Synergy of shared work 
By Sara Fasy

Authors’ Sala Reading Fri, May 22, 5–7pm St. Paul’s Church Cardo 6 50 pesos, includes  wine reception

Writers toil silently and alone in a daily struggle with the demons and angels of language: how to discover the rhythm that moves a story forward? How to create the finely wrought detail that elicits emotional resonance?

It might go something like this. In those moments when the muse is happily hanging out in the writer’s head, the keyboard clacks or the pen scratches steadily on paper. When the muse defects, procrastination rituals begin. Eventually the muse returns and the words sing with rightness. But writers will tell you that before their work reaches an editor or publisher, they look for reader reactions. The reader may be a friend, spouse or fellow members of a writing group. Something in this process of sharing work before final edit creates for both writer and reader a kind of synergy.

Eight poets, memoirists and journalists will take the podium for the Authors’ Sala Reading to share works-in-progress with the public. Cynthia Simmons, Patricia Campuzano, Judith Jenya, Peggy Purcell Dowling, Rochelle Cashdan, Patrice Wynne, Nancy G. Shapiro and Robin Fell offer a fascinating variety of work.

Cynthia Simmons studied theater at NYU in the seventies and worked as an actress in New York and Atlanta. For more than 15 years she toured with Sally of Monticello, her one-woman show about Thomas Jefferson’s slave wife, Sally Hemings. She returned to school for an MFA in creative writing from Goddard College in 2004. As an actress and teacher, she is aware of the power of auditory learning and is working on a series of short stories based on her family’s oral history. Her reading will be chosen from one of those stories, or from her ongoing memoir of her experiences in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Patricia Campuzano arrived in San Miguel last year for the Writers’ Conference. She lived in Portland, Oregon, for 35 years, but was born and raised in Monterrey, Mexico. She writes “love poems, hate poems, nature poems, poems/complaints to the god/dess and poems about childhood and growing up.” She loves being bilingual. “Spanish is so deep, traditional and sober. But I also like English,” she says. “It is so flexible, so modern, so crazy and fast on its feet!”

Judith Jenya is a painter, photographer, art teacher, art therapist, family therapist and lawyer. A stellar enough CV, but she also was one of the people who opened Russia for international adoption and placed 20 orphans with families in the US. She has won International Humanist of the Year, the Temple Award for Creative Altruism and the Alumnus Service Award from UC Berkeley. Her graduate degrees are from Harvard, UC Berkeley and University of Hawaii. Currently she is on the Board of Patronato Pro Nińos and Democrats Abroad. 

Jenya first came to San Miguel in 1955. “I vowed to someday return to live here as an artist.” This woman who believes in living out your dreams will read from her memoir in progress, focusing on the decade she spent in the Balkans with a humanitarian aid organization.

Peggy Purcell Downing abandoned memoir in favor of poetry. She was working on a memoir in February, but took the poetry workshop offered by Judyth Hill, whom Downing describes as “living and breathing poetry. Her enthusiasm is contagious.” So Downing made the liberating decision to switch genres. Writing about simple things, she calls herself a “Grandma Moses” of poetry.

Rochelle Cashdan describes herself as “a constant reader and a born-again writer.” After 30 years in Oregon, she moved to Guanajuato where she writes poems, a monthly article in English for a local magazine, The Chopper, and assorted articles that appear at www.associatedcontent.com. A cultural anthropologist and inveterate blogger, she also enjoys public readings of her work.

Patrice Wynne was the proprietor of the GAIA Bookstore in San Francisco. When Wynne moved here six years ago, she fell in love with the color and symbols of Mexican folk art. The Biblioteca’s La Tienda stocks her colorful aprons, bedecked with images of dancing skeletons, flaming hearts, or the ubiquitous Virgen de Guadalupe. Her designs are also sold in museums and stores in Mexico, the US and Europe. Owning a business in town “deepens your connections to the people and the culture,” she says, which led her to work on her memoir, Reborn on Cobblestone: Finding Freedom in a Mexican Town.

Poet Nancy G. Shapiro specializes in personal transformation. She will read from a nonfiction book, Common Thread Living: Connection, Grace and Passion as a Way of Life.


Anyone who listens to audio books knows that a writer’s words take on new meaning in the listening. Rather than reading with your own interior rhythm and inflections, you hear the emphasis and emotion the author brings to the words. Close your eyes; listen.