ADVERTISER BOOK CLUB
Maui writer recognized with Poetry Society of America Award
By Wanda A. Adams
Advertiser Books Editor
Maui writer Margo Berdeshevsky has received the Robert H. Winner Award from the Poetry Society of America for her manuscript, "The Breaking Book." The $2,500 award is designed to direct attention to significant work by "a writer in mid-life who has not had substantial recognition." Berdeshevsky, who divides her time between Maui and Paris (where she spent part of her childhood), is back on the Valley Isle now and, she said, "writing hard." Berdeshevsky's work was selected by Marie Ponsot, winner of a National Book Critics Circle Award, who called it a work of "exceptional immediacy."
This just out: Kamehameha Schools Press, the University of Hawai'i and Alu Like Inc., last week released a new Hawai-ian/English cultural resource, "Ka Ho'olina: Puke Pai 'Olelo Hawai'i — The Legacy: Journal of Hawaiian Language Sources" (Vol. 1, Issue 1). The material includes articles from defunct Hawaiian-language newspapers, stories, records and other written materials not readily available before. The book's format makes these archival materials accessible even to those with minimal knowledge of the language by offering the text in four parallel columns: the original spellings, contemporary Hawaiian spelling, English translation and annotation.
BODY TREAT: "Yoga for Transformation" is the new title from Gary Kraftsow of Maui Yoga Therapy and the American Viniyoga Institute, who is planning an O'ahu book-signing 7 p.m. July 19 at Barnes & Noble, Kahala Mall and a workshop the next day. Amazon.com said Kraftsow's second trade paperback from Penguin "introduces techniques that treat not only the physical body but also the emotions, mind, heart, and soul of the practitioner — the places where real transformation can take place." See www.hawaiiyogaandwellness.com or www.viniyoga.com.
CREATIVE PATHWAYS: Writer, photographer, artist and teacher David Ulrich's new book, "The Widening Stream: The Seven Stages of Creativity," will be launched Saturday with a signing at 2 p.m. at Borders, Ward Centre. Ulrich, co-founder and director of the Pacific Imaging Center and a professor at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa, has spent the last 30 years exploring the path of the creative process and here shares stages he has identified as integral to that process, whatever form it takes.
FUNGAL DELIGHTS: Ten Speed Press has released "Mushrooms of Hawai'i: An Identification Guide," by Don E. Hemmes and Dennis E. Desjardin. Hemmes is a professor and chairman of the Biology Department at the University of Hawai'i-Hilo; his co-author is a biology professor and director of the H.D. Thiers Herbarium at San Francisco State University. The book features more than 400 photographs of mushrooms and fungi.
