Description
Cultural Writing. Essays. Mary Lou Sanelli’s FALLING AWAKE: AN AMERICAN WOMAN GETS A GRIP ON THE WHOLE CHANGING WORLD—ONE ESSAY AT A TIME brings a sharp eye and sophisticated wit not only to the sometimes disheartening, sometimes encouraging aspects of our current politics and culture, but also to issues specific to her home city of Seattle. “Mary Lou Sanelli…offer(s) a sensitive, personal look at life’s tug-of-wars like those between age and time, male and female, war and peace, place and belonging” –Knute Berger, former editor, The Seattle Weekly
Mary Lou Sanelli has earned a solid reputation in the literary and public-speaking community through a steady commitment to writing and through twenty years of successful public readings and presentations. She has published seven collections of poetry, three works of nonfiction, Among Friends, Falling Awake, and A Woman Writing. The Star Struck Dance Studio (of Yucca Springs) is her first novel (Chatwin Books). Her regular columns appear in Seattle’s City Living Magazine, Art Access magazine, The Queen Anne/Magnolia News, as well as Lilipoh magazine and Dance Teacher magazine. She has written for the Seattle Times, Seattle Metropolitan Magazine, Morning Edition, National Public Radio, Seattle’s NPR affiliate station KUOW FM, and many other publications and radio stations. Honorariums include an Artist Trust GAP Award, Poetry on the Buses, A Jack Straw Writers Award, A Seattle Bumbershoot Festival Book Award, The Skagit River Poetry Festival, A GoodReads Notable Book Award, and writing residencies in France, Costa Rica, and Spain. She presents her work at corporate events, conferences, literary venues, colleges and universities, book clubs, private events, and fundraising salons. Also a master teacher of Lyrical style contemporary dance, she teaches workshops throughout the world. This professional dance training and performance experience enables her to present with skills that surpass the average author reading. She lives with her husband in Seattle. “What Sanelli does in front of an audience is easier to recognize than it is to define.” -The Seattle Times. For more on Mary Lou Sanelli, please visit: marylousanelli.com
Knute Berger, former editor, Seattle Weekly –
Mary Lou Sanelli has a personable and striking presence in her writings. She brings a sharp eye and sophisticated honesty not only to the sometimes disheartening, sometimes encouraging aspects of our current politics and culture, but also to issues specific to her home city of Seattle and home town of Port Townsend, Washington. Falling Awake chronologically compiles Sanelli’s inquisitive, savvy, and humorous commentary. Political relations, women’s issues, family dynamics, the intricacies of a writer’s life, what can go wrong at a Seattle dinner party all are mulled over in this intelligently engaging collection that is a life-affirming journey in essays, a testimonial to the age-long process of questioning the status quo in order to find one’s truth.