Barnes & Noble Celebrates National Authors Day: Invites Me to Sell Books

 

Sunday is National Authors Day. To celebrate, Barnes & Noble, on Washtenaw in Ann Arbor by Whole Foods and my favorite Panera, is inviting authors to sell their books in two-hour shifts. I was invited to be one of them so, first of all, I hope anyone reading this will visit me any time from 3 to 5 Sunday November 1 and bring your friends. Secondly, I hope you’ll buy a few books to enjoy and to give away as gifts for the holiday season.

Some of my books are temporarily out of print. Here are the ones I’ll have with me:

• Transforming Lives: A Socially Responsible Guide to the Magic of Writing and Researching: the first textbook devoted to helping students turn Ken Macrorie’s brilliant I-Search idea into a full-length, life-changing research project while demystifying the process of writing and researching, arousing their curiosity, and awakening their dormant passion for expressing themselves through writing. So student-friendly it’s been called “the anti-textbook.” If you’re a teacher of writing whose students don’t want to be in your class because they hate or fear writing, this book is for you. It’s been used successfully at the high school and Freshman college level as well as by individual writers who want to find or regain the flow.
• Beercans on the Side of the Road: The Story of Henry the Hitchhiker: called a cult classic by someone whose name I long forgot but whose characterization I have ever since used. Henry’s story, the adventure of a young college dropout hitchhiker in search of the perfect flow and what it means to be a writer, came out of my hitchhiking years during the seventies when I established my reputation as the foremost expert on intranational hitchhiking in the country.
• The Ballad of Ken and Emily: or, Tales from the Counterculture: a collection of short stories, poems, head trips, essays, and journal entries including “Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and Growing Up as a New Left Jew” (an analysis of the Yippie literature from a Jewish perspective as well as a history of the Jewish Left in America and an account of the Yippies and Zippies in Miami Beach in the summer of 1972); “Accidental Revolutionary” (a fictionalized version of my first political arrest following the Kent State murders in May 1970); “Diary of a Mad Anarchist” parts 1 and 2 (May Day 1971 in D.C. during the May Day demonstrations; May 1972, Madison, Wisconsin, after Nixon blockaded Haiphong Harbor), plus “Being in Jail Is Like Finals Week” (because, in case you didn’t notice it, all three arrests happened in May), “Yo Ho Ho-Ulp” (my brief life as a gillnetter in Sebasco, Maine), “The Busy Person’s Guide to Street Yoga” (how I kept limber and in shape while on the road), and more.
• The Last Selection: A Child’s Journey through the Holocaust: an amazing story about a girl who spent time in Auschwitz during World War II. If you know about Dr. Mengele, you know about the selections. At one point the war ended. Before that, you had— the last selection. Thirteen-year old Goldie was in it, the only child along with her mother and a hundred other women. This is the only book that gives you “life in the gas chamber.” I co-wrote the book with her current husband Sylvan Kalib.
• Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Cancer Book: Like all the Chicken Soup for the Soul books, this one is an anthology of contributions from lots of folks connected with the subject. This time, one of the contributions is mine, an excerpt from my booklet, Your Partner Has Breast Cancer?: 21 Ways to Keep Sane as a Support Person. I’ll have copies of the book and the booklet.

Finally, I’ll have information on my upcoming Dissident Press Series, which Michigan State University Press will be publishing in four parts beginning with the first in May 2010 and followed every six months by another until all four are out. Stories are written by insiders of underground papers—the predecessors to today’s progressive blogs—representing the Black, Puerto Rican, feminist, lesbian, gay, socialist, psychedelic, Southern consciousness, rank-and-file, prisoners’ rights, military, Native American, and other antiwar voices from the Vietnam era.

I hope to see you there. You can always purchase books from my web site but if you show up you don’t have to pay shipping and handling.

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