The inspiring memoir for young readers about a Latina rocket scientist whose early life was transformed by joining the Girl Scouts and who currently serves as CEO of the Girl Scouts of the USA. A meningitis outbreak in their underprivileged neighborhood left Sylvia Acevedo’s family forever altered. As she struggled in the aftermath of loss, young Sylvia’s life transformed when she joined the Brownies. The Girl Scouts taught her how to take control of her world and nourished her love of numbers and science. With new confidence, Sylvia navigated shifting cultural expectations at school and at home, forging her own trail to become one of the first Latinx to graduate with a master's in engineering from Stanford University and going on to become a rocket scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Simultaneously available in Spanish!

The best writers say their work seems to come from a source beyond the thinking mind. But how do we access that source? “We must first look inside ourselves and be willing to touch that raw emotional core at the heart of a deeper creativity,” writes Albert Flynn DeSilver. In Writing as a Path to Awakening, this renowned poet, writer, and teacher shows you how to use meditation to cultivate true depth in your own writing—so your words reveal layers of profound insight that inspire and move your readers. Constructed as a year-long exploration with a new focus for each month and season, Writing as a Path to Awakening includes: • How to approach writing and reading with a greater level of presence and immersion • Engaging curiosity, playfulness, and spontaneity to keep your regular practice fresh • Meditating with poetry to deeply embody the power of language • How you can spark your imagination by connecting to the groundless source of creation • The meditative approach to storytelling—how not being trapped in your story liberates your capacity to create • Editing, rewriting, and the path of spiritual transformation “Writing and meditation practice are a powerful pair, a dynamic duo,” Albert Flynn DeSilver teaches. “Together they nourish and push, trigger and define, inform and inspire, enable, and energize. To engage in both practices fully is to activate a more complete, creative, and spiritual self.” With a mixture of engaging storytelling and practical exercises, Writing as a Path to Awakening invites you on a yearlong journey of growth and discovery—to enhance your writing through the practice of meditation while using the creative process to accelerate your spiritual evolution.

A hands-on, practical resource for people who want to explore their relationship with God through writing. Unlike other books that focus on writing itself, Sarah Stockton focuses on the discoveries made--about one's self and about God--through meditation and creative journaling. A Pen and A Path is a book for anyone who wants to explore where God has been present in the various experiences of their life, past and present. Stockton, a spiritual director and writing teacher, walks readers through thirty-five separate topics, which can be read and worked on in order or in any sequence of interest to the reader. Topics explored include religious understandings such as how God is envisioned, how religious training formed (or didn't form) the reader, and how we envision ourselves as spiritual beings. Other chapters explore life stages: childhood, teenage years, elder years, as well as marriage, parenting, and sexuality. Focusing on emotions such as grief, shame, anger, and loneliness, as well as feelings about work provide readers with the opportunity to explore nearly any aspect of their life of faith.

In this unique book, Ray McGinnis offers us a new, deeper, and more meaningful way to explore and understand the Psalms. Vividly connecting us with the original psalm writers, McGinnis discusses the intent and meaning of the historical psalms, and then sets us on a path to creating our own sacred poetry. Explaining the various literary devices used, and the intention behind the various types of psalms, McGinnis leads us through sensory and poetic exercises designed to transform the reader into an inspired modern day psalmist

Elevate Your Writing From So-So To Spectacular! Great writing requires more than an original idea, compelling characters, or a scintillating plot. An author needs all of these to be successful, but writing--and writing well--also demands an entirely different skill set. Spellbinding Sentences arms you with the tools you need to master the power of the English language. In this book, you'll learn the different qualities of words and the many ways those words can be combined to create sentences that hook readers. You'll emulate sentences from your favorite writers, practice proven techniques, and develop your skills one step at a time. The result? Your ability to craft excellent sentences will become second nature--and those sentences will hold your readers spellbound, page after page. "Barbara Baig's Spellbinding Sentences is a tribute to the pleasure and vitality of the English language. Never prescriptive and always clear, this enlightening book is sure to help all those wishing to add grace and strength to their writing." --Jane Brox, award-winning author of Brilliant: The Evolution of Artificial Light, one of TIME magazine's top ten nonfiction books of 2010 "Spellbinding Sentences is sophisticated and down-to-earth at the same time. Barbara Baig has distilled decades of experience into this wise book." --Edward Dolnick, New York Times best-selling author of The Rescue Artist: A True Story of Art, Thieves, and the Hunt for a Missing Masterpiece

A six week Artist's Way Programme from legendary author Julia Cameron From the bestselling author of The Artist's Way comes a new, transformative guide to deeper, more profound listening and creativity. Over six weeks, readers will be given the tools to become better listeners-to their environment, the people around them, and themselves. The reward for learning to truly listen is immense. As we learn to listen, our attention is heightened and we gain healing, insight, clarity. But above all, listening creates connections and ignites a creativity that will resonate through every aspect of our lives. Each week, readers will be challenged to expand their ability to listen in a new way, beginning by listening to their environment and culminating in learning to listen to silence. These weekly practices open up a new world of connection and fulfilment. The Listening Path is a deeply necessary reminder of the power of truly hearing. In a time of unnecessary noise, listening is the artist's way forward.

For the first time, an award-winning Harvard professor shares his wildly popular course on classical Chinese philosophy, showing you how ancient ideas—like the fallacy of the authentic self—can guide you on the path to a good life today. Why is a course on ancient Chinese philosophers one of the most popular at Harvard? Because it challenges all our modern assumptions about what it takes to flourish. Astonishing teachings emerged two thousand years ago through the work of a succession of Chinese scholars exploring how humans can improve themselves and their society. And what are these counterintuitive ideas? Transformation comes not from looking within for a true self, but from creating conditions that produce new possibilities. Good relationships come not from being sincere and authentic, but from the rituals we perform within them. A good life emerges not from planning it out, but through training ourselves to respond well to small moments. Influence comes not from wielding power but from holding back. Excellence comes from what we choose to do, not our natural abilities. In other words, The Path “opens the mind” (Huffington Post) and upends everything we are told about how to lead a good life. Its most radical idea is that there is no path to follow in the first place—just a journey we create anew at every moment by seeing and doing things differently. “With its…spirited, convincing vision, revolutionary new insights can be gleaned from this book on how to approach life’s multifarious situations with both heart and head” (Kirkus Reviews). A note from the publisher: To read relevant passages from the original works of Chinese philosophy, see our ebook Confucius, Mencius, Laozi, Zhuangzi, Xunzi: Selected Passages, available wherever books are sold.

"Don't live with a lover or roommate who doesn't respect your work," says the short story writer Grace Paley. "Buy time" to write if you have to, she goes on to say. In fact, "borrow to buy time," if you have to. Do anything, in other words, to make it possible for yourself to write. "Write what will stop your breath if you don't write," Paley says. In other words, if you privately think, "I'll die if I can't write," that may just be true. And so the ultimate loyalty to yourself is to write in order to save your life. In exchange for your life, know that your writing will ask a lot of you. It will drive a hard bargain. Writing asks a lot of all of us who do it, as does any art, or anything worth doing. Be prepared to give it what it requires. The blank page, the impossible deadline, the exhilarating rush of inspiration, the perils of publication: There is no profession more maddening or more rewarding than being a writer. Yet surprisingly, all writers, no matter how famous or successful, pass through the same sequence of stages in the course of their careers. It was this remarkable insight that inspired veteran writers Nancy Pickard and Lynn Lott to pool their talents and write a book. The result is one of the wisest and liveliest guides to the literary life ever written -- a volume of astonishing revelation, warm reassurance, brilliant encouragement, and welcome humor. Drawing on their own experience as writers of fiction and nonfiction as well as the insights of scores of colleagues, Pickard and Lott follow the trajectory of the writer's life from the first time that inner voice whispers "I want to write" to the burst of accomplishment that comes when the book is finished, the vision expressed, the dream made real. No matter what you write or how much recognition you've received, if you're serious about writing as a profession, you are bound to pass through the seven steps on the writer's path. Pickard and Lott call these steps Unhappiness, Wanting, Commitment, Wavering, Letting Go, Immersion, and Fulfillment. Are you sunk in a pit of loneliness and confusion, burdened by pressures you can neither name nor escape? Welcome to the stage of Unhappiness, what Pickard and Lott call the "precreative state." Don't worry, Tolstoy and Stephen King have been there before you, and somehow they cleared the abyss of Wanting (desires you can't shake, jealousies that sting like bees) and climbed the ladder of Commitment. Wavering is where you hit the wall, tread water, and succumb to the dread paralysis of writer's block and the abuse of unsympathetic editors and critics. E. B. White said a writer is like a surfer waiting for the perfect wave -- and in the stage of Letting Go, that wave finally crests, releasing the torrent of creativity that carries you through the deeply satisfying stages of Immersion and Fulfillment. Pickard and Lott are the buddies every writer dreams of -- always there to light the way and lighten your mood, generous with advice and sympathy, and bold enough to give you the occasional kick in the pants. Whether you're a "wanna-be" writer or a published literary veteran, you're bound to find this book a source of true delight, vital wisdom, and lasting inspiration. Book jacket.

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Nature of Witches comes an immersive, enemies-to-lovers contemporary fantasy standalone. After a night of magic turns deadly, Iris Gray vows to never let another person learn she's a witch. It doesn't matter that the Witches' Council found her innocent or that her magic was once viewed as a marvel—that night on the lake changed everything. Now settled in Washington, Iris hides who she really is and vents her frustrations by writing curses she never intends to cast. And while she loves working at the wildlife refuge she runs with her mother, she loathes Pike Alder, the witch-hating aspiring ornithologist who interns with them. When Pike makes a particularly hurtful comment, Iris concocts a cruel curse for him. But just as she's about to dispel it, an owl swoops down and steals the curse before flying far away from the refuge. The owl is a powerful amplifier, and if it dies, Iris's dark spell will be unleashed not only on Pike but on everyone in the region. Forced to work together, Iris and Pike trek through the wilderness in search of the bird that could cost Pike his life. But Pike doesn't know the truth, and as more dangers arise in the woods, Iris must decide how far she's willing to go to keep her secrets safe.