President Obama honors San Miguel author
By Lisa Tyson February 20, 2009 San Miguel de Allende

Teen Writers’ Workshop
The Oz Project, Betsy James
Mon–Tue, Feb 23-24 
Info/contributions: www.sanmiguelworkshops.com  
Free to 30 children

US President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama read to children during their visit to the Capital City Public Charter School in Washington, DC, to meet with the second grade class and read the book The Moon Over Star. February 3, 2009. EPA/GARY FABIANO / POOL

San Miguel resident and award-winning children’s book author, Dianna Hutts Aston, was as surprised as anyone to learn that US President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama chose one of her books to read at the First Couple’s first school visit since the election.

On February 3, President and First Lady Obama made a surprise visit to the Capital City Public Charter School, known as one of Washington, DC’s most successful public schools, where they sat down with 25 second graders to read Dianna’s most recently published book, The Moon Over Star.

Set in the summer of 1969, when the world witnessed an awe-inspiring historical achievement as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to set foot on the moon, The Moon Over Star is a lyrical and hopeful picture book about a young African-American girl inspired by the inaugural moon landing to make one giant step toward all of the possibilities that life has to offer. The book is illustrated by Jerry Pinkney, a Caldecott Honor-winning painter. Publisher’s Weekly calls The Moon Over Star an “inspired collaboration,” with Pinkney’s illustrations “giving visual form to what Aston evokes: awe.”

The Moon Over Star recently was awarded the 2009 Coretta Scott King Book Award, an honor bestowed upon books that “promote understanding and appreciation of the culture of all peoples and their contribution to the realization of the American dream,” and the 2009-2010 Keystone to Reading Award Master List, an award sponsored by the Keystone State Reading Association, a nonprofit organization of Pennsylvania reading specialists, teachers and librarians. The Moon Over Star is published by Dial Books for Young Readers, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, and is available through Amazon.com and at all Barnes & Noble bookstores.

Aston has recently completed her twelfth children’s book, A Butterfly Is Patient, which will be illustrated by another award-winning artist, Sylvia Long, and will be available in 2011. She is currently working on a new piece, The Jewel of Watts, which recounts the story of Simon Rodia, constructor of the famous Watts Towers.

In addition to writing, Aston now focuses a significant amount of her time and attention on her latest endeavor, the Oz Project, a San Miguel-based nonprofit organization whose mission is to give disadvantaged children and young adults “experiences that ignite the imagination and inspire dreams.” 

On February 23-24, the Oz Project, in cooperation with San Miguel Workshops, sponsors its first major event: the San Miguel Teen Writers’ Workshop. The workshop will be free to 30 children, ages 14–18, who attend school and/or live in an orphanage in San Miguel. The workshop will be led by bilingual instructor Betsy James of Albuquerque, New Mexico, who is also an award-winning author/illustrator of books for children and young adults. The workshop is based on the idea that strong writing skills are fundamental to future success, and is designed to help participants explore the love of writing and learn to express their ideas through the written word. All supplies for the children will be free, and at the end of the course, three participants will receive new laptop computers. For more information about the workshop and how you can contribute, go to www.sanmiguelworkshops.com  and click on Teen Writers’ Workshops or email Jody Feagan at jody@sanmiguelworkshops.com or Aston at diannaaston@hotmail.com. 

“I am truly humbled by the attention that The Moon Over Star has received,” said Aston, “but right now I am most excited about the Teen Writers’ Workshop and other Oz Project events.” In April 2010, The Oz Project plans to host “Raising Angels,” San Miguel’s first ever Hot Air Balloon Festival. As part of the festival, the Oz Project plans to give free balloon rides to 100–125 San Miguel children. Aston says, “Dreams are born in the realm of the rainbow. Inspiration—magic—goes hand in hand with education and health. We believe in the truth of Albert Einstein’s statement, ‘Your imagination is your preview to coming attractions.’” For more information about the Oz Project, go to www.theozproject.org. 

Aston has lived in San Miguel for almost three years. She has two children, James, 18 and Elizabeth, 12. 

House + House engages the human spirit
By Philip Enquist

Book Signing/Reception
Houses in the Sun
Cathi & Steven House 
Sat, Feb 21, 5pm
Librería la Deriva
Fábrica La Aurora

Great praise is due when we discover architecture that respects the land, is in scale with its surroundings and that understands the relationship between site and structure.

The equation is as simple as it is powerful: communities need great architects to renew the built environment as much as great architects need exceptional communities in which to frame their work. 

Cathi and Steven House are just such exceptional architects. Their art, for House + House homes are nothing less than art, recognizes what it is to work within the context of, and improve, life.

Even the name of their firm, “House + House,” could not be a happier shorthand for what they do—create soul-stirring homes defined by a clear, nurturing, tranquil relationship to the environment and the soul, enclosing and defining space in rich textures, rising from the ground with volumes of intense color to incorporate sunlit days and velvet nights.

Their work says: “Architecture should inspire. It should provide a sense of emotion. It should demonstrate a commitment to craftsmanship. It should, above all, embrace one’s soul.” These are not easy principles to guide one’s work, yet they are the essence of the passion and emotion that inspires everyday life and is the heart of the Houses’ efforts.

The Houses focus on elements of design that energize them—color, form, texture and relationship to the surroundings—mixed with craftsmanship, local materials and a unique sense of space and light. Passionate, anchored in tradition and rooted to place, House + House designs are at the same time soaring, light-filled and emotion-provoking. Their homes mirror the owner’s desire for a beautiful life, a positive relationship with the surroundings and spaces that are life renewing. 

Working closely with local artisans, Cathi and Steven House discover distinctive materials that celebrate the indigenous. From the street their work can be discreet, quiet and humble. Entering the home, however, begins a remarkable journey—spaces unfold, volumes emerge, colors wash over the visitor in ways that approach the mystical. Surprises occur at every stage; preconceived notions are shattered, reinvented and reinterpreted. 

Architecture by House + House is reminiscent of the serenity of Luis Barragan, the colors of Ricardo Legoretta, the beauty of William Turnbull and the playfulness of Charles Moore.

Their work is poetic, insightful and intelligent. It is influenced not by trends or fashion, but rather by views, climate, culture, light and shadow, and by the desire to inspire. 

The work of House + House can offer motivation to a profession that needs to create places of unique beauty, inspiration and influence. Ultimately, their projects call to mind a quote by Mexico’s great writer, poet and diplomat, Octavio Paz, “solid without heaviness and tied to the earth but with a desire for flight.” 

Join Cathi and Steven House at Librería la Deriva for a cocktail reception, slide discussion and book signing in celebration of their new book, Houses in the Sun: light movement embrace. 

Philip Enquist, FAIA, is the planning partner for Skidmore Owings & Merrill, Chicago. 

Art in San Miguel showcases local artists
By Lulu Torbet

Book Signing and Exhibition
Art in San Miguel
AlTirado
Fri, Feb 20, 6–9pm
William Martin Gallery
Fábrica La Aurora 18-C 

Photographer and photojournalist alTirado hit the ground running when he arrived in San Miguel just over a year and a half ago. Within a few months, he had mounted an exhibit, titled “Art X-pressions,” of San Miguel artists photographed at work in their studios.

Always on the lookout for the essential spirit of San Miguel, where he’d first visited and shown his work 30 years ago, he soon amassed a body of work that looked at San Miguel from different angles, in ways that showed his love and appreciation for the town’s beauty and diversity. The resulting book, San Miguel de Allende: A Pictorial Story, was published in the summer 2008. It offers a range of new and old, sacred and secular—evocative nighttime scenes, color-saturated buildings, rich details of doors and walls and wrought iron, everyday scenes of lively celebrations and people going about their workaday lives, birds dramatically perched on a fountain to savor the sunset. You can find it at local bookstores.

Drawn back to the artists he’d met while working on his first project, alTirado decided to do a book about San Miguel artists. Armed with his camera and lights, he made the rounds of studios and galleries, eventually coming up with a group of 33 artists who represent the wide range of styles and traditions found here. In the resulting large-format book, Art in San Miguel, you’ll find painters, sculptors and ceramicists; Mexicans and expats.

Well-known artists—Mary Rapp, David Leonardo, Merry Calderoni, Toller Cranston—are interspersed with up-and-coming names such as sanmiguelense José Luis Ramirez.

Art in San Miguel presents each artist’s work on several pages, with interviews and statements from the artists about their work and processes, their background and training, the development of their style and technique, their artistic ideas, inspirations and concerns.

“It’s impossible to cover the entire artistic panorama of San Miguel in a single volume,” alTirado comments, “but this group of artists in some way represents the quality of resident artists of the town and its diversity of styles and traditions.”

For example, explaining his focus on still life painting, Edgardo Soberón says, “It is a choice, like many we make in art and life. I don’t find it reductionist at all, but rather expansive. Sometimes it is only through reduction, limitation or elimination that expansion and continuity can occur. Still life painting has come to symbolize in my experience the essence of what painting has always been: that which is visual, still and silent, the echo of our existence, the trace of our passing.”

Ceramist Yasuaki Yamashita says, “I humbly work to create my pots and to impart to them my own spirituality and creativity. I never tire of making utilitarian ceramics. For me, infinite possibilities of form and beauty exist in this pursuit.”

José Luis Ramirez comes from a family of artisans in La Cieneguita, and grew up celebrating patriotic and religious festivals based on pre-Hispanic rites. Though his style is influenced by artists from around the world, he feels that, “Mexico is a country rich in cultural experience and I consider my work to be a form of contemporary neo-mexicanismo.”

“My work as a sculptor is a search for meaningful universal images,” says David Kestenbaum. He explains that his work is often a response to specific materials—wood, steel, stone. “Rather than an idea-based art,” he adds, “mine is materialistic, object-based sculpture. My life led me by a process of elimination to a full dedication to making sculpture, and I have no idea what the outcome will be.”

Clearly there is a synergy between the joy of the act of painting and the inspiration created by the subject matter. Mary Breneman leverages her attachment to Mexican culture in order to play with paint. “When I go into the studio I can feel exhausted and then suddenly feel energized by my surroundings,” she explains. “I don’t think a lot when I paint. I make decisions intuitively. Something feels right or it doesn’t. The painting tells me what it needs.”

An art show enhances the book signing. Every artist featured in this book is showing one or two works in a unique exhibition. Art will be offered at reduced prices for this special occasion. See the show, have a cocktail, meet the artists and have them sign your book. If you bring your camera, take a picture with your favorite artist.

The Colors of San Miguel 
By Camie Sands

Book Presentation 
The Colors of San Miguel
Wed, Feb 25, 4pm
Sala Quetzal
Biblioteca Pública
Insurgentes 25
Donations accepted

Take a journey into the heart of San Miguel through the eyes of 10 gifted photographers who capture its magic through color-drenched photography.

Each chapter focuses on one color and photos were selected for their distinct graphic design content.

Camie Sands, the book’s conceptual designer and producer, and Lander Rodriguez, the book’s graphic designer and a photographer represented in The Colors of San Miguel, will give a short talk and share images on a large screen to better see the photos by many award-winning photographers. Many great photos which did not make it into the book will be shared. Other San Miguel photographers represented in the book are Tanya Brockelman, Tabatha Davis, John Sholtis and Patrice Wynne.

Rodriguez, a professional photographer and designer, will answer photography and design questions. Sands will explain the book’s conceptual path. Sands also produces the San Miguel Walking and Shopping Guide, which also will be available (free). Books purchased during The Colors of San Miguel signing help benefit the Biblioteca’s charitable programs.

Writers' Conference & Literary Festival

Nina Burleigh
Mon–Tue, Feb 23–24, 10am–1:30pm 
Hotel Real de Minas
Ancha de San Antonio & Stirling Dickinson
Contact: Jody Feagan at jody@sanmiguelworkshops.com 

A million stories
By Nina Burleigh

I’ve made a living, more or less, as a writer for more years than I like to admit. And if I had a dollar for every person who has told me they have a story that they would like to write, well, I’d be worried about where to stash my fortune right now.

The fact is, everyone has a story. Everyone has lots of stories. And despite what people say, not everyone really wants to write them down.

For starters, let’s talk about grammar. Although it may appear that I lead a rather exciting life, chasing ambulances, presidents, mountain climbers, thieves and movie stars, the fact is that at heart I’m like your high school English teacher, the one you shot spitballs at when her back was turned. Like her, I can’t stop correcting people’s incorrect pronouns.

If you have that part of the job down, you’re much closer to being a writer than your friend who says “her and me.”

The next important, exceedingly unglamorous aspect of the writing life is summed up in a double maxim my uncle, a failed screenwriter, told me. He got it from some famous screenwriter, but I’ve forgotten that person’s name. It goes like this: 

Rule One: Seat of the chair to seat of the pants.

Rule Two: All writing is re-writing.

Let’s add that writing is not something you can do with other people around, comedy show writers apparently excepted. It’s a solitary profession. 

Does the monkish life appeal to you? Does waking up in the morning, getting dressed up to spend the entire newborn day with you, yourself, and you sound appealing?

If so, and if the rest of what I’ve laid out above sounds like fun, well, then you’re on your way.

All of this is not to deter anyone from taking my workshop, A Million Stories in the Naked City. Because everyone—really, truly everyone—has an amazing story to tell. And not just one, but many.

I learned this lesson the best way: as a cub reporter for the Associated Press and then People magazine in the eighties and nineties, I covered the Midwest. Every time I got an assignment, I’d have a pretty clear idea of what type of person or situation I was going to meet. And every single time I got to the source, I was surprised. An editor told me once, never assume, you’ll make an ass out of you and me. I learned by experience that his off-color aphorism was absolutely right. 

One of my favorite examples: I was sent to Kansas to interview the woman whose husband, the biggest church builder in America, had just left her for Tammy Faye Bakker.

On the plane from Chicago (where I was then based) to Kansas, I had a very clear picture in my mind of what sort of woman would be married to a man who would be attracted to Tammy Faye Bakker. I was thinking, in no particular order—Southern accent, squeaky clean blonde, gingham-checked dress, maybe a passel of children, maybe gales of tears.

Instead, I found a woman with a dark page boy haircut, decked in a few pieces of tasteful and expensive gold jewelry, sipping a Scotch on the rocks, finishing her master’s degree thesis on the lesbian poet Adrienne Rich.

Every journalist has many stories like this. We all learn by experience about the surprising, mind-boggling array of human individuality. This is why I know everyone has an amazing story to tell. 

If you want to tell your story badly, I can help you get started by showing you what I’ve learned about stories in years of whacking out newspaper and magazine articles. I can tell you about the high and low points of writing four books, covering an eclectic array of subjects from the mysterious Cold War murder of an American aristocrat, to the eighteenth-entury chemist James Smithson and his mysterious bequest to America, to the intrepid, eccentric scientists who first ventured into uncharted Egypt and mapped the pyramids and ancient monuments, and finally, last year, to the marvelous, movie-esque underworld that is the Holy Land trade in biblical antiquities.

We will talk about how and why I chose my subjects, and how you can choose yours. We will discuss some of the great nonfiction writers and learn how to seek out role models for specific genres. We will talk about how to organize thoughts, manage time, make a research schedule, take notes, write an outline and finally, strap into the chair and put it all down on the computer screen.

PEN Lecture Series

What: No Panties? The Seventeenth Century Revealed
Sandra Gulland
Tues, Feb 24, 6pm
Bellas Artes
Hernández Macías 75
50 pesos 

What: No Panties?! 
By Emily Hamilton


Why would a Florida-born woman living in Canada dressed in a 17th-century French gown be here in San Miguel? 

This could only happen at the PEN Winter Lecture Series. Sandra Gulland, adorned in formal attire, discusses her newest novel, Mistress of the Sun, here on February 24.

Released in 2008, Mistress focuses on the life of Louise de la Vallière, mistress of King Louis XIV, the monarch also known as the Sun King for his notion that all of France should orbit him. The novel’s opening scene displays Louise taming a wild stallion as a young girl, an experience that grows into a metaphor for both life and love in the book. As a maid of honor in the Sun King’s court, she quickly captures his heart and despite her humble background rises to a position of high nobility. She soon finds, however, that King Louis’ love is more wild that the most unruly stallion. (After all, what else could be expected of a king who thought everything revolved around him?) Unlike the stallion, however, she cannot tame the King’s heart, as his affection has shifted to a young courtesan. Still, the romance between Louis and Louise is not only fascinating, but rather unexpected.

“[Louise de la Vallière] was not at all sophisticated,” Gulland said in a February 2008 Ottawa Citizen article. “She was a horsewoman, a jock, and a very unlikely person for Louis to choose, because he was Mr. Glamour.”

This unlikely partnership between two eccentric characters makes for a compelling story. Upon release, Mistress quickly rose to the No. 2 spot on Canada’s bestseller list. The Historical Novels Review chose it as an Editor’s Pick, calling it “a captivating jewel of a novel.” Since its debut in Canada, the novel has appeared in the US, Germany and the Czech Republic.

Margaret George, author of Helen of Troy, referred to the novel as “suspenseful, evocative, atmospheric, and deliciously satisfying reading, with an immensely appealing heroine.”

As well as talking about and reading from her critically applauded novel, Gulland will divulge misconceptions about historic dress as well as some unsettling facts of intimate life at court.

In 1972, Gulland became interested in the life of Josephine Bonaparte and spent nearly 30 years finishing an acclaimed trilogy of novels about her life, the last of which was published in 2000.

After finishing the trilogy, Gulland spent eight years researching this next historical novel, the dramatic tale of the rise and tragic fall of one of France’s most intriguing female figures.

The San Miguel Chapter of International PEN sponsors local and statewide literary programs and scholarships. San Miguel PEN also participates in major Mexican and regional literary events, such as the enormous Feria Internacional del Libro (the FIL) in Guadalajara. San Miguel PEN members travel at their own expense to the United Nations and many International PEN conferences. 

Proceeds from the Winter Lecture Series fund local activities, interventions on behalf of writers around the world who are in trouble for what they have written and help support the international organization. For more information or advance tickets, contact Lucina Kathmann: lucina.kathmann@gmail.com or Pat Hirschl at 154-9478.

Emily Hamilton is the 17-year-old editor of Palo Alto High School’s Verde Magazine in California.

PEN Writers Aloud series

Lulu Torbet & Jan Baross
Thurs, Feb 26, 3pm
Sala Quetzal
Biblioteca Publica
Insurgentes 25
50 pesos



On ghostwriting and building a woman
By Bill Pearlman

Lulu Torbet Though ghostwriting has become an increasingly legitimate profession within the publishing world, it is still little noticed and little understood by the general public. But what was once the province of the celebrity autobiography has now grown to include every topic imaginable.

Today there are ghostwritten business and management books, cookbooks and gardening guides, spiritual advice, physics for the layman, relationship rescue programs, medical advice tomes. Even ghostwritten memoirs and novels are commonplace—although some people think that’s going a bit too far.

Photographer and painter Lulu Torbet is the author, editor or ghostwriter of over 30 nonfiction books. She will be talking about the purpose and process of ghostwriting, and its growing role in the writing of books, briefly touching on the basics, such as: How do you work with clients? How do you get paid, and credited (if at all) for your work? 

But her focus will be on the unique issues of ghostwriting autobiography and memoir—in particular dealing with taking on another’s voice and—an issue frequently in the headlines lately—establishing the veracity of their story.

To illustrate these topics, she will read from the introductions to three of her collaborations: A Brush with Darkness, by the blind painter Lisa Fittipaldi; The Wondering Jew: The Autobiography of Rabbi Morris Gordon; and Nightfall: The Last Days of the Hacienda Cortez, a current project with Princess María Gloria Aragona Pignatelli Cortés.

More about Lulu Torbet at www.lauratorbet.com  and  www.lulutorbet.com. 

Jan Baross People refer to Jan Baross as a “Renaissance woman” with good reason. She’s made over 40 animated films, numerous public service announcements for television, worked on music videos and six feature films. In the course of her career, she’s been a TV-film stringer for NBC and ABC affiliates. She makes award-winning documentaries.

Baross has written 15 plays, and been produced off-Broadway, in the US and Mexico. She was commissioned to turn her play Mata Hari, into an opera which premiered in Dallas, Texas and won an award.

There’s more. She is a freelance film critic, travel and feature contributor to newspapers and magazines in the US and Mexico. She has also contributed cartoons. Her photographs have been published and she has been in a number of shows. She has taught filmmaking and preschool art.

But Jan Baross will speak at the PEN series as a writer. Right now she is working on a travel series and has recently published a novel, José Builds a Woman, to great acclaim. (She’ll give us some of the back story of writing a novel.)

The book is a novel in the sensual tradition of magical realism. With lush prose and dry humor, Baross captures the fluid boundaries between life and death. The multi-layered saga revolves around the impenetrable passions of Tortugina, the doyenne of bad love, Gabito the beautiful and jealous octopus diver and their son, José, a boy obsessed with marrying a nun.

Intrigued? Ursula Le Guin said of the book, “What a romp. Let Baross take you for a wild ride on her magical-realist camel, from the Village of Octupus to the Village of the Women through an extravagantly carnal Mexico of the imagination.” Jan will be reading excerpts from her novel, giving us some of the back story about the process of writing a novel—i.e., what goes on behind the scenes.

More about Jan Baross at www.barossmedia.com. 
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