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What’s New in a Nutshell

• Lorraine traveled to the Iceland Writers Retreat with writers Diane Abatemarco and Nadine Revheim in April 2024. All three participated in an Icelandic Inspiration Zoom session on June 12, 2024, to share nuggets, tips, truths, and insights they gleaned from the many workshops at this unique literary gathering.
• One of Lorraine’s clients, Carin Bicker, landed a book deal with Imzadi Publishing for her memoir, Wings at Sunrise: Soaring above the Hurricane of MS—A Marriage Memoir. Its projected release date is early 2025.
• Walker Vreeland won a Voice Arts Award for Best Audiobook Producer at the Society for Voice Arts and Sciences gala in Hollywood on December 10, 2023. He won for his work on Corona City! This is the anthology’s fourth international award. Employing multiple art forms, we’ve clearly captured something essential about COVID-19 and the indomitable human spirit it evoked.
• At the Easton Book Festival on October 20, 2023, Lorraine joined Jerry Waxler and Jennifer Lader, both of Pennsylvania, for How Memoirs Heal the Social Fabric: A Panel Discussion. See the recording on the festival’s homepage here.

• Corona City: Voices from an Epicenter won a 2023 IPPY (Independent Publisher Book Award) for Outstanding Audiobook of the Year. The audiobook team is Producer Walker Vreeland of Walker Vreeland Productions in Philadelphia, Casting Director Margie Lenhart of Margie Voiceovers in the Pittsburgh area, and Composer William Antoniou, who wrote the original soundtrack. The anthology in its paperback version also won two 2021 Next Generation Indie Books Awards, taking first place for Best Anthology and first place for Best Covid-19 Pandemic Book. The NextGen Book Awards and IPPYs are both international contests.

  Listen to a demo of the audiobook here (opens a Facebook post in another browser window).

• Client Jay Bergen, author of Lennon, the Mobster & the Lawyer (Devault Graves Books), won a silver medal in the 2023 IPPY Awards for Best First Book – Non-Fiction category. Competition was stiff in a field of four thousand contest entries.
• Three of Lorraine’s clients achieved publishing success in 2023: Helen Lippman, To Newark with Love: True Stories of a City, a Family, a Life (Fonthill Media); Barbara Williams, I Hate You, Mary Sullivan: A Memoir of Inherited Trauma (Cape House Books); and Nicole Smith, Diagnosis: Dementia—Your Guide for Eldercare Planning and Crisis Management (NJS Press).
• Two of Lorraine’s clients achieved publishing success in 2021: Jay Bergen, Lennon, the Mobster & the Lawyer (Devault Graves Books, release date May 1, 2022); Anne Kennedy, My Addicted Family: A Mother’s Story of Shame, Pain, Loss, and Healing (KDP).
• Twelve Corona City contributors turned out for the Boonton Books and Beyond Festival in Boonton, New Jersey, on November 13, 2021. They read their pieces in the anthology, manned our sales table, signed books, and met our very supportive readers that day.
• At the Easton Book Festival on October 19, 2021, Lorraine joined Jerry Waxler and Andy Laties, both of Pennsylvania, on the Memoir Revolution Panel. See the panel here.
• Susan Lambert interviewed Lorraine about Life Touches Life: A Mother’s Story of Stillbirth and Healing for her In the Balance podcast. The conversation aired July 12, 2020 as part four of a “Grief Sessions” series. It covered the consuming grief of stillbirth and how its lessons can help in the age of the coronavirus.
• Lorraine spoke with Kate Sobolewski on July 9, 2020 about editing the Corona City: Voices from an Epicenter book anthology and helping writers find their voice. Check out the podcast at the Radio Kiosk with Kate.
• Lorraine joined forces with Sherry Wachter, a consummate book designer and owner of Magic Dog Press, to create Corona City: Voices from an Epicenter, released November 22, 2020. The 262-page, full-color, 8½" x 8½" charity anthology features sixty-two first-person writings and dozens of images from sixteen professional photographers, with additional essays and photos in an online supplement. The book presents a grassroots history of life in New Jersey and New York when we were the nation’s first COVID-19 epicenter. Our volunteer team expanded to include Lloyd Jassin, intellectual property lawyer; Dan Kulp, publicist; and Bill Ash, proofreader. All royalties go to fight hunger in America.
• Four of Lorraine’s clients achieved publishing success in 2020: Mary Burns, Saving Eric: A Mother’s Journey through Her Son’s Addiction (Austin Macauley); Barbara Gilford, Heart Songs: A Holocaust Memoir (Amsterdam Publishers); Sarajane Giere, My Pilot: A Story of War, Love, and ALS (Imzadi Publishing); Nick and Bob Finamore, Two Jersey Brothers: Stories from Our Haledon Boyhood 1939-1953 (Independently Published).
• Lorraine spoke with Katie Tarta about making literary dreams come true. Tarta describes Lorraine as a “way-finder for authors navigating through good, great, and publishable writing.” Tarta’s piece, part of her WOMEN IN BUSINESS WEDNESDAYS social media series, appeared on November 25, 2020.
• Lorraine spoke about what memoirs mean to those who write them and those who read them on Connections with Deborah Turner at Rockland World Radio in Nyack, New York on October 4, 2017. Check out the podcast at www.rocklandworldradio.com/program/connections.

• Lorraine’s new book Self and Soul: On Creating a Meaningful Life is now available! Dr. Christiane Northrup (Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom and The Wisdom of Menopause) says “Self and Soul shines with heart, soul, and brilliance” and proclaims “I love this book!”
• Lorraine and her husband Bill have launched their new publishing company, Cape House Books. Their first two releases include Lorraine’s new book Self and Soul: On Creating a Meaningful Life, and Celestial Conversations: Healing Relationships After Death by Lo Anne Mayer. Authors may be interested in the company’s collaborative publishing model. Details are on the Cape House website.
• As of 2008, excerpts from Life Touches Life appear in the OLDS Maternal-Newborn Nursing Women’s Health Across the Lifespan, a Pearson Prentice Hall textbook for nursing students. For the first time, training in perinatal death is part of the core nursing curriculum.
• Lorraine has written the Foreword for Mourning Sarah, an important consciousness-raising book about a baby who died of Group B Strep, the same bacterium that killed Victoria. This new work, by Theresa Vigour, was released in April by Radcliffe Publishing throughout the United States and United Kingdom.
• The family of Life Touches Life readers now extends around the globe, with stillbirth mothers writing to Lorraine not only from the United States but from the Middle East, Australia, Europe, China, Canada and Mexico. Lorraine welcomes all correspondence and remains happily committed to writing back to everyone personally.
  

Listen In

Catch up with these radio/podcast interviews with Lorraine:

• In the Balance podcast, The Grief Sessions #4: “I Feel You in My Heart,” a half-hour segment with Susan Lambert about the consuming grief of stillbirth and how its lessons can help in the age of the coronavirus. You can hear Lorraine on the July 12, 2020 podcast.
• Radio Kiosk with Kate, a half-hour segment with Kate Sobolewski about helping writers find their voice. You can hear Lorraine on the July 9, 2020 show.
• Power Women Radio, a half-hour segment with Deb Bailey about pregnancy, stillbirth and what every pregnant woman should know. You can hear the interview on the January 26, 2011 show.
• A Novel Idea, a 20-minute radio segment with Helen Coronato about spiritual memoir as an American genre. The segment is featured in the hour-long “Contours” show on 91.9 WNTI (Hackettstown, NJ). You can visit the show’s web site at www.wnti.org/Contours and listen to Lorraine on the June 27, 2010 program.
• Healing The Grieving Heart with hosts Drs. Gloria & Heidi Horsley about “Grieving the Stillborn Child.” You can hear Lorraine on the January 18, 2007 program.

Press Releases

• First Autobiographical Text Source Used In Stillbirth Nurses Training; ‘Life Touches Life’ Now In Second Printing released January 14, 2008.
• Lorraine Ash to read at Awakening from Grief program released November 28, 2004.