December 25, 2017

Kindness/Gratitude Writing and Publishing Workshop in Astoria

(Season’s greetings readers. I will take a break from the blog until the New Year. Thanks for reading and making contributions to support the effort.)

Writers:

At one of our recent workshops, I proposed the idea of producing a small print publication with a specific non-fiction theme. The idea was warmly received and we tentatively settled on kindness/gratitude after some stellar writing and sharing on the topic.

I want to propose a kindness/gratitude writing/publishing workshop Saturday, Feb 3 from 10-2 in Astoria. At the workshop, I wold run us through a series of prompts/readings/discussion topics and a process for making editorial decisions about the publication (e.g. naming it, size, color, etc).

Basically, it would work like this: participants would write their pieces (approximately 200-300 words in length), email them to me, I would edit, email it back for a final revision, and then the pieces are returned to me. Then I (or someone else with better skills) will design the publication (probably a two-page, front/back, 11” by 14” broadsheet), have it printed, and then we all distribute a thousand copies in our various communities or wherever we go. We could even hold a little event to publicize the release. I envision the publication coming out in the spring.

The cost of the workshop/publishing venture is $80 and that includes the printing cost for the publication. We need about 10 paying people to make this project fly and have enough voices in the publication to provide the desired variety of perspectives. If you cannot attend the workshop but still want to participate in the project, I can email the prompts and work with you that way. The writing has been so wonderful and unique this past year and deserves a larger audience. Let me know if you want to join and of course, if you want to recruit a writer friend to join us in this endeavor, by all means invite. Email me through the blog or at my email address and let me know if you want to join this project.

Support Meditations Blog

The Old Crow

Book Club

$11.99 + $3 Shipping

In December of 2020, author Matt Love moved to Portland to care for his elderly father.

Returning to the Rose City jolted Love after 23 years residing on the Oregon Coast. In the Sellwood neighborhood where he lived, Love met a homeless man named Mark. They formed a friendship over literature and the unforeseen magical discoveries in street libraries. They created The Old Crow Book Club, and yes, sometimes that involved drinking Old Crow on a sidewalk.

The club also included several other Sellwood homeless men and women cut from John Steinbeck's Cannery Row cloth.

In due course, Love learned the members' stories of homelessness and how they survived. He wondered what happened to his beloved state of Oregon and attempted to help Mark get off the streets only to run up against the seemingly futile policies to address the crisis.

Along the way, he had the best conversations about books in his life and wrote The Old Crow Book Club, where he recounts his interactions with the homeless people in his neighborhood and offers some suggestions how to alleviate what he considers the greatest man-made American humanitarian disaster of his adult life.

The Old Crow Book Club is available for purchase here and select independent bookstores in Oregon.

Choice Cuts

of Oregon Fiction

$22.99 + $3 Shipping

Choice Cuts of Oregon Fiction by Matt Love contains 20 stories, all set in Oregon. The cast of characters includes a depressed Santa Claus, Steve Prefontaine, Jack Ramsay's fast break offense, socialist squirrels, a clearcut, a dead deer, a junior high football team, a high school tennis player, a dissipated teacher, a man who evolves into a beaver, a homeless vet, a jilted preacher, a double date to a prom, rural degenerates, a wily caterer, and much more.

The publication of the collection culminates a quarter century of the author's writing about Oregon and rambling around the state.

Choice Cuts is available for purchase here, through Amazon, or select independent bookstores in Oregon.

The Savage

of State Street

Nestucca Spit Press is proud to present The Savage of State Street: The Thieving and Literary Lives of Smoky Epley. He is the greatest unheralded writer in Oregon history and also one of its more mediocre, colorful and persistent thieves.

$19.99 + $3 Shipping

In 1973, Oregon State University Press published Men in Exile: An Anthology of Creative Writing by Inmates of the Oregon State Penitentiary. Twenty-two of Smoky Epley's pieces appeared in the book.

Smoky spent most of his adult life in state and federal prisons for robbery. In 2008, during one of his brief stints of freedom, Smoky became friends with Matt Love, an Oregon author and publisher. They met after Love discovered Men in Exile and wrote a newspaper column about the landmark book. Smoky read the column and reached out.

He returned to prison in 2009 after forging a check. Upon his release in 2011, Love encouraged Smoky to write a memoir. He completed half of Auto before dying in February of 2013.