Join us for First Wednesday downtown! Local author Naseem Rakha will be reading from and signing copies of her award-winning novel THE CRYING TREE, now available in paperback!

We welcome award-winning journalist and author Naseem Rakha celebrating the availability in paperback of her debut novel, THE CRYING TREE, which  reaches into the heart of a family nearly torn apart by a mother’s act of forgiveness.

“For anyone who has ever wondered how forgiveness is possible, even when the pain is overwhelming, wonder no more. THE CRYING TREE takes you on a journey you won’t soon forget.”

Sister Helen Prejean

“This complex, layered story of a family’s journey toward justice and forgiveness comes together through spellbinding storytelling.”

Publishers Weekly

Third Thursday Poets celebrates Summer.

Recently relocated to Portland, Oregon, Dan Encarnacion has previously only known the San Francisco Bay Area as home. He earned an MFA in Writing at the California College of Arts and has been published in print in The Peralta Press, The Five Finger Review, Margie: The American Journal of Poetry and in the online journal The Exquisite Corpse. Dan is still in the throes of completing his epic semi-autobiographical novel-in-verse entitled Rhumba.

Leonard Orr is Academic Director of Liberal Arts and Professor of English at the Tri-Cities campus of Washington State University. He is the author or editor of thirteen books of literary criticism or critical theory. His most recent books are Joyce, Imperialism, and Postcolonialism (Syracuse University Press, 2008), and Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw (Continuum, 2009). He was named the Lewis E. and Stella G. Buchanan Distinguished Professor of English (2005-08).

His poetry has appeared in many journals including Black Warrior Review, Fugue, Poetry International, Poetry East, Natural Bridge, Isotope, Midwest Poetry Review, Pontoon, Rosebud, and Rocky Mountain Review. His poetry chapbook, Daytime Moon, was published in 2005 by FootHills Press, and his book, Why We Have Evening, is scheduled for publication in March, 2010 (WordTech/Cherry Grove Editions). He was a finalist for the T. S. Eliot Poetry Prize and the Blue Lynx Poetry Prize and was a semifinalist for the Floating Bridge Chapbook Prize and the William Stafford Poetry Prize. He has been a featured reader in many venues throughout the state, and he has led poetry workshops at the Burning Word Poetry Festival and elsewhere. He hosts the open mic and featured poet events at Washington State University Tri-Cities and served as president of the Washington Poets Association for three years. In recent years, he has taken up painting abstracts and had his work featured in a solo-exhibition of fifty paintings in 2007. Both his poetry and painting utilize a similar aesthetic based in spontaneity, surprise, and passion.

Pamela Steele was born in her grandfather’s house on the banks of Laurel Creek in West Virginia. When she was six months old, her parents took her across the Divide on a train to eastern Oregon, and she has been traveling back and forth since. On one of those trips, she accidentally received an MFA in Writing from Spalding University in Louisville, Kentucky.

She has been a recipient of Jentel Arts and Fishtrap fellowships, and her work has appeared in Rattapallax, High Desert Journal and Rosebud magazines, among others. Paper Bird, her first full-length collection of poetry published in 2007 by Wordcraft of Oregon, was nominated for an Oregon Book Award. Pamela is currently in her second year of a year-long novel workshop taught by Jane Vandenburgh. Things are going well.

Facilitated by Glenda Goodrich

Cost: $50.00 (all materials provided)

Spring – Discovering New Beginnings through SoulCollage®

Spring is a time for new growth. Come join us for an afternoon to relax, play and use imagery to discover the Spring of new growth inside you. This workshop is open to everyone. Just come and enjoy yourself and take a break from the routine.

What is SoulCollage®?

SoulCollage® is a process through which you contact your intuition and create cards which have deep personal meaning and which can help you with life’s questions like: What new growth is emerging within me? What’s next for me in my life and work? What does my Soul and intuition tell me?

Following the simple Soul Collage directions, your hands move fragments of cut-out magazine pictures around, fitting them together in a surprising new way and gluing them down on a card. Cards containing the images you select—or the images that select you—come straight through your Soul, bypassing the mind. It is a relaxing, Soul-nourishing process that helps you stop and get in touch with deeper meaning in your life.

This is a multi-leveled, creative process which anyone can do. All you need is a good pair of scissors, pre-cut mat board cards, and images you can cut out from magazines, greeting cards, personal photos, postcards, catalogs, and calendars. It is wonderful to have other people with whom to share the process. The cards are fun to have on your work desk or coffee table to spice up the conversation, take to a friend’s house, or to share in groups.

Most of my adult life I’ve been on a journey to know more about my own soul’s code—all of the aspects of my character and self that make me uniquely who I am. When I reached mid-life this journey led me to discover the artist within through working with clay and mixed media. I have sold some of my work in local galleries and shops in Oregon, but mostly I create because I love doing it.

For many years I have been in the Human Resources profession, holding executive positions for the last 15 years. I have always been a curious observer of people and life. This curiosity has led me to enjoy sharing and playing and becoming a guide to others to help them discover what they can do and who they really are. In my past small business, Down to Earth Adventures, I journeyed with women into the outdoors on short and long hiking excursions to learn and connect with nature. I explore my own depth of spirit and soul through the ongoing study of the Four Shields of Human Nature using the Native American Medicine Wheel, and through many vision quests in deserts and mountains that have brought me to learn about the gifts I have to offer myself and the world. This continued longing to explore the mystery has led me to SoulCollage®.

I am attracted to both the artistic and soul-reading aspects of SoulCollage®. At first I made cards for the simple joy of creating. Then I learned to use the “I am one who…” process to understand more about how my soul is expressing itself, and that opened up a whole new way of thinking and feeling. I enjoy just looking at my cards and appreciating the many aspects of my soul that they represent. For me, making SoulCollage® cards is an act of loving compassion and soul tendering. Through this process I learn more deeply about all the shadow and positive aspects of myself, my relationships with others and my relationship with my work and chosen profession. Because we are all connected, knowing and understanding myself helps me know and understand others.

I especially delight in using SoulCollage® to help others deepen their experience of life events like wedding showers, baby showers, and as a way to remember loved ones who have passed on. It can also be a very powerful tool for understanding our relationship to our jobs and our work. I bring SoulCollage® into work places to help people adjust to changes, transitions and losses. The process is an effective way for employees who are involved in mergers and acquisitions to express their reactions and move toward feeling productive and happy in their jobs. Or, it can be just a fun health and wellness activity to spice up the work week. I love to share, play and facilitate the process of “Re-membering the Self through SoulCollage®.”

Third Thursday Poets celebrates Tax Day with two un-taxing poets.

Barbara Drake writes poetry and prose. Among other works she is the author of Peace at Heart: an Oregon Country Life, published by Oregon State University Press. Her new poetry collection, Driving 100, was recently published by Windfall Press (2009). Earlier poetry books include Small Favors (Traprock Press), What We Say to Strangers (Breitenbush Press), Love at the Egyptian Theatre (Red Cedar Press, Michigan State University), and Bees in Wet Weather (Canoe Press). Her college textbook, Writing Poetry, originally published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich and now owned and published by Heinle of the Thompson Publishing Group, has been in print and widely used in colleges across the country since 1983. Drake’s memoir, Peace at Heart, was an Oregon Book Award finalist.

Drake’s poetry and prose works have appeared in anthologies such as Poets on Place, U. of Utah Press, The Plain Truth of Things, Harper Collins, The Sumac Reader, Michigan State University Press, The New Geography of Poets, U. of Arkansas Press, and others. Her poetry, fiction, and reviews have appeared in numerous literary magazines and she has been a scholarly contributor to the Oregon Historical Quarterly, the Dictionary of Literary Biography and other references.

She was the recipient of a Northwest Arts Foundation grant to study poetry in England in 1985 and the Linfield College Edith Green Distinguished Professor Award. In 1966, upon completion of her MFA in writing at the University of Oregon, she was awarded “the first National Foundation for the Arts and Humanities award to be given to an Oregonian.” She also received a $20,000 National Endowment for the Arts award in poetry in 1987.

Colette Tennant is an English Professor at Corban College. Her poems have appeared in Southern Poetry Review, Rosebud, Pudding, Dos Passos Review, Natural Bridge, Global City Review, among others. She has poetry forthcoming in Karamu, and Orpheus II. Her first poetry book, published in January 2010, Commotion of Wings, was a finalist in Main Street Rag’s book contest. In 2003, her book Reading the Gothic in Margaret Atwood’s Novels was published by Edwin Mellen Press.

Presented by Vishara Veda

"From the Silence Beyond Time…The Joining" takes the reader on the intimate spiritual journey of two people, fulfilling an agreement made outside this lifetime.

Based on a true story, "The Joining" is an adventure through the distortions of human experience toward the recognition and awakening of their joint mission to support the current planetary shift, a Spiritual Awakening.

Kirk Spangler is a longtime administrative law judge with the State of Oregon and a former flight instructor with a commercial pilot’s license. He received his Bachelor of Science in psychology from the University of Washington and a law degree from Willamette University College of law. Mr. Spangler grew up in Bellevue, Washington and moved to Salem, Oregon, in 1983, where he currently resides with his two daughters.

Kirk Spangler’s debut novel, Capitol Crimes, is a fast-paced murder mystery that features Salem PD Homicide Detective Jack Davis. Mr. Spangler is currently working on a sequel novel, Now and Forever, which combines powerful themes of love, fear, loss, corruption, and revenge.

View Kirk’s bio here

Join us for the book
launch party for local
author Kirk Spangler!
Capitol Crimes is set
right here in Salem!

Sunday April 11th
11:00AM – 1:00PM

Shamanic Ceremony

As we move through our lives, each of us is moving forward in our spiritual evolution. You are not the same person you were 10 years ago. You have evolved and changed. If you’ve been around a good many years then you could probably say that you’ve had several “chapters” in this life, periods that were vastly different from each other, often marked by tumultuous change. Knowing and using ceremony during and after these transitions can close the old way with honor and gratitude, and can open the new way with solid intention.

But ceremony is not only for the major transitions in life. It can also be used as a truly potent practice towards enlightenment. A daily gratitude ceremony, for example, is a potent way of moving your awareness towards the Truth of who you are. It can also bring up all the negative issues to work on, but that’s another class…

In this class you’ll learn about Shamanic Ceremony. We’ll plan and do a ceremony created by you for your purposes. For this class, you’ll need to bring a drum if you have one and also an object that holds intense meaning about you.

Sunday April 3rd
11:00AM – 5:00PM

Soul Healing
(prerequisite: Intro to Soul Healing or Journey to Enlightenment)

In this class, you’ll learn about the process of Soul Healing—the phases that we all go through in that process, how to do the preliminary journeys that heal the Soul and then actually work on current issues. Whether we actively engage in the healing of our Souls or whether we choose to allow the winds of life to move us in our needed direction, there are phases that we all pass through. Knowing what these phases are not only helps us negotiate the rough waters, but also helps us remember that it is a phase, which enables us not to be so consumed by it.

Journeying to Heal the Soul is something that can be learned, but does take some practice. You have to learn how to see inside a Journey, what to look for, what to ask. You will begin to learn it here.

As participants in the class work on current issues within the Journey space, you will see how we share the same issues and you will also witness first hand how it is done. Journeying to heal the Soul is one of the most powerful practices available today.