Titans of Travel Reading Series, Mill Valley Library

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Titillating Tales Told by the Titans of Travel: Adventure Stories From Albania to the Amazon

Wednesday, October 22nd
Creekside Room – 7pm

Author Lisa Alpine (Wild Life: Travel Adventures of a Worldly Woman and Exotic Life: Travel Tales of an Adventurous Woman) hosts an ensemble of writers for this series of literary travel tales from around the globe. They will read and talk-story from some of their best published works at each program. Authors will also be signing and selling their books at each event.

Adventure Stories From Albania to the Amazon

Featuring:

Mary Jo McConahay, Lowell Thomas Travel Journalist of the Year, and author of Maya Roads, One Woman’s Journey Among the People of the Rainforest, and Ricochet.

Kimberley Lovato’s essays and articles have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies and her culinary travel book, Walnut Wine & Truffle Groves, received the 2012 Gold Lowell Thomas Award.

Erin Byrne‘s work has won Grand Prize Solas Awards for Travel Story of the Year, and appears in World HumBest Travel Writing, and elsewhere. Erin wrote The Storykeeper, an award-winning film.  She is occasional instructor at Shakespeare and Company Bookstore, and is co-editor of Vignettes & Postcards From Paris.

Oakland-based Jeff Greenwald is the author of six best-selling travel books, including The Size of the World and Shopping for Buddhas – just released in a dazzling revised 25th Anniversary Edition.

Lisa Alpine is the author of Wild Life: Travel Adventures of a Worldly Woman and Exotic Life: Travel Tales of an Adventurous Woman (Best Women’s Adventure Memoir BAIPA Book Awards).

Jill K. Robinson writes about travel, adventure, food, and drink for the San Francisco Chronicle, AFAR, National Geographic Traveler, Every Day With Rachael Ray, Saturday Evening Post, Robb Report, Islands, Coastal Living, American Way, San Francisco magazine, and Organic Gardening. She runs a kayak business and surfs near Mavericks’ big waves.

– See more at: http://www.millvalleylibrary.org/index.aspx?recordid=18831&page=1394#sthash.tE9d96gn.dpuf

Salon – Jane Weston: Charlie Hebdo

You are invited to a Salon

featuring Jane Weston Vauclair 

speaking about her PhD thesis which examines Charlie Hebdo

Thurs March 19 at 20:00

Hosted by Erin Byrne

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Jane Weston Vauclair has a PhD in French Studies from the University of BristolHer thesis, which she is currently preparing for publication, examined humour in Hara-Kiri and Charlie Hebdo in its theory, practice and subsequent mythologisation. Over the course of her  research, she was able to spend time at the offices of Charlie Hebdo and to interview its contributors on their work. She has lived in Paris since 2005 where she now works as a translator, teacher and independent researcher.  She also enjoys travel, choral music and creative writing.

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Charlie Hebdo became a global name following the tragic events of January 7 2015 in Paris. Following this, two competing, somewhat reductive forms of commentary on Charlie Hebdo rapidly emerged in the global media. Could Charlie Hebdo effectively be sidelined as a case of egregiously irresponsible and offensive satire, even if the attacks per se were inexcusable? Or could its cartoonists instead be championed as martyrs to free speech, having proved to have a backbone of conviction and courage that had been lacking elsewhere in the media? I will look to highlight how Charlie Hebdo’s contributors have been engaging with these tensions, both in the ‘survivor’s issue’ of 14th of January 2015 and in other spaces of commentary.

Readings, Salons, Events

scorpion house menu

moulay photoMarch, 2014 – Deep Travel Morocco Reading and Celebration, Scorpion House, Moulay Idriss, Host – Mike Richardson

 

March, 2014 – Literary Salon, île Saint Louis, Paris – Gonzague Pichelin, artist and filmmaker presents his Love Letters project

You are invited to a Salon,

an evening of creative inspiration and conversation,

featuring Gonzague Pichelin, artist and filmmaker

presenting his Love Letters Project

Wednesday, March 5

Hosted by Erin Byrne

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Events, California

Weekday Wanderlust January

 

 

Weekday Wanderlust – with a wild band of travel writers Kimberley Lovato, Michael Shapiro, Don George, Derk Richardson and Lavinia Spalding at the Rex

January, 2014 – Weekday Wanderlust Reading, Hotel Rex, San Francisco – Day Dreamer

December, 2013 – Reading, Book Passage, Corte Madera, 7:00 pm. Two poems, The Night Café and Coltrane Twilight, from anthology Burning the Midnight Oil

November – Presentation of projects and Reading, National Women’s Book Association Los Angeles Chapter. The Secret of It.

Events October – December, 2013

December, 2013 – Reading, Book Passage, Corte Madera, 7:00 pm. Two poems, The Night Café and Coltrane Twilight, from anthology Burning the Midnight Oil

November – Presentation of projects and Reading, National Women’s Book Association Los Angeles Chapter. The Secret of It.


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November – Presentation of projects and mini-workshop, The Writers’ Junction, Los Angeles, 6:30 pm

October – Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, Hot Springs Arkansas. Two screenings of The Storykeeper, nominated for Best Short Documentary, with special guests Rene and Ann Duval from Scotland, and Michele Duval from Paris.

More Press…

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Adrian Leeds, Parler Paris,

Hot Off the Postcard Press

http://www.adrianleeds.com/component/acymailing/archive/view/listid-1-mailinglist/mailid-150-pp7-5-12

Arts Beat LA

http://www.artsbeatla.com/2013/11/travel-writing-workshop/

Mediabistro

http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/amy-tan-alexander-mccall-smith-erin-byrne-get-booked_b79664

Left Coast Writers

http://www.leftcoastwriters.com/ferry-plaza-book-party-vignettes-and-postcards-with-erin-byrne/

 

Screenings, Salons, Readings

vie lit photo

August – Literary Salon with Sabrina Crawford, “La Vie Littéraire”, The Depot Bookstore, Mill Valley, CA

 

 

 

August – Reading – Spirals, Memoir of a Celtic Soul, from Best Travel Writing volume 9, Book Passage Bookstore, Corte Madera, CA

June – Reading, Caféotheque, Paris, Deep Travel Sketches

May – Sir Francis Drake Hotel, San Francisco – San Francisco Book Festival Awards Ceremony

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May – The Harvard Club, New York – Next Generation Indie Book Awards ceremony, Vignettes & Postcards Winner, with agent Kimberley Cameron

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

March – Literary Salon, Menippean Satire, île Saint Louis – Writer Philip Murray Lawson’s personal analysis of the genre

February, 2013 – Thin Line Film Festival, premier, The Storykeeper.

Salon, Paris

You are invited to

A Satirical Salon

With writer Philip Murray-Lawson

Sunday, April 7 at 6 pm

Hosted by Erin Byrne

“Parody, despite its humorous effect, is involved in the very serious business of pointing out what is to be avoided in a real world of pain and suffering.”

– Carter Kaplan Critical Synoptics 2000 Associatied University Presses

What do the following works of fiction have in common?

 

The Satyricon, Guargantua, Gullivers Travels, Candide, Alice in Wonderland, Moby Dick, Lolita, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy…

 

They are all examples of Menippean Satire.

 

In this talk, I will be giving a personal analysis of Menippean Satire. We will be discussing its classical origins, its main characteristics, its resurgence in postmodern literature and its aims which go beyond the purely literary to reach a philosophy of life itself.

philip bioPhilip MURRAY-LAWSON

 

Philip Murray-Lawson studied History in the University of Aberdeen. He lives in Paris where he runs Evolution-abc, a language consulting company.

His first works were translations of fin de siècle author Marcel Schwob. They appeared in Udolpho, the Gothic Society periodical, to which Philip also contributed non-fiction.

A collection of horror stories Heresies was published in 2000.

He is published in Vignettes &Postcards published by Shakespeare &Co and contributes works of Menippean satire to Emanations, an annual anthology published by International Authors.