Laurie Gough’s latest book…
S T O L E N C H I L D
Although Laurie Gough was an intrepid traveller and travel writer who had explored wild, far-off reaches of the globe, the journey she and her family took in their own home in their small Quebec village proved to be far more frightening, strange and foreign than any land she had ever visited…MORE
“…a book that belongs among the classics of parenting.” ~Michael Shermer, American science writer, columnist for Scientific American, founder of Skeptic, author of Why People Believe Weird Things, The Believing Brain, and The Moral Arc
Interview on CTV National News
Video from Macleans Article
My latest travel piece:
Conquering Fear on a Via Ferrata in Canada
www.perceptivetravel.com
After a helicopter ride into the Bugaboos of Canada, a 50-something mother puts aside her fear of heights to zipline over ravines and walk across suspended cables between rocky peaks.
I get to teach memoir writing (and eat and drink wine!) with these fabulous writers in Tuscany this month! Alison Pick, Nadia Brown, Laurie Gough (Author), and Alison Wearing.
I get to teach memoir writing (and eat and drink wine!) with these fabulous writers In Tuscany this month!
In 2006 a high school English teacher asked students to write a famous author and ask for advice. Kurt Vonnegut was the only one to respond - and his response is magnificent:![]()
“Dear Xavier High School, and Ms. Lockwood, and Messrs Perin, McFeely, Batten, Maurer and Congiusta:![]()
I thank you for your friendly letters. You sure know how to cheer up a really old geezer (84) in his sunset years. I don’t make public appearances any more because I now resemble nothing so much as an iguana.![]()
What I had to say to you, moreover, would not take long, to wit: Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.![]()
Seriously! I mean starting right now, do art and do it for the rest of your lives. Draw a funny or nice picture of Ms. Lockwood, and give it to her. Dance home after school, and sing in the shower and on and on. Make a face in your mashed potatoes. Pretend you’re Count Dracula.![]()
Here’s an assignment for tonight, and I hope Ms. Lockwood will flunk you if you don’t do it: Write a six line poem, about anything, but rhymed. No fair tennis without a net. Make it as good as you possibly can. But don’t tell anybody what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite it to anybody, not even your girlfriend or parents or whatever, or Ms. Lockwood. OK?![]()
Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces, and discard them into widely separated trash receptacals. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow.![]()
God bless you all!"![]()
Kurt Vonnegut