At Magers & Quinn Booksellers, 3038 Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis – www.magersandquinn.com – 612.822.4611
Jodi Livon discusses and signs her new book The Happy Medium: Awakening To Your Natural Intuition (Llewellyn) – 4 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 13 – With warmth and candor, intuitive coach Jodi Livon shares the fascinating true stories and hard-won wisdom she’s acquired on her journey as a psychic medium.
Over the years, Jodi has helped clients, friends, family, and even those in spirit find healing and learn life lessons. These true and incredibly touching stories illuminate spirit communication and offer instruction on developing your own intuitive skills. Jodi reveals how she receives and interprets psychic impressions, offering a compelling firsthand account of how the psychic process works.
Packed with tips on trusting your senses, maintaining emotional balance, staying grounded, and interpreting signs from the Universe, along with fun exercises to develop your psychic abilities, The Happy Medium can help you learn to tune in to your own intuition for higher awareness and guidance in making life’s decisions.
For more than 25 years, Jodi Livon has used her psychic skills professionally. An intuitive coach for the business sector, she also offers readings for individuals and leads workshops on developing psychic intuition. Visit her website – www.theintuitivecoach.com – for more information.
Wendy Brown-Baez and Tim Brennan read poetry – 7:30 p.m., Wednesday, Sept. 16 – Wendy Brown-Baez, author of Ceremonies of the Spirit, is renowned for her signature style as a performance poet; she takes you into her vibrant, colorful world with sensual imagery, elegant rhythms and poignant stories. Ceremonies of the Spirit (Plain View Press 2009) is a collection of love poems that travel a spiral from infatuation to transformation, from grief to consecration. Ceremonies has been called “gorgeous,” “exquisite,” “flirty” and a “joyous work that should be celebrated.”
In 2004, Wendy released her poetry CD Longing for Home and since then, has performed poetry nationally, and in Mexico, in unique venues such as cafes, galleries, schools, women’s retreats, and cultural centers, solo and in collaborations. She began her performance style while collaborating with Word Dancers, a Santa Fe women’s poetry group. She has published poetry and creative non-fiction in numerous literary journals, including Mizna, Minnetonka Review, The Awakenings Review, The Chrysalis Reader and Wising Up Press. Wendy was the recipient of 2008 and 2009 McKnight grants through COMPAS to teach writing workshops with at risk youth. She considers her homes to be in Santa Fe, Puerto Vallarta, and Minneapolis with family and friends. For more information, visit her website – www.wendybrownbaez.com.
Tim J. Brennan is the author of Fifty White Stones (Pudding House Press, 2006), a collection of droll musings, ordinary thoughts about family life, and profound personal contemplation as the author approaches, reaches, and passes the half-century mark of living. Joel Van Valin of Whistling Shade literary journal says, “Brennan has a wonderful ability to free fall away from the subjects of his poems.”
Brennan writes from southeastern Minnesota. As well as being a published poet, he is well-known as a playwright. His poetry has appeared in literary journals such as Whispering Shade, Main Channel Voices, Green Blade, and RiverWalk Journal. His poem “Hewn” took first place in the 2009 edition of The Talking Stick and he won a 2005 Whatlight monthly poetry contests on mnartists.org. His short plays which have been produced in six states, most recently Chicago and NYC. He’s been a teacher for 27 years.
Sue Leaf discussing her book The Bullhead Queen: A Year At Pioneer Lake (University of Minnesota Press) – 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 17 – In The Bullhead Queen, Sue Leaf exemplifies the moral aspect of humans to nature through a collection of engaging meditations on the places she sees every day on Pioneer Lake in east-central Minnesota. This is an evocative memoir exploring the relationship between humans and nature through the liturgical calendar.
The Western approach to nature has always operated under both spiritual and scientific views. While Christianity decrees that human beings have dominion over nature, evolutionary biology teaches us that we are but highly adapted animals among a biological network of millions of other species. What is our proper relationship to wild animals–and what is our responsibility to them?
Reflecting on the birds she peers at through binoculars and the Lutheran church that anchors Pioneer Lake’s southern shore, Leaf contemplates how her relationship to nature has been colored by the Christian theology of her childhood. Acknowledging the influence of the church on her view of the natural world, she follows the liturgical calendar as a thread, chronicling the change of seasons over the year.
Leaf considers the results of the assumption that nature is ours to use: we continue to fish, trap, and hunt animals whose populations are ghosts of their former selves and produce mounting environmental pressures on their habitats. Observing the ways in which the heavy hand of human beings has changed the landscape of Pioneer Lake, and many others like it, she also rejoices in the ways in which the lakes remain wild and exuberant, influencing the lives of all who encounter them.
Sue Leaf is a freelance writer and the author of Potato City: History, Nature, and Community in the Age of Sprawl. Her essays have appeared in Minnesota Monthly, Utne Reader, Minnesota Conservation Volunteer, and Architecture Minnesota. A former college instructor in biology and environmental science, she holds a doctorate in zoology from the University of Minnesota. She is president of Wild River Audubon and lives in Center City, MN, on the shore of Pioneer Lake.
