Kirjahaku

A reissue of the now-classic anthology (with more than 60,000 copies sold) of deeply moving testimonies by survivors of child sexual abuse--with a new afterword by Ellen Bass, co-author of The Courage to Heal.

Come to terms with your past while moving powerfully into the futureThe Courage to Heal is an inspiring, comprehensive guide that offers hope and a map of the healing journey to every woman who was sexually abused as a child--and to those who care about her. Although the effects of child sexual abuse are long-term and severe, healing is possible.Weaving together personal experience with professional knowledge, the authors provide clear explanations, practical suggestions, and support throughout the healing process. Readers will feel recognized and encouraged by hundreds of moving first-person stories drawn from interviews and the authors' extensive work with survivors, both nationally and internationally.This completely revised and updated 20th anniversary edition continues to provide the compassionate wisdom the book has been famous for, as well as many new features: Contemporary research on trauma and the brainAn overview of powerful new healing tools such as imagery, meditation, and body-centered practicesAdditional stories that reflect an even greater diversity of survivor experiencesThe reassuring accounts of survivors who have been healing for more than twenty yearsThe most comprehensive, up-to-date resource guide in the fieldInsights from the authors' decades of experienceCherished by survivors, and recommended by therapists and institutions everywhere, The Courage to Heal has often been called the bible of healing from child sexual abuse. This new edition will continue to serve as the healing beacon it has always been.

The Human Line startles with its precise detail, intimate images, and wild metaphors. Ellen Bass brings attention to life's endearing absurdities, and many of the poems flash with a keen sense of humor. She also faces many of the crucial moral dilemmas of our time--genetic engineering, environmental issues, continuous war, heterosexism--and grounds her vision in the small, private workings of the heart. "Poetry," writes Bass, "is the way I pay attention, appreciate, give praise, struggle, grieve, rage, and pray. It's the way I embody my love for the world."

Paterson Poetry Prize Finalist, 2015Featured on NPR's The Writer's Almanac"Ellen Bass's new poetry collection, Like a Beggar, pulses with sex, humor and compassion."--The New York Times"Bass tries to convey everyday wonder on contemporary experiences of sex, work, aging, and war. Those who turn to poetry to become confidants for another's stories and secrets will not be disappointed."--Publishers Weekly"In her fifth book of poetry, Bass addresses everything from Saturn's rings and Newton's law of gravitation to wasps and Pablo Neruda. Her words are nostalgic, vivid, and visceral. Bass arrives at the truth of human carnality rooted in the extraordinary need and promise of the individual. Bass shows us that we are as radiant as we are ephemeral, that in transience glistens resilient history and the remarkable fluidity of connection. By the collection's end--following her musings on suicide and generosity, desire and repetition--it becomes lucidly clear that Bass is not only a poet but also a philosopher and a storyteller."--BooklistEllen Bass brings a deft touch as she continues her ongoing interrogations of crucial moral issues of our times, while simultaneously delighting in endearing human absurdities. From the start of Like a Beggar, Bass asks her readers to relax, even though bad things are going to happen, because the bad gets mined for all manner of goodness.From Another Story: After dinner, we're drinking scotch at the kitchen table.Janet and I just watched a NOVA specialand we're explaining to her motherthe age and size of the universe--the hundred billion stars in the hundred billion galaxies.Dotty lives at Dominican Oaks, making her way down the long hall.How about the sun? she asks, a little farmshit in the endlessness.I gather up a cantaloupe, a lime, a cherry, and start revolving this salad around the chicken carcass.This is the best scotch I ever tasted, Dotty says, even though we gave her the Maker's Markwhile we're drinking Glendronach...Ellen Bass's poetry includes Like A Beggar (Copper Canyon Press, 2014), The Human Line (Copper Canyon Press, 2007), which was named a Notable Book by the San Francisco Chronicle, and Mules of Love (BOA, 2002), which won the Lambda Literary Award. She co-edited (with Florence Howe) the groundbreaking No More Masks An Anthology of Poems by Women (Doubleday, 1973). Her work has frequently been published in The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, The New Republic, The Sun and many other journals. She is co-author of several non-fiction books, including The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse (HarperCollins, 1988, 2008) which has sold over a million copies and been translated into twelve languages. She is part of the core faculty of the MFA writing program at Pacific University.

Bass's work--about marriage and parenting, illness and recovery, small daily pleasures--cultivates an exuberance that's born of, and balanced by, close watchfulness. --The New York Times "A bold and passionate new collection... Intimacy is rarely conveyed as gracefully as in Bass's lustrous poems." --Booklist Indigo, the newest collection by Ellen Bass, merges elegy and praise poem in an exploration of life's complexities. Whether her subject is oysters, high heels, a pork chop, a beloved dog, or a wife's return to health, Bass pulls us in with exquisite immediacy. Her lush and precisely observed descriptions allow us to feel the sheer primal pleasure of being alive in our own "succulent skin," the pleasure of the gifts of hunger, desire, touch. In this book, joy meets regret, devotion meets dependence, and most importantly, the poet so in love with life and living begins to look for the point where the price of aging overwhelms the rewards of staying alive. Bass is relentless in her advocacy for the little pleasures all around her. Her gaze is both expansive and hyperfocused, celebrating (and eulogizing) each gift as it is given and taken, while also taking stock of the larger arc. She draws the lines between generations, both remembering her parents' lives and deaths and watching her own children grow into the space that she will leave behind. Indigo shows us the beauty of this cycle, while also documenting the deeply human urge to resist change and hang on to the life we have, even as it attempts to slip away.

Balancing heart-intelligent intimacy and surprising humor, the poems in Ellen Bass's Mules of Love illuminate the essential dynamics of our lives: family, community, sexual love, joy, loss, religion and death. The poems also explore the darker aspects of humanity-personal, cultural, historical and environmental violence-all of which are handled with compassion and grace. Bass's poetic gift is her ability to commiserate with others afflicted by similar hungers and grief. Her poem "Insomnia" concludes: "may something/ comfort you-a mockingbird, a breeze, rain/ on the roof, Chopin's Nocturnes, the thought/ of your child's birth, a kiss,/ or even me-in my chilly kitchen/ with my coat on-thinking of you."Marketing Plans: * National advertising * National media campaign * Advance reader copies * Course adoption mailingAuthor Tour: * Berkeley * Boston * Minneapolis * San Francisco * Santa CruzEllen Bass is co-author (with Laura Davis) of the best-selling The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse (HarperCollins 1988, 1994), which has sold more than one million copies and has been translated into nine languages. She has also published several volumes of poetry, and her poems have appeared in hundreds of journals and anthologies, including The Atlantic Monthly, Ms., Double Take, and Field. In 1980, Ms. Bass was awarded the Elliston Book Award for Poetry from the University of Cincinnati. Last year, she won Nimrod/Hardman's Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry, judged by Thomas Lux. She was nominated for a 2001 Pushcart Prize. She lives in Santa Cruz, where she has taught creative writing for 25 years. She has also taught writing workshops at many conferences nationally and in Mallorca, Spain.