The contributors have been selected, and we are thrilled with the quality and variety of prose and poetry for our first annual Nature’s Gifts anthology. More than twenty pieces, from haiku to villanelles, from essays to short stories, will delight nature lovers everywhere. Take a walk in a garden or hike in a national park. Reflect on the moon. Learn something new. Laugh—and cry—with our writers as they discover the beauty, the joys, and the raw power of nature.

 

The Nature Conservancy will receive a donation of 50 percent of the profits for every book sold in both print and e-book editions for one year. Dedicated to protecting our rapidly vanishing natural environment, The Nature Conservancy has protected more than 117 million acres of land in 28 countries.

 

The selected poets and authors are:

 

Kathi Anderson      Douglas G. Campbell      Malcolm Campbell     

Sam Cash      Chelle Cordero      Helen Fanick      jeglaze      S. Kelley Harrell     

Robert Hays       Donna Henes      Lisa Houff       Victoria Howard     

Leah Mooney      Thom Newnham        Deanne Quarrie      Connie Spittler

Smoky Trudeau       Kimberlee Williams        Scott Zeidel

You can learn more about The Nature Conservancy at their website:  http://www.nature.org


All selected contributors, in addition to receiving the print copy of the published anthology in which they appear, will also be announced on this Website, and on Facebook, MySpace, and Xanga blogs, as well as inclusion in the donation letters each period to The Nature Conservancy, and be invited to participate in the Vanilla Heart Publishing Earth Day 2010 Celebrations.

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About Our Contributors

 

 

Chelle Cordero is a multi-published romantic-suspense and mystery writer with Vanilla Heart Publishing. She was previously published in the Vanilla Heart Publishing With Arms Wide Open and the Mandinam Press Forever Friends anthologies. She lives in New York State with her family and finds constant adventures in her everyday life. Chelle is also a journalist with several regional and national publications.

 

Connie Spittler writes about the interconnected threads of flora, fauna, and environment. She is the author of The Desert Eternal, a collection of nature essays, and her work has appeared in The Art of Living, A Practical Guide to Being Alive and What Wilderness is This anthologies. She lives in Tucson, Arizona.

 

Deanne Quarrie is a spiritual mentor and author of four books. Poetry is her first love, especially when written about images captured in her camera. She is the founder of Global Goddess, a worldwide organization open to all women who honor the divine feminine. She currently teaches online through Ocean Seminary College. For more information on Deanne, visit http://blueroebuck.com.

 

Donna Henes is an internationally renowned urban shaman, eco-ceremonialist, ritual expert, award-winning author, syndicated columnist, popular speaker, and workshop leader whose joyful celebrations of celestial events have introduced ancient traditional rituals and contemporary multicultural, nondenominational ceremonies to millions of people in more than one hundred cities since 1972. She has published four books, a CD, and an acclaimed quarterly journal. She currently writes for the Huffington Post and UPI (United Press International) Religion and Spirituality Forum, as well as a monthly e-zine. Mama Donna, as she is affectionately called, maintains a ceremonial center, spirit shop, ritual practice and consultancy in Exotic Brooklyn, New York.

 

Douglas G. Campbell is a professor of art at George Fox University in Newberg, Oregon. His poetry has been published in Windhover, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, RiverSedge, and many other periodicals and anthologies.

 

Helen Fanick grew up in West Virginia, where Indian summer was her favorite time of year. Her short stories have appeared in a variety of publications, including several anthologies, and she has won several writing awards. Helen has a degree in English from the University of Texas at San Antonio, and lives there with her husband.

 

jeglaze writes from his home on the plains of Northwest Oklahoma. Writing primarily about nature and human nature, he is influenced by the open, isolated, wild character of the land, and by the plain and straightforward character of the people. On any given day, one might find him out in the country with camera to his eye, pen and paper in hand, or lying in tall grass, eyes closed, listening.

 

Kathi Anderson was raised by a large extended family in rural southern Indiana, surrounded by coal mines, corn fields, and cow pastures. Trained by family expectations to be practical, Kathi came late to travel, writing, and art making. Now, she’s making up for lost time.

 

Kimberlee Williams enjoys travel to exotic and unique places, experiencing different cultures. Throughout her travels, she’s worked as a banana plantation cook, counted endangered frogs in the rain forests of Australia, and trekked across the continents in too-small cars with the driver’s side on the right. She currently resides in Western Washington with her family and her perfect dog, Sparky.

 

Leah Mooney writes, works and plays in rural Wisconsin, where she resides with her husband, three-year-old daughter, three cats, and what other wilds may show up at her doorstep. Her work has most recently appeared at LiteraryMama.com and SpilledCoffee.wordpress.com. She can also be found at her blog at www.xanga.com/mooncatblue.

 

Lisa Mayers Houff remembers the moment her love of writing began in the fifth grade, thanks to a wonderful teacher who inspired her students to use their imaginations when creating stories. When Lisa is not writing, she is enjoying photography, cooking, home decorating, and attempts gardening. She lives in Bridgewater, Virginia, with her husband Terry and two daughters, Katie and Jessie, who are currently in college.

 

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of two novels, Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire and The Sun Singer, both from Vanilla Heart Publishing. During the summers of 1963 and 1964 he worked as a bellman at Many Glacier Hotel in Glacier National Park’s Swiftcurrent Valley. He served as an editorial assistant for two books about the park: Geology Along Going-to-the-Sun Road (1983) and Place Names of Glacier/Waterton National Parks (1985). His essays “Backbone of the World” and “Crown of the Continent” appeared in the Rosicrucian Digest in September and October of 1986. His article, “High Water in 1964” appeared in A View Inside the Park: 100 Years, 100 Stories (2009). “Bears, Where They Fought” arises out Campbell’s love of the valley and his fascination with the diverse stories of Park Service employees, seasonal workers and tourists flowing out of it.

 

Robert Hays has been a newspaper reporter, public relations writer, magazine editor, and university professor and administrator. A native of Illinois, he taught in Texas and Missouri and retired in 2008 from a long stint on the journalism faculty at the University of Illinois. He also has spent a great deal of time in South Carolina, the home state of his wife Mary, and is a member of the South Carolina Writers Workshop. His publications include academic journal and popular periodical articles and eight books. His three novels, Circles in the Water, The Life and Death of Lizzie Morris (a 2009 Pushcart Prize nominee), and The Baby River Angel were published by Vanilla Heart Publishing. Robert lives in Champaign, Illinois.

 

S. Kelley Harrell is an author, columnist, and neoshaman in North Carolina. Her book Gift of the Dreamtime: Awakening to the Divinity of Trauma, chronicles her pivotal step into her role as a shaman. She makes her home with a wonderful lover and their two energetic children. A passionate animist and modern Druid, her shamanic practice is Soul Intent Arts, and she is vigorously involved with the worlds in and around her.

 

Sam Cash is a writer based in Nashville, where she teaches English to refugee groups and adopts small furry creatures. She also collects vintage pictures of people and their pets. You may read some of her other work at www.nograysunflowers.xanga.com.

 

Scott Zeidel teaches music at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut, California. He was born in the cold north, on the tip of Lake Superior, and spent most of his adult life in the warm west, on the coast of California. He was once a member of the rock group Dynamo Hum, for which he wrote many lyrics about the age-old dilemma of unrequited love. Today he is a classical guitarist and poet who finds inspiration, both as a musician and a writer, in nature.

 

Smoky Trudeau is the author of the recently released Observations of an Earth Mage, a collection of prose, poetry, and photographs celebrating the beauty and splendor of the natural world. She is also the author of two novels, Redeeming Grace and The Cabin, as well as two nonfiction books on writing, all from Vanilla Heart Publishing. She is the host of a monthly radio program on Blog Talk Radio, “Write Well With Smoky Trudeau.” An ardent outdoorswoman with a deep reverence for nature, she lives in California with her husband, daughter, and a menagerie of animals, both domestic and wild, in a ramshackle cottage in the woods overlooking the San Gabriel Valley and the mountains beyond. When she isn’t working, Smoky spends her time hiking in the mountains, camping in the Sierras, splashing in tidepools, and fighting the urge to speak in haiku.

 

Thom Newnham was born and raised in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. A former member of The Second City Touring Company and an avid outdoorsman all his life, Thom turned to writing following an encounter with a drunk driver that left him partially disabled and in chronic pain. The father of two teenaged girls spends much of his time at his cottage in Northern Ontario.

 

Victoria Howard is the author of two romantic suspense novels, The House on the Shore and Three Weeks Last Spring, both from Vanilla Heart Publishing. She is a member of the Romantic Novelists' Association and Romance Writers of America. She currently resides in South Yorkshire, England.