We are excited to welcome Judy Reeves and Amy Wallen to celebrate the release of Judy's new memoir, When Your Heart Says Go. Join us for an evening of reading, writing, and discussions about the literary life.
"Reeves recounts in loving detail the globe-hopping she embarks upon to chart a new path after the death of her husband. It is in these details-a perfect cappuccino at a caféeacute; in Amsterdam, a moonrise in Mykonos--that she reveals how we carry on after loss--and take loss with us as we carry on." — Sue William Silverman, How to Survive Death and Other Inconveniences
"In gentle, gorgeous, and elegiac prose, Judy Reeves pulls the reader into a journey of quiet courage and insight that shines from her paragraphs in this memoir of midlife journey. Against a backdrop of foreign countries, her reverie on recovery--from alcohol, intimate losses, young widowhood--shows emergence in a woman who has spent the thirty years since then guiding others through reflection and self-inquiry. Reeves' contributions as a teacher of the writing life are known to thousands: this is her origin story." — Christina Baldwin, Life's Companion
Nearing fifty and grieving the death of her husband, Judy Reeves sells everything, buys an around-the-world airline ticket, and sets off on a solo journey. Months of solitude and loneliness in foreign countries challenge her to examine her old ideas and explore her heart's deepest longings as she searches for who she might become in her new life.
In a special presentation on the writer’s life, these two multi-published, award-winning authors and writing teachers, will discuss how they approach the different genres, how writers can work in multiple styles and genres, their current books, and what they’ll take on next. Participants will be invited to take on some writing of their own during a lively, interactive writing session.
Judy Reeves is the award-winning author of A Writer’s Book of Days and Wild Women, Wild Voices (books on writing), All That Isn’t Singing (novel-in-progress), and When Your Heart Says Go, (memoir). Judy is co-founder of two nonprofit literary centers, including San Diego Writers, Ink, where she continues to teach, and a member of the Journal Council of the International Association for Journal Writing.
Amy Wallen is the best-selling author of MoonPies and Movie Stars (a novel), When We Were Ghouls (memoir), and How to Write a Novel in 20 Pies (a book about writing and the writing life). She’s founder of DimeStories—an open mic of 3-minute stories read by the author, and she’s former Associate Director of the New York State Summer Writers Institute in Saratoga Springs, NY. (DimeStories–Albuquerque meets the second Thursday of every month.)
