Saturday Dec 21st A MESSAGE FROM OZEKILAND'S TINY NEWS OFFICE on the road again...again? Yup. That's right. The paperback of A Tale for the Time Being will be out just in time for the new year, and I'll be on book tour, again! The first of my tour dates are listed below, with a link to the complete tour schedule. Please come say hello if you can, and feel free to forward this newsletter around to your friends and social networks, too. That long old lonesome road ain't so long or lonesome with friends to meet along the way. 2013 was an exciting year for all the time beings involved in this tale. We made it to the shortlist for the Man BookerPrize, which was a delight and a surprise. Oliver got to wear a tux and I got to wear a fancy dress and meet the Duchess of Cornwall. Each of the shortlisted authors received a beautiful one-of-a-kind, hand-bound edition of his or her book. Mine was made by book artist, Angela James, and it is stunning. I will treasure it forever. Nao and old Jiko went out into the world and made all sorts of new friends, and at last count, the novel will be published in over thirty countries, which means soon there will be more friends around the globe. Readers have sent an astonishing variety of lovely things, inspired by the world of the book. All this just goes to show that writing/reading is indeed a collaborative and co-creative act, and I thank you all for your generous participation in the making of this tale. as ever, Ruth Ozeki  p.s. My publisher would want me to remind you that books make lovely gifts, and the hard cover edition of A Tale for the Time Being really is beautiful.  (Thank you, Viking Books!)   ALSO OF NOTE Upcoming Events TUESDAY JANUARY 7  WORD Brooklyn, NY WEDNESDAY JANUARY 8  Asian American Writers Workshop The Interdependent Self: A Reading & Conversation, with Gish Jen New York, NY THURSDAY JANUARY 9  Powerhouse Arena Brooklyn, NY SATURDAY, JANUARY 11 McNally Robinson Booksellers Winnipeg, MB MONDAY JANUARY 13  Common Good Books Minneapolis - St. Paul, MN TUESDAY JANUARY 14  St. Louis County Library St. Louis, MO WEDNESDAY JANUARY 15 Watermark Books Wichita - Hutchinson, KS THURSDAY JANUARY 16 Bookworks @Offsite location (TBA) Albuquerque-Santa Fe, NM SUNDAY JANUARY 19 Old Firehouse Books @Council Tree Library Fort Collins, CO TUESDAY JANUARY 21 Stanford Humanities Center Stanford University Stanford, CA complete winter-spring tour schedule ➔   MORE INFORMATION About Ozekiland Ozekiland is what happens when you start publishing books, and then set up a web site and, you know, social media, and want to tie all this together somehow. Next thing you know, you have become a semi-public entity, distributed across a public persona platform that both is, and is not ... you. What's a writer to do? Copyright © 2013 Ozekiland All rights reserved. You're receiving this email because you asked to kept informed of my writing, speaking, or teaching activities. If you've changed your mind or I got that wrong, you can easily unsubscribe, below. Unsubscribe • Update Subscription Preferences Ozekiland Box 254 Whaletown, BC V0P1Z0 Canada Forward this to a friend Follow us on Twitter Friend us on Facebook

Questions for a quiet morning . . .

Today I read  a couple of pieces around the transplant story. One about the night of an anxiety attack and one about our emergency bag. It feels like no time has elapsed when I revisit memories from that era. Like there is no linear quality to time after all – not in the sense of distance, of being able to walk further and further away from memories and the feelings they invoke. Time is a bunch of lily pads on gently moving water, like early spring. I land on one leaf  and am once again in the dark, alone with my fear, separated from Shan by the gulf of her pain and my anxiety. The memories are still in my body and I have felt that subtle acceleration of my breathing over and over as I reread my journal and let my mind drift from one lily pad to another. Was that scene from Vancouver or here? Before the transplant or after? Chemo in Victoria or Vancouver? Doctor Toze? Connor? Protcor? Wass? Sing? Rahti? Power? Sheppard? Where am I now? And what should I be doing? Saying? Feeling? Avoiding? Disguising? Misdirecting? Translating? Downplaying? Organizing? Clarifying? Where is Shan and what does she need from me now? Company? Food? Reassurance? Transportation? Medicine? Reminding? Monitoring? Distracting? Soothing?

Who am I? Who was I before this all began? Can I be that me again? Do I want to be?

Miss Trunchbull loves literacy

I am currently covering a maternity leave for one of our teachers and so September to the end of January, my life looks quite different than the usual schtick. With all this teaching going on, I have had no time for writing. I look forward to getting back to my writing life, but I am enjoying the teaching very much. It helps to have the best age group (grades 3-5) and an especially sweet group of kids. But it's just been fun to play. I've been Captain Canada, Edna the Ears, Mission Control, a Broadway producer, and that really evil teacher from "Matilda".
No matter what outrageous idea I come up with to help us explore something new, the kids are with me, ready to try anything with enthusiasm.
Not surprisingly, what has been most enjoyable for me is their love of the Literacy Centres. I decided to use Lit Centres in order to best address the huge disparity in ability. I never could have anticipated how successful they would be. The students are motivated and empowered by the choices they can make at each centre and by my expectation that they are responsible for their own learning.
Every day between 11 and 12, my classroom is a quiet buzz of energy:
There are kids reading in the reading centre, alone or with a buddy or maybe listening to/reading a book with a CD. There is a group at one table doing reading response worksheets. At another table, kids choose from 45 activity cards to do a fun (and often physical) activity to reinforce their weekly spelling list. There is a sentence centre with games that have morphed into new games over the weeks as each group experiments with new ways to play them. But my absolute favourite is the creative writing centre. Kids have a myriad of ways to  inspire some creative thinking and today the whole class got involved in helping J think of uses for his invisible monkey. They are writing Wanted posters for the strange creatures they make up. (If you see something that looks like a cross between a fairy and a weasel that poops jelly beans, please contact us immediately.) They pick pictures from the Roll & Write dice game and make crazy stories. Emerging writers record them into a tape recorder. They can choose an item from the Bin of Inspiration or the Bag of Weirdness to get them writing. When the chime sounds to move them to their next Centre, the loudest groans tend to come from the creative writing corner.
As soon as my term is finished, I will pack up my Bag of Weirdness, infuse myself with the kids' amazing imaginations and head into my studio to steal as many of their ideas as possible. Don't tell them.
Monica is the author of "Thanks for chucking that at the wall instead of me."