Art Expo Night

Now that all the Sunday art shows are over we've finally got around to posting some photos from the night. You can also check them out on Facebook too.

The guy with the hat and a smile is Denis Morin.

His wine domaine Chateau La Villatade supplied the red and rose wines for the night.

Below, our neighbor Yves Moffre plays his sax in front of Tom Darnell's landscapes.

Yves is the organizer of the Roquefere Jazz Festival. The Jazz Sous Les Chataigniers is on every August for three days with musicians from all over the world playing. Every year it gets bigger.


















Rey, below, shows Janet Stilson his mother's paintings of our village. Elinore Hollinshead, Rey's mom, stayed at the annex last month.



















Two of the local octogenarians, below, enjoy the party. To the left of them is a painting by Mary Offermann from Santa Cruz. She lives here for five months of the year in the nearby village of Miraval.















Seanin, aka The Troubadore, plays his mandolin, below left. Seanin attended La Muse on a barter last month.



















John and Kerry with Christian Bastian. Christian's paintings are barely visible on the wall directly behind John's head, but you can check him out on his website.

Recent Press

Three articles about La Muse were published last month.

The first profile was on Ginny Wiehardt's great Fiction Writing website for About.com. Ginny came to La Muse as a guest at the wedding of Soft Skull press publisher Richard Nash two years ago; as chance would have it, she had already been accepted on a barter residency at La Muse when she found out that this was also to be the location of her good friends' wedding. Ginny is currently revising a novel. Her book of poetry, Compulsion of the Unlocked Thing, was a finalist for the Ohio State University/The Journal Book Award in Poetry in 2005.

The second article was in the El Dorado Sun's Sun Monthly, entitled "The Power of Writing to Heal," by former La Muse attendee, Shanti Bannwart from Santa Fe, New Mexico. Shanti attended La Muse in April 2006. Her most recent article, Eating Her Children, appeared in the June issue of monthly The Tokyo Advocate published by Printed Matter Press.

The third was an interview with Kerry and John in The Connexion, the largest expatriate newspaper in France, discussing how they made La Muse possible.

Robin Hemley - Guggenheim Fellow!

Well done and congratulations to our friend, and previous attendee, Robin Hemley, who has just been awarded a 2008 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship!

Robin has published seven books of nonfiction and fiction. His latest book will about revisiting his youth. His nonfiction includes: Invented Eden, The Elusive, Disputed History of the Tasaday (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2003), the anthology Extreme Fiction:Fabulists and formalists with Michael Martone (Longman, 2004), the memoir, Nola: A Memoir Of Faith, Art And Madness (Graywolf, 1998) and Turning Life Into Fiction (Graywolf Press). He has also written a novel, The Last Studebaker, (Graywolf) and the story collections, The Big Ear (Blair) and All You Can Eat (Atlantic Monthly Press).
You can get all of his books on Amazon.

Robin is also the Director of the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa.

Tim Keane - Alphabets of Elsewhere

Tim Keane, who attended La Muse last year, has just had a book of poetry published.

Please check him out at his website, or buy his collection on Amazon, in St. Mark's bookstore or directly from Cinnamon Press.

Thanks!

Here's what a few people had to say about his poetry:

'Tim Keane's poems move with impetuous energy, fired by a centrifugal and neo-Romantic enthusiasm. His appetite for texture, color, sound, culture, and sensation is inspiring.'
-Wayne Koestenbaum, Hotel Theory & Jackie Under My Skin

`With a subtle, economic music that retains the strength of fiction, Tim Keane surveys the world -- through desire's fancy and memories of the real -- with the accuracy of a cartographer.'
-Ammiel Alcalay, Memories of Our Future & Sarajevo Blues

`Tim Keane paints daybreaks, loves, losses, and longing. His is a passionate voice that does not compromise its craft, a voice free of ‘chic ironies,’ engaged with its times, politics, places beyond its borders, a voice that assures us American poetry is in good hands.
-Naveed Alam, A Queen of No Ordinary Realms