Hudson Valley Writers Guild First Annual Multi-Genre Writing Contest

The Hudson Valley Writers Guild is pleased to announce its first annual multi-genre Writing Contest, which will annually alternate among the genres of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. This year's contest is in poetry. Winners and Honorable Mentions will be invited to read their poems during the Community of Writers Program in the fall of 2009.
Eligibility:

All contestants must be residents of New York State. Current members of the Hudson Valley Writers Guild Board of Directors and their families are not eligible. Entries must be postmarked between May 1 and August 31, 2009.
Submission Guidelines:

* Theme: No style or topic requirements, but all submissions must be unpublished
* Submissions must be typed (No email submissions)
* 50-Line Limit
* Anonymous Entries: Do not write your name anywhere on the poems
* Submit 3 copies of 3-5 poems (3 completes sets)
* Entry fee: $10.00 for members of the HVWG and $15.00 for non-members

Send cover letter with:

* Your name
* Address
* Email address
* Poem titles
* Check for entry fee made out to "HVWG"
* SASE (optional)

Mail submissions to:
The Hudson Valley Writers Guild
c/o Mimi Moriarty
Box 222
Clarksville, NY 12041

Note: Submissions will not be returned, but if you would like hardcopy results of the contest, please send a SASE. All entrants will be notified of winners by email and/or SASE. Results will also be posted on our website. For more info, please email Mimi Moriarty.

For more on the contest, visit the HVWG site.

Three Minute Fiction Contest From National Public Radio

"Three-Minute Fiction" Contest Official Rules


1. CONTEST SPONSOR. The 2009 Three-Minute Fiction Writing Contest ("the Contest") is sponsored by National Public Radio, Inc. ("the "SPONSOR").

2. HOW TO ENTER. The Contest begins at 12:00 a.m. on June 20, 2009, and entries must be received by 11:59 p.m. on July 18, 2009. To enter, go to www.npr.org/threeminutefiction and click on the link "Send Us Your Original Short Story." Fill out the personal information form and upload your entry following the online instructions. You will receive an e-mail asking you to confirm your agreement to these Official Rules. You must reply in the affirmative to that e-mail in order for your entry to be considered. There is no limit to the number of entries per person. There is no fee to submit an entry. By submitting an entry to the Contest, each entrant agrees to comply with and be bound by these Official Rules and acknowledges that the decisions of the SPONSOR shall be final and binding in all matters relating to the Contest.

3. QUALIFIED ENTRIES. To be qualified for the Contest, an entry must include only one (1) fictional story (each, a "Story"). Each Story must (a) be in the English language; (b) be no longer than 600 words; (c) be wholly the original work of the entrant, not be copied from any other source; (d) be written solely by the entrant; (e) not have been previously broadcast or otherwise distributed or disseminated in any media or format; (f) not be in the public domain; (g) not be in violation of or conflict with the trademark, copyright, rights of privacy, rights of publicity or any other rights, of any kind or nature, of any other person or entity; and (h) not include any language or other content that is indecent, inappropriate, morally objectionable or otherwise unfit for dissemination or broadcast, as determined by the SPONSOR in its discretion. Entries not satisfying these criteria in any respect will be disqualified. If the SPONSOR, in its sole discretion, has reason to believe that any entry contains any material that may infringe or violate any law or any rights of a third party, or that the use or broadcast or such entry in the manner described herein may infringe or violate any law or any rights of a third party, the SPONSOR may immediately disqualify such entry and take any other measures the SPONSOR may deem appropriate.

4. ELIGIBILITY. The Contest is open only to individual legal residents of the fifty United States who are age 18 and over. Any individuals who have, within six (6) months prior to the start date of the Contest or thereafter, been employed by or performed services (including but not limited to as employees, consultants, independent contractors or interns) for SPONSOR or any of its subsidiary, affiliated or successor companies, and immediate family and household members of such individuals, are not eligible to enter or win. The SPONSOR reserves the right to verify and confirm entrants' ages and compliance with other eligibility requirements. Entrants may be required to submit further information to assist in the judges' verification of eligibility.

5. WINNER SELECTION. Judging will commence at the time the Contest begins and continue through and including July 24, 2009. The Contest judge shall be James Wood (literary critic for The New Yorker and author of "How Fiction Works") or such other person(s) as may be selected by the SPONSOR from time to time in its sole discretion (the "Judge"). The Judge will select one (1) Contest Winner, based on the following criteria, weighted equally: (a) originality; (b) creativity; (c) humor; and (d) overall quality of writing. In the event of a tie, tied entries will be re-judged based solely on the criteria of overall quality of writing. The Contest Winner will be notified on or about July 24, 2009. The Contest Winner will be required to sign and return within five (5) business days of receipt a notarized Affidavit of Eligibility and any other documents that SPONSOR may reasonably require. If the Contest Winner does not reply to any notification within forty-eight (48) hours, or fails to return any required documentation within five (5) business days of delivery to the Contest Winner, such Contest Winner may, in the sole discretion of SPONSOR, be disqualified and an alternate Contest Winner may be selected.

6. PRIZE. One (1) Contest Winner will be interviewed and have his/her Story read on-air during Weekend All Things Considered and will receive an autographed copy of the book "How Fiction Works" (approximate value - $25.00). No substitution, cash redemption or transfer of right to receive prizes is permitted, except in the discretion of SPONSOR, which reserves the right to substitute a prize of equal or greater value. Prize consists only of items expressly specified in these Official Rules.

7. GRANT OF RIGHTS. By submitting a Story entry, the entrant grants to SPONSOR a non-exclusive, assignable, perpetual, license to produce, publish, distribute, transmit, exhibit, exploit, and license the Story and any portions thereof in any format (collectively "distribute" or "distribution," as applicable) by any and all means, uses and media, whether audio, print, audiovisual or otherwise, now or hereafter known, throughout the universe in all languages. Entrant further agrees that NPR shall have the first right to distribute the Story unless NPR waives that right, in writing. Entrant retains the copyright and all other rights in the work.

8. ENTRANT REPRESENTATIONS, WARRANTIES, INDEMNIFICATION AND RELEASE. By entering, each entrant represents and warrants to the SPONSOR that his/her entry is (i) completely the original work of the entrant and was written solely by the entrant, (ii) not copied from any other source or previously broadcast or otherwise distributed or disseminated in any media or format, (iii) not in the public domain, and (iv) not in violation of or conflict with the trademark, copyright, rights of privacy, rights of publicity or any other rights, of any kind or nature, of any other person or entity. Entrant agrees to defend and indemnify SPONSOR for any breach of the above representations. By submitting an entry, each entrant agrees to indemnify, defend, release, discharge and hold harmless SPONSOR and its parent companies, affiliates, subsidiaries, promotional partners and agents, and all others associated with the development and execution of this Contest, and the officers, directors and employees of each of the foregoing, from any and all claims and liabilities arising from or in connection with participation in this Contest, including without limitation (a) claims for injury, loss or damage of any kind resulting from participation in this Contest or acceptance or use of any prize and (b) claims based on rights of privacy, rights of publicity, false light, defamation, copyright and/or trademark infringement relating to the submission or exploitation of the entrant's concept.

9. RELEASE OF CLAIMS. Each entrant acknowledges that the SPONSOR engages and has engaged in the developing, writing, acquiring, producing, publishing, disseminating and/or broadcasting of literary, artistic, and other material, including stories, ideas, themes, plots, titles, treatments, formats, and concepts (collectively, the "Materials"). By submitting an entry in the Contest, each entrant acknowledges and agrees that any Materials that the SPONSOR may hereafter use or exploit may have originated with the SPONSOR themselves or may have been acquired from the SPONSOR's employees or other parties, and that such Materials may duplicate, parallel or resemble the Story submitted in the Contest by the entrant. By submitting an entry, each entrant acknowledges that he or she understands and agrees that the SPONSOR use of Materials containing features, ideas, material and/or elements similar to or identical with those contained in their entry shall not entitle the entrant to any compensation whatsoever. As an inducement to SPONSOR to accept the entrant's entry into the Contest, each entrant hereby waives any claim or right of action against any of the SPONSOR or their successors in connection with the SPONSOR's use of any Materials (or any portions thereof) whether or not such Materials contain any features, ideas, material and/or elements similar or identical to those contained in an entrant's entry.

10. GENERAL TERMS AND CONDITIONS. By entering the Contest, each entrant grants permission to the SPONSOR to use his/her name, photograph, likeness, voice, and/or biographical information for SPONSOR's programming, publication, publicity, advertising and all other promotional purposes without compensation, review or approval unless prohibited by law. The SPONSOR reserves the right to terminate, modify or suspend this Contest due to any of an act of God; unavoidable accident; epidemic; fire; blackout; act of public enemy; war, riot or civil commotion; enactment, rule, order or act of government or governmental instrumentality or tribunal; strike, lockout or other labor dispute; inclement weather; the recapture of any time period scheduled for the live broadcast of a program for an event of national importance or emergency; failure of technical facilities; failure of essential production, or technical personnel to appear or be available for production or broadcast; or other cause beyond its control. SPONSOR is not responsible for lost, late, illegible, incomplete, damaged, mutilated, misdirected, misdelivered, or delayed entries, or for technical or human errors or failures of any kind in connection with the submission, transmission, processing or judging of entries.

11. GOVERNING LAW. This Contest is governed by the internal laws of the District of Columbia without regard to principles of conflict of laws. All cases and claims pertaining to this Contest must be brought in a court of competent jurisdiction in the District of Columbia.

12. WINNER'S NAME. For the name of the Contest Winner, available after August 1, 2009, send a separate self-addressed, stamped envelope to Three-Minute Fiction Writing Contest, Weekend All Things Considered, NPR, 635 Massachusetts Ave. NW, Washington, D.C. 20001. Responses will be provided to all requests made prior to December 31, 2009.

Truffle Oil, Staff Rota, and Vegetable Prep: New Novel Takes You Into the Kitchen

In the Kitchen: A Novel

In the Kitchenis nowhere if not in the kitchen. In its first 100 pages there is so much detail about mise en place and truffle oil, staff rota and vegetable prep, consommé julienne and chiffonade, that we could be watching the Food Network. The author has done her research. The kitchen of the grand Imperial Hotel on Piccadilly is presented as “part prison, part lunatic asylum, part community hall.” It is also — and this is where Ali’s interests lie — an employer harbouring immigrants whose back-stories concern child armies in Africa, the Soviet Union’s senseless declassifying of intellectuals and the sex trafficking of teenage girls from Eastern Europe.

No doubt someone somewhere has already written a PhD thesis on the role of restaurants in the literature of immigration. In that genre, I prefer Ha Jin’s descriptions of the Chinese restaurant in A Free Lifeand Rose Tremaine’s striving Polish dishwasher in A Long Way Home. Ali’s Kitchen comes with a series of unsympathetic characters: The reader casts about from chef to his not-very-believable second-in-command, from fiancé to father, and finds nowhere to rest her affections. I would be the last to assert that we have to love all the characters in a novel. That is not what fiction is about. However, if an author deeply engages with any character, whether an upwardly mobile mid-life man from a Northern mill town or an earnest Asian immigrant chopping at his “battle station,” that character’s humanity will win our sympathy, if not our affection.

So the problem with In the Kitchenis not that the characters aren’t pleasant people, though they aren’t, but that they do not come alive. And why do they do not come alive in the hands of this gifted, insightful and thoughtful writer? I am afraid it is because they are stifled with dogma, with Ali’s desire to speak for everyone arriving on England’s shores. The immigrants are so loaded down with Ali’s voice that they can’t seem to speak with their own, even though they are given speech tics to signify their heritage. And the English are mouthpieces for Ali’s ideas about the country’s crisis of heart.

Ali wants to tell us what she thinks about the terrorist threat in London: “What are the chances? What kind of statistic are we talking about? But it invades us. We’ve been invaded, not by anyone, just by a nightmare.”

Read the rest of the review here, or get a copy of In the Kitchen now!

Creative Writing Contest for Children: Dream Power

"Dream Power” Creative Writing Contest for Children

In celebration of the fifth anniversary of the award-winning fantasy The Dark Dreamweaver, Imaginator Press is sponsoring a creative writing contest for children and teens up to age 14. The Dark Dreamweaver is the first book of The Remin Chronicles, about a land literally powered by dreams. Imaginator Press invites children to write a creative story on the theme of “Dream Power,” for a chance to win an 8 GB iPod Touch. Four second prize winners will receive $25 iTunes gift cards, and five third prize winners will receive $10 iTunes gift cards. The winning stories will be published in a "Dream Power" anthology.

Stories will be judged on originality and creativity, writing quality, grammar and spelling, and appropriateness to “Dream Power” theme. Everyone who enters and includes a self-addressed, stamped envelope with their entry will receive a certificate and a gold “Powered by Dreams” sticker. Entries must be received by October 31, 2009.

For more on the contest, visit the site here.

Bandits, Love Pirates, and the Shadow of Jesse James: Book Thralling Read

The Love Pirate and the Bandit's Son: Murder, Sin, and Scandal in the Shadow of Jesse James

Laura James, an attorney and crime historian from Detroit, has written a crackling, true-life account of a brazen femme fatale who was murdered in Kansas City in 1924.

Zeo Zoe Wilkins (her mother appropriated the curious name from the heroine of a 19th-century romance novel) grew up in squalor and poverty on a hog farm in rural Ohio. The 11th child of a prolific family, she was also the smartest and best-looking, with flawless skin, electric blue eyes and a willowy figure.

At 17, a high school drop-out, Zeo finagled her way into the American School of Osteopathy in Kirksville, Mo. Her striking good looks attracted many male admirers, one of whom, Richard Dryer, the son of a banker, she married.

Details are murky, but it appears the marriage lasted only a few weeks. A new suitor entered her life, another ASO student named Charles Garring. They married in 1904; a year later, Zeo graduated from ASO and moved to Oklahoma with Garring. Oklahoma was in the throes of an oil boom. The number of men in the town of Durant, where Garring had set up an osteopathic clinic, outnumbered women 20-to-1. Zeo dallied openly with the roughnecks. Her career as a gold digger was launched.

Garring took out a life insurance policy, with Zeo the sole beneficiary. One night, at home alone, clutching a loaded pistol, she heard him tramp up the front steps. Thinking it was a burglar, she fired, not once but twice, wounding him. Overcome by remorse, she tended his wounds; only later did Garring find out that Zeo had rubbed her hands in horse manure before changing the dressings on his wounds.

Read the rest of the review here, or get a copy of The Love Pirate and the Bandit's Son: Murder, Sin, and Scandal in the Shadow of Jesse James now!

WOW: Women of Wisdom Experience

Women of Wisdom

Foreword by Jean Houston

Women of Wisdomis in the forefront of the biggest change in human history – the only change that will assure our continuity as a species. Those who organize and participate in the Women of Wisdom experience know that for a new world to be born we have to bring a new mind to bear. Critical to this is the rich mind style of women that has been gestating in the womb of preparatory time, lo, these many millennia. In their ebullient and evocative conferences WOW demonstrates a tremendous change in who we are and how we do things.

Playing their part to usher in feminine mind, WOW emphasizes process rather than just product, and making things cohere, relate, and grow. Cultures in which the feminine archetype is powerful are almost always non-heroic; they tend to make things work together, each piece has its part to play. The feminine principle expresses itself as an unfolding of levels of existence, not as conquest of facts. The relationships between people and things become more important than final outcome. The world within becomes as important as the world outside.

In each and every WOW conference women discover ways to manifest this consciousness, embrace their power, challenge the way things are done, and build a new social order. They learn how women are more geared to team building and leading enterprises through natural growth stages.

The conferences demonstrate that governance, games, education, work, health – society itself – can be held to a new standard, one that promotes and honors the fullness of who and what we can be rather than just collective rights and liberties. They empower women to challenge the most sexist institutions from the medical establishments to business institutions, and at long last, allow their full creativity to be set free.

The women’s movement as a whole, and events such as the Women of Wisdom conference in particular, may be the outward manifestation of what is happening on depth levels in essential, mythic, and archetypal space-time. Whether the women’s movement has evolved because the crisis of the eternal world is calling for the rise of the goddess to restore the balance of nature, or because the release of women into full partnership demands a similar release of its archetypal principle, or even because, in the cosmic cycle of things, the time of the goddess has come around, we cannot say. But all the evidence indicates that the feminine archetype is returning.

This is perhaps the most important event of the last five thousand years, and its consequences may well have an immense, unimaginable effect on cultural and ecological evolution.

Because its approach is systemic rather than systematic, because it sees things in constellations rather than as discreet and disconnected facts, the feminine mind view is supremely concerned with the networking of the individual with the larger social organism. This is most important as we try and create a planetary society with deepening of individual cultures.

As I have had the opportunity to talk with many of the participants at these conferences I am moved to celebration and gratitude for what these remarkable women have done and how they have served in the creation of this new society.

Women of Wisdom by Kris Steinnes, is being offered beginning on June 23rd, 2009 at 12:01 am. We invite you to go to this page - www.wisewomanpublishing.com/womenofwisdom.html - to access the order page and then go back to this page to access the bonus page. On the Exclusive Private Invite page, enter your order confirmation code. That will allow you to gain entry to the bonus gifts that are available to people who buy the book on June 23rd.

Women of Wisdom offers a wide range of possibilities, images, and visions for galvanizing a better world for future generations. This compilation is a timely and invaluable resource for all ages, cultures, and disciplines."
— Angeles Arrien, author of The Four-Fold Way and The Second Half of Life


“What a magnificent job you did with “Women of Wisdom” The book is beautifully done, the women in it are brilliant, the graphics are exquisite, and the intelligence of your whole organization and effort are stunning.” —Barbara Marx Hubbard, author of The Hunger of Eve and Conscious Evolution and Emergence.


“First read this book carefully, perhaps aloud to a friend. Then dance with it. Then draw in it. Then bundle it in a leather pouch and take it someplace sacred—like under a large tree, alongside clear water, into the temple of a coffee shop, into a circle of women. Then read this book again. There is wisdom here that women and companioning men need in order to make the world anew. Bravo to Kris Steinnes for holding the vision, calling the gatherings, and harvesting these voices and images.” —Christina Baldwin, author of Life’s Companion, Calling the Circle, The Seven Whispers, and Storycatcher.


“I have just finished reading from cover to cover Women of Wisdom. I do congratulate you on a powerful book. I am very proud to be among this company Your own piece is an excellent introduction to all that follows. I hope many people will feel in their bones what this book is about. As I read, I remembered detail by detail my journey to Seattle, my time with Jean Shinoda Bolen over dinner, the drive to the church - happy memories!” —Marion Woodman, author of The Pregnant Virgin, Ravaged Bridegroom, and Leaving My Father's House.

Pacific Writers Institute Hollywood Movie Treatment Contest

PWI's Hollywood Movie Treatment Contest.

Pacific Writer's Institute is inviting submissions for our first Writing Contest of 2009. We have been in touch with a Hollywood Movie Producer who has agreed to consider our best Movie Treatment for the novel "Day Follow Night; From Chaos To Redemption" by DH Burns. Read on to find out how to enter this exciting writing contest!

A brief definition of Movie Treatment: Most successful Hollywood Producers won't take the time to sit down and read an entire movie script unless they first know there's a good chance it's a script they can be passionate about. And so, agents and script writers invented the "Movie Treatment." Basically a Treatment is a selling tool to tease a producer into wanting to see the entire book or movie script.

It is usually from one to 25 pages- for our contest, less is more, and we're limiting our submissions from one to eight pages, single-spaced, with one inch margins all the way around.

A Treatment is written in broad strokes in present tense. Use dramatic, action-packed, highly-visual prose. Give us a great hook and tell us a bit about the main characters, use some dialogue to help us see and hear them. We want to see some dramatic scenes and some humor as well.

"Day Follow Night" is a big, episodic novel and we need it boiled down to a few pages. Focus on what you see as the main themes then write with intensity! Bring it to life for us on the page.

"Day Follow Night; From Chaos To Redemption" can be purchased from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Publish America, or through our own online store. It's been out for a few years now and sometimes a used copy can be found online.

Pacific Writer's Institute's Spring Hollywood Movie Treatment Contest opened Feb. 22 and the deadline for entries has just been extended to August 1, 2009. Please use white paper, single-spaced on one side only. Always keep the original for your files. Include your name and contact information at the top of page one. Enter as often as you like but include a $15.00 entry fee made out to PWI on a U.S. bank with each entry. Please include a self-addressed, stamped envelope. Address entries to: PWI Contest, 60894 Willow Creek Loop, Bend, Oregon 97702.

The winner's Treatment will be forwarded to our Hollywood Producer. If movie rights are purchased from author DH Burns he has agreed to give our contest winner a full 25% of the first advance payment he receives for movie option, not including the publisher's cut. Sorry, no guarantees; it could be lucrative, it could be disappointing. Some treatments sell for hundreds or thousands of dollars; most don't sell at all. (The deadline for this deal is midnight December 20, 2009 which gives the winner six months for Option offers to come in after the contest ends). The winner will also receive name credit for the Treatment and a handsome frameable certificate and PWI tee-shirt.

PWI reserves the right to carefully edit the winning Treatment before forwarding to Hollywood. We promise to only make changes to clarify points or otherwise improve the Treatment. Entrants must be at least 18 years old. Treatments become property of PWI. See suggestions on our Tips Page.

Authors of the top five Treatments receive certificates and PWI tee-shirts as well. All winners may enter a short story for a free critique by our staff if they like.

Entries will be judged by our staff and each one will receive a number grade. In cases of ties the earliest post dates will win. Decisions of our judges are final. Send entries by US Mail only.

Our staff is excited about this first-of-a-kind contest! We know we will see some wonderful and creative contest entries from our contestants. The best of luck to all.

For more on the contest, visit the Pacific Writers Institute page.

Bull Fighter Poetry Contest: Review Fuse Contest

Poetry Contest - August 2009

Purpose: Have fun, enjoy the competition, and become a better poet by participating in our peer critique process for this contest.

Who Can Enter: This contest is open to all poets. All submissions must be posted and assigned critiques completed by August 31, 2009. Poems must be 50 lines or fewer. You may post additional poems to this site for critique, but only one poem will be eligible for this contest.

Subject Matter: A Bull Fighter. The poem should adhere to our content policy.

Prizes: The winner of this contest will receive $50.

How to Enter: It’s pretty easy

1. Create a free account or sign in for existing members.
2. Upload your poem; make sure you select “Poetry Contest” as the category.
3. Submit your poem for peer critique.
4. Complete you assigned reviews, this is discussed more below.

Decisions: There will be 3 rounds of judging.

1. Authors from the Review Fuse staff will select the 10 best poems for Round 2.
2. Of these 10 poems, Review Fuse management will select the 5 authors who gave the most detailed and well thought out critiques of their peer’s poetry for Round 3.
3. The winner will then be selected by 3 creative writing and poetry professors.

* Find out more about what our judges think great poetry is.

Entry Fee: There are no entry fees or purchases of any kind required to enter and win the contest. After you submit your poem to the contest you will be required to complete assigned critiques of other poets (4 for free members and 3 for premium members). You will receive 3 critiques of your poem in return. Those who do not complete their critiques will not be eligible to win the contest.

Rights: All poems remain the sole property of the author. After we have selected the winner we will seek permission from the author to publish the winning poem on our blog. The author is under no obligation to allow this.

Notification: The prize winner will be notified by email on September 12, 2009. We will announce the prize winner on our blog on September 14, 2009.

Women of Wisdom: Have You Put Your Dreams on Hold?

Women of Wisdom: Empowering the Dreams and Spirit of Women

Women of Wisdomis a journey through sixteen years of one of the largest women’s spirituality conferences in the world, a very unique conference that has impacted thousands of women’s lives. Authors Jean Houston and Margot Anand both exclaimed separately to me – “Kris there is nothing like this in the world” – and they have traveled around the world. The book will continue to impact women, as they experience the wisdom and gifts of the sixty contributors in the book.

The Women of Wisdombook gives women access to powerful, inspiring women leaders and their message for women to step into their power, own their feminine gifts, and learn to speak their truths. WOW provides role models who will inspire women to discover their dreams and their purpose.

Additionally the book shares stories from women whose lives have been changed by experiencing these women’s messages. Evocative art, poetry and experiential exercises enhance the book’s message, providing diverse ways to experience the spirit of the feminine.

Included in the book is my own story of how I started Women of Wisdom,which has been an empowering story for women to hear. My story began with reading The Feminine Face of God, by Patricia Hopkins and Sherry Anderson. Shortly afterwards I had a vision of bringing these spiritual women leaders to Seattle. And I immediately set that in motion at Seattle Unity Church, where I was a board member.

I realized this was something more than just a conference when I welcomed people at the first night of the conference, February 11, 1993, and I stated “Welcome to the First Annual Women of Wisdom Conference.” It has become a movement for women to come together in community and explore their potential, and to honor and support one another. This conference has continued to grow and be strong for seventeen years now and that is a testimony to the power of the vision, and the importance of women realizing the value of their unique gifts to share with the world.

In 1998 I realized I had a wealth of material in the tapes of the talks from these nationally known best selling authors and that they would make a great book. I had a dream to share this with other women. I would get phone calls and emails from women asking me if there was an organization like WOW in their city. Not everyone has the luxury to travel to conferences and experience life changing conferences and this book will provide that opportunity to many women.

In addition, the powerful women who participated at the conference in different ways – artists, musicians, writers, local presenters and WOW leaders – would contribute to make this book a holistic experience of exploring the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual aspects of being a woman, giving the reader the full conference experience.

The women’s movement has led women to evolve to such heights as running for the presidency of the United States. However in workshops I have given women have shared how isolated they feel. They don’t feel honored in society for their feminine gifts and how they don’t feel comfortable or safe speaking what they feel, what’s inside their hearts, whether it be in the workplace, home or other. In sharing women’s stories in the book, women will relate to their experiences and gain strength and support through the validation of the feminine that is expressed in the book.

Many of the authors in the book share how there is a lack of balance of the feminine in our world, and how we’re at a critical time where women need to become equal partners towards creating the solutions to the many crisis facing our globe. Jean Houston shares her experience of Women of Wisdom in the foreword of the book:

“Women of Wisdom is in the forefront of the biggest change in human history – the only change that will assure our continuity as a species. Those who organize and participate in the Women of Wisdom experience, know that for a new world to be born we have to bring a new mind to bear. Critical to this is the rich mind style of women that has been gestating in the womb of preparatory time, lo, these many millennia. In their ebullient and evocative conferences WOW demonstrates a tremendous change in who we are and how we do things.”

"Playing their part to usher in feminine mind, WOW emphasizes process rather than just product, and making things cohere, relate, and grow. Cultures in which the feminine archetype is powerful are almost always non-heroic, they tend to make things work together, each piece has its part to play.”

“Men and women will be released from the old polarities of gender that force them into limited and limiting roles, and qualities of intelligence will be added to the human mind-pool that will render most previous problem solving obsolete. Linear, sequential solutions will yield to the knowing that comes from seeing things in whole gestalts, in constellations, rather than in discrete fact…. And it will ring an ecological ethic, along with a new partnership between men and women, in which the human acts in concert and in partnership with Nature to bring about more symbiotic ecological relationships.”

An Excerpt from Women of Wisdom: Have You Put Your Dreams On Hold?

Each one of us has a great dream and a great calling. Many of us have put our dreams on the back burner. We say, “Someday when I have enough time, when I have enough money; then I’ll do what I really want to do, what has fire for me.” At this time there is such a wonderful opening in history, in evolution, if we will just come and take our place.

What I’ve found among many of the indigenous peoples of the world is that they know how important it is to bring our medicine and our dreams to this world. If we want the earth to get better we need to show up and take our place, not with our shrouds of insufficiency, but with our long tall bodies and our deep, deep roots. The warrior’s way or the leader’s way is to show up. And then I can pay attention to what has heart and meaning, which is the healer’s way. I can’t know what has heart or meaning until I choose to show up, until I choose to be present.

Among the shamanic traditions of the world, if you go to a shaman or a medicine person, and you are dispirited, disheartened, or depressed, many of them will ask you one of four questions: “When in your life did you stop singing? When in your life did you stop dancing? When in your life did you stop being enchanted by stories, and particularly your own life story? And when in your life did you stop being comforted by the sweet territory of silence?”

Wherever we stop singing, dancing, being enchanted by stories or deeply comforted by silence, we begin to experience soul loss. There’s not a culture in the world that does not have song, or dance, or story, or doesn’t recognize that in the sweet territory of silence we connect to the mystery in our contemplative and reflective practices.

I know I’m not at home when I’m in appeasement, weak-heartedness, seduction, drama or exaggeration. I know I’m not at home when I am playing the martyr or the victim and wanting someone else to be responsible for my life and therefore guilt induce others. I’m not at home when I’m controlling, because the opposite of control is trust.

I am at home when I have fire; when I am deeply connected to what has heart and meaning, the heart’s fire; when I’m seized by a vision that I want to manifest and bring to the sweet face of Mother Earth. I know I’m on fire when I’ve lost time through some creativity, and when I’ve experienced a moment of tender sweetness and intimacy in a relationship that has substance and depth. I know I’m on fire when I’ve connected to something numinous and extraordinarily beautiful that can only be found when trusting in an unshakable part of myself, in a sacred refuge that I can find in my deep interior.

Women of Wisdom by Kris Steinnes, is being offered beginning on June 23rd, 2009 at 12:01 am. We invite you to go to this page - www.wisewomanpublishing.com/womenofwisdom.html - to access the order page and then go back to this page to access the bonus page. On the Exclusive Private Invite page, enter your order confirmation code. That will allow you to gain entry to the bonus gifts that are available to people who buy the book on June 23rd.