I'll be teaching a writing workshop called "Engaging Fictions" this September 18 - 23, at Channel Rock, a stunningly beautiful location on Cortes Island, in British Columbia, Canada. Here's the info. Please come!

This workshop is for all who are inspired to write stories that are socially meaningful and thought-provoking, and which will engage readers with what it means to be human in our world today.

Many of us want to help to make the world a better place — greener, kinder, more just and humane. We are passionate about these beliefs, and yet we see that as a society, we often fail to engage with what matters. In our information-overloaded and media-saturated world, we worry that facts and figures have lost their power to convince. The trick, we feel, intuitively, lies in the power of story, in crafting narratives that cut through the noise to touch the quick. We’ve got ideas for tales we want to tell. We want to write them...if only we had the time.

This workshop is a chance for you to make the time and space to write these stories, and to receive guidance and support for your efforts.

In this workshop, we will:

• Turn beliefs into stories that inspire, make issues enticing and teach

without preaching
• Turn conflict into plots, learn to recognize stereotype and avoid

caricature
• Write engaging heroes and learn to love our villains
• Use humor to lighten things up

We will also investigate:

• The power of complexity
• The importance of honesty in a make-believe world
• The fictional contract

The workshop will include daily meditation, class discussion, guided writing exercises, private time for writing, private consultation with Ruth, and a chance to share your work and receive feedback and support from the group.

The workshop is open to writers of any level, who are writing or want to write "pure," semi-autobiographical, or autobiographical fiction (and we will certainly be discussing what these terms imply).

Ruth Ozeki is a filmmaker and novelist, and the author of the award-winning, muck-raking novels, “My Year of Meats” and “All Over Creation.” Both novels have been named New York Times Notable books, and have been widely translated and published internationally. She was a judge for the 2000 Bellwether Prize for Fiction, an award founded by Barbara Kingsolver in support of a literature of social change.

Dates: September 18 - 23
Tuition: $960, which includes five nights accommodation and three delicious organic home-cooked meals a day!

To register for a workshop, please contact bookings@channelrock.ca. A nonrefundable deposit of CAD$200 will be required to reserve your spot.

www.channelrock.ca

The new EVERYDAYZEN website is now up and running! This is the website for Zen teacher Norman Fischer and the Everyday Zen foundation and sangha, and we've been working on it now for over a year. There are 400+ dharma talks available for download, as well as a Study Guide and a schedule for study and retreats. Please feel free to come browse and listen, and if you have any comments or suggestions, please contact me at: editor@everydayzen.org

The New York Public Library has chosen “Click” for inclusion in their list of “Books for the Teenage 2008,” a selection of the best books from the previous year. “Click” is a collaborative novel, written by ten authors (of whom I am one), as a benefit project for Amnesty International. It was published in October, 2007 by Arthur Levine's imprint at Scholastic.

The idea was that one author would kick things off by writing a chapter, and then that chapter would be passed it along to the next author on the list, and from there the chapters would accrue and the book would grow. We were told we could take as our inspiration any aspect of the chapter or chapters we received in our turn—a character, or an event, or a location, or a word or object—and that we should feel free to follow the story in any direction it took us, forward or backward, up or down, in time or through space. It's a puzzling idea, but it works.

The authors, in order of our chapters, are: David Almond, Eoin Colfer, Roddy Doyle, Deborah Ellis, Nick Hornby, Margo Lanagan, Gregory Maguire, me, Linda Sue Park, and Tim Wynne-Jones. You can find out more about it at the SCHOLASTIC WEBSITE.

SHAMBHALA SUN magazine has published "The Art of Losing: On Writing, Dying, and Mom," in their March, 2008, issue. It's an essay based on the talk I gave at the benefit for the Zen Hospice Project, and they did a really nice job with the photos and layout. You can order a copy of the magazine at their website, and I've also put up a link to the PDF on my weblog.

• The Vancouver Public Library has chosen "My Year of Meats" for the 2007 ONE BOOK ONE VANCOUVER program! This makes me happy for many reasons, not the least of which is that the VPL is one of the coolest libraries I've ever had the privilege of using, and it's where I did the research for "My Year of Meats." There are a lot of PUBLIC EVENTS associated with the One Book One Vancouver program throughout the summer, so if you're in the city, I hope you'll check them out and come and say hi!

• Last year at Stanford, I met a really nice writer and Stegner Fellow, Malena Watrous, and we've stayed in touch. She interviewed me for BELIEVER MAGAZINE, and it's just been published in the March 2007 issue of the magazine. You can read an excerpt HERE, but if you want to read the whole thing you'll have to buy the issue, which you should do anyway because it's a fantastic magazine...and not just because I'm on the cover.

• Check this out! Kodansha has just published "Inside and Other Short Fiction," which is an edgy and totally mind-blowing collection of short stories by Japanese women that will pretty much demolish any lingering stereotypes of coy geisha, docile office ladies, or submissive wives that you might be harboring in the creases of your unconscious. It's a gorgeous-looking book, and I wrote the foreword to the collection, and you should go out and find a copy and read it right now if you're at all curious about contemporary Japan.

• My friend, artist Marina Zurkow, has another very cool project called Karaoke Ice that she's doing in collaboration with artists Nancy Nowacek and Katie Salen for the ZeroOne San Jose ISEA 2006 Symposium. The project involves a demented baby squirrel cub who drives around in a karaoke ice cream truck, with some of the twinklingest music you've ever sung along to, so if you're in the San Jose area from August 7 - 13, you should drop by for a song and a pop. Marina is a wild and wonderful artist and a friend from the horror film days. We met on the set of a film called "Matt Riker: Mutant Hunt," and we ended up opening a production design studio together.

Here's a link to a ZeroOne interview and schedule.

Here's a link to Marina's website, o-matic.com.

Here's a link to an interview I did with her for Bitch Magazine.

• In May, I gave a talk for the Zen Hospice Project, called "The Art of Letting Go: On Writing, Dying, and Mom." Some of the talk comes from my weblog, and some of it is new. My Zen teacher, Zoketsu Norman Fischer, has posted it on his website, Everyday Zen, so you can read it there...and then while you're at his site, you can check out his very large collection of talks and teaching on Buddhism and poetry and a lot of other things as well...and then if you really feel inspired and motivated, you can check his schedule and go and sit with him or hear him talk, and maybe I'll see you there.

• Stay tuned for the long-awaited and eagerly anticipated publication of "Mixed," a new anthology of short fiction by multi-ethnic writers from Norton in August! I'll let you know when it hits the bookshelves.

UPDATE: August, 2006. "Mixed" is out, and it looks fantastic, and I've written about it on my WEBLOG, so check there for more information...