I'm taking advantage of my position as the webmistress and blogger-in-chief to invite friends and supporters of the Mendocino Art Center to come out in support of the literary arts this coming Wednesday. The literary arts are one of the few forms of artistic expression that have little representation at the Art Center, but being a writer, I hope that will change in the not too distant future. The Mendocino Arts magazine, of course, reflects the power of a well-turned phrase, but I'm hoping that eventually the Art Center will engage the literary arts with the same professional intensity they do the visual arts.

The Mendocino Coast is remarkable for many reasons, one of which is the great number of truly talented artists who make this region their home, and that's as true for writers as well. There's a well-established community that hosts the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference every summer and meets regularly throughout the rest of the year to sharpen their craft. This merry band of authors is led by the intrepid and brilliant novelist Charlotte Gullick, the Director of the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference. We are the folks who will be reading at Good Words this coming Wednesday—I say "we," because I will be there. I'll be reading a very brief excerpt from my soon to be published, first novel, Requiem for the Author of Frankenstein. A lot of other charming, funny, brilliant and entertaining writers will be there too.  So we hope you'll come out and lend your support. The venue is small, the evening informal and the words.... well, they're Good.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to congratulate Mendocino Coast poet, Barbara MacKay, who just had a poem accepted into the Look of Love literary exhibit being sponsored by the Northwest Cultural Council of Bloomington, Illinois. Barbara will be reading at Good Words. Her winning poem was called, If I Could.

If I Could

I would choose to be a stowaway
on a tramp steamer going anywhere.
I would travel everywhere around the globe
stopping at this or that port, here and there.

My horizon would be unlimited, as vast
as the universe, and I would visit each star,
the moons of Jupiter, the rings of Saturn,
to you I would never return.

But oh my love you hold me tight and fast.
I am becalmed as is the fly in a spiders nest.
You are my universe, my sun, my moon,
so I hug the shore and give up all the rest.

—Barbara MacKay



Hope to see you there: Wednesday, November 14, 6-8pm,
The Fort Bragg Library, 499 Laurel Street, Fort Bragg.