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Meet the Authors |
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Priscilla Cogan
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AUTHOR of
internationally acclaimed novels Winona's Web, Compass of the Heart, Crack at Dusk: Crook of Dawn,
Double Time, and The Unraveling Thread. Priscilla Cogan, Ph.D., is a clinical
psychologist of Irish-American descent and a practitioner of Native
American pipe and sweat-lodge ceremonies. She lives with her husband,
Duncan Sings-Alone, a Cherokee storyteller, writer, and healer, and two
Shelties betwixt and between rural Massachusetts and the Leelanau
Peninsula in northwest Michigan.
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Duncan is an enrolled Cherokee
(Georgia Tribe of Eastern Cherokee), a storyteller, healer,
ceremonialist, and spiritual teacher. His book, Sprinting Backwards to
God, contains many lessons told in story form.
At 73, he looks back on a life that has taken odd twists and turns.
Starting out as a professional musician, he followed in his father’s
footsteps and completed college and seminary to become a protestant
minister....a huge mistake. Escaping the parish, he completed a Ph.D.,
taught and practiced Psychology for the next 30 years.
Like so many others, the Wounded Knee occupation called Duncan back to
his roots, and he became deeply involved in Native American spiritual
practices. Spirits led him to a Lakota/Monacan medicine man with whom he
studied intensively for seven years sometimes participating in or
pouring six sweatlodges a week. The Sacred Pipe and the Inipi have been
his sacred home for thirty eight years. In 1988, following a Vision
Quest, he organized a national inter-tribal spiritual group, The Free
Cherokees, dedicated to fostering Native sacred teachings to people who
no longer had connections to their reservations or tribes.
He is married to Priscilla Cogan who shares his commitment to the Red
Road. She holds a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology and has published five
novels, four of which feature the interface between Native American and
Anglo cultures.
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Wendy Parciak
www.RequiemForLocusts.com
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Wendy Parciak was named after
the Wendy in Peter Pan, which may explain why she’s always loved a good
story. Growing up, her favorites were Alice in Wonderland, The Phantom
Tollbooth, Pippi Longstocking and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,
each of which she must have read twenty or thirty times. She also loved
her father’s spur-of-the-moment variations on Ali Baba and the Forty
Thieves, which he shared with the family when they were huddled around a
tiny camp stove in Washington’s Cascade Mountains, hoping to keep the
darkness and the bugs at bay. She read voraciously and made a library
out of her books, which she loaned out to the neighborhood kids. Some of
them still have tiny identifying numbers taped to their covers.
Despite a lifetime of reading, Wendy hasn’t always been a writer. In a
misguided effort to "make up" for her handicapped sister, she decided
early in life that she would be a famous concert musician. She
practiced cello six hours a day and went to the Julliard School of Music
in New York City. She would probably still be there or in some other
large city, practicing all day and then dressing up in black in the
evenings and walking into the bright onstage lights, if she had not
injured her arm during her third year at Juilliard. After an
unsuccessful year spent trying to rehabilitate herself, she made the
bold decision to try something new.
Wendy moved back to the west and obtained a BS in wildlife science from
the University of Washington. In her spare time, she worked as a
wilderness ranger and a field biologist, figuring out, among other
things, how to catch a species of diving duck with the help of a
motorboat and a mist net, surveying Puget Sound waterfowl from a small
floatplane, and searching for songbirds and their nests in the forests
of the Pacific Northwest, the muskegs of Alaska and the mountains of
Arizona. She then moved to Missoula, Montana to obtain a PhD in ecology
from The University of Montana. She liked it so much there that she
never left.
Wendy currently lives in a solar-powered log house in the woods with her
husband, five-year-old son and three very active border collies. She
obtains food locally as much as possible and drives a Prius to try to
minimize her carbon footprint. She wrote Requiem for Locusts, her first
novel, to explore how people react when confronted by a psychotic
individual whose life is more out of control than their own. She based
much of her knowledge on her own mentally-ill sister, who was diagnosed
after years of visual and auditory hallucinations with a genetic
disorder called Velocardiofacial
syndrome. |
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Events and Workshops |
Saturday, April 4
Workshops by Grandfather Singsalone:
Walking In Beauty: A Native Path To Deep Spirituality.
Harmony Center in Medfield, MA
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Friday, April 17 Workshop by Dr. Priscilla Cogan
Running on Empty: When Busy-ness Substitutes for a Spiritual
Center.
Rockville Cnetre, NY
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Events for
Wendy Parciak |
Thursday, Apr. 2
12 - 2 pm
Fremont Place Books
Book signing and reading
621 N 35th St, Seattle, WA |
Saturday, Apr. 4
7 pm
Orca Books
Book signing
509 E 4th Ave, Olympia, WA |
Thursday, Apr. 23
Awards Presentation for Montana Book Award Winners
Montana Library Association Conference
Hilton Garden Inn,
1840 Highway 93 South, Kalispell, MT |
Saturday, Apr. 25
12 - 2 pm
Montana Book Company
Book signing
331 North Last Chance Gulch
Helena, MT |
Saturday, May 2
1 - 3 pm
Books & Books
Book signing
206 W. Park St
Butte, MT |
Wednesday, May 6
11 am - 1 pm
MSU Bookstore
Book signing
125 Strand Union Bldg Bozeman, MT |
Saturday, May 9
1 - 2:30 pm
Auntie's Bookstore
Book signing
402 W. Main Street, Spokane, WA |
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Two Canoes Press