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Maze Books, Animation

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Joe Wos is a Pittsburgh based, cartoonist, storyteller, and writer.

As a cartoonist he has worked professionally since age 14, and has served as visiting resident cartoonist of the Charles M. Schulz Museum in California, since it's inception in 2001. He is known world-wide for his hand-drawn illustrated mazes, which have been dubbed the world's largest and most difficult by Ripley's Believe it or Not.
His feature MazeToons is distributed worldwide by Creators Syndicate.

He served as both founder and executive director of the ToonSeum, Pittsburgh's museum of cartoon art, for 7 years before retiring to further his writing and illustration career.
Pulling from his expertise in animation and cartoon history, he co-authored "A Celebration of Animation: The Top 100 Animated TV Characters.
In 2014 he published a "children's book" entitled "the Three Little Pigsburghers" which tales the story of the Three Little Pigs as told in Pittsburghese.
His recent books include "A-Maze-Ing Animals:50 Mazes for Kids" and "Myths and Monsters:50 Mazes for Kids" from Barron's Books.

Joe is the recipient of the Reuben Award from the National Cartoonists Society for his feature MazeToons.
Joe tours nationwide with his live program "Once Upon a Toon" combining storytelling and live cartoon illustration.

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Joe Wos is a Pittsburgh based, cartoonist, storyteller, and writer. As a cartoonist he has worked professionally since age 14, and has served as visiting resident cartoonist of the Charles M. Schulz Museum in California, since it's inception in 2001.

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Books and teacher materials Brian "Fox" Ellis's nature and history focused tales

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From Audience to Zeal: storytelling book and workbook.

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Black Friday Deals Gift Cards Best Sellers Prime Customer Service New Releases Find a Gift Whole Foods AmazonBasics Sell Registry Free Shipping Coupons #FoundItOnAmazon Shopper Toolkit Disability Customer Support

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best books on plot and storytelling- plus modern ghost stories and poetry!

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Loren Niemi and Nancy Donoval
Parkhurst Brothers Publishers, 2020

The companion to The Book of Plots this one explores "who is telling the story" and why it matters. Also, and quite deliciously, a dozen variations of Little Red Riding Hood serve as examples.

Loren Niemi and Elizabeth Ellis
August House Publishers, 2001

This critically acclaimed book explores the value and necessity of crafting the stories that are hard to hear but harder to tell with numerous samples that are both artful and truthful.

Loren Niemi
Parkhurst Brothers Publishers, 2012

If Inviting the Wolf In... is the theory, this book is the application, exploring 10 useful plot forms with examples and exercises that can be used to create engaging and artful oral or written narratives.

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Loren Niemi and Nancy Donoval Parkhurst Brothers Publishers, 2020 The companion to The Book of Plots this one explores "who is telling the story" and why it matters. Also, and quite deliciously, a dozen variations of Little Red Riding Hood serve as examples.

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author of the Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap as well as new non-fiction titles- including Covi-19 Conspiracies

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Wendy is editor of HIGH HOPES: how Appalachian prescribers and therapists are facing down the opioid crisis (McFarland Press, 2020).

Her previous book is FALL OR FLY (Ohio University Press) about adoption and foster care during the Appalachian Opioid Crisis. Listen to the podcast here.

Wendy Welch was named New River Gorge Writer in Residence for 2018! Read all about it here.

One of the people on the left is Wendy Welch, and the other is her husband Jack Beck. It's up to you to determine who is which.

Yeah we figured you'd have no trouble. Bibliophiles are smart people.
GETTING TO KNOW WENDY
Writers' Digest did an interview with Wendy that covered a lot of what people have wanted to know, so we're reposting it here. Enjoy!

by Chuck Sambuchino

I love featuring interviews with first-time book writers on my blog. It's a rare treat that I get to sit down and talk with a debut memoir writer, but that's just what's happening today. Meet author Wendy Welch, who wrote the inspiring and fun book, THE LITTLE BOOKSTORE OF BIG STONE GAP (Oct. 2012, St. Martins). The book has been featured by People. Redbook, NPR, and many other media outlets.

Wendy's story is billed as "the little Virginia bookstore that could: how two people, two cats, two dogs, and thirty-eight thousand books helped a small town find its heart. It is a story about people and books, and how together they create community." Publishers Weekly said "The whole narrative exudes enormous charm and the value of dreams and lives truly lived," while Kirkus called it "An entertaining book with a full cast of eccentric characters." Find Wendy online here.

What is the book's genre/category?
THE LITTLE BOOKSTORE OF BIG STONE GAP is Memoir/Comedy and Books & Reading.
Please describe what the story/book is about.
Two bibliophiles with no retail experience set in motion a comedy of errors when they move to the Appalachian Coalfields and start a used books shop, just as the economy tanks and e-readers debut-and manage to build a community.
Where do you write from?
The front room table of Tales of the Lonesome Pine Used Books and Café, in Big Stone Gap, VA, between customers.
Briefly, what led up to this book?
I was trying to make sense of all the silly, strange, sweet things that happened while we were setting up the bookshop. Having been a storyteller who stopped working in the arts, I was used to organizing my thoughts by narration, so I started talking to myself about what was going on in the store, then writing it down (after two or three strange looks from people in the cars next to me at red lights, or behind me on the walking path). That became the book.
What was the time frame for writing this book?
The draft of the book was about five months in the making, then working with my agent on the proposal was another two months. I actually wrote the book twice. First it was a "here's how you run a bookshop" but the only agent who saw that draft said, "Don't be a dinosaur. Bookstores are dead." And when I told some friends in despair, they said, "You know what? You and Jack are really funny and fun people. Instead of writing 'here's how you do it' why don't you write 'here's what happened to us as we were trying to get it done'?" So I did and that was the five-months-work draft that Pamela, my agent, saw and liked right away.
How did you find your agent (and who is your agent)?
Pamela Malpas at Harold Ober Agency represents me, and she's brilliant. A friend represented by her introduced us. I had queried 11 agents and received "let me see more" interest from two, when Cami Ostman (author of the running memoir Second Wind) out of the blue e-mailed that she'd spoken to her agent about my book and the agent would be up for a query. So I sent a polite and carefully constructed letter, and Pamela asked to see the manuscript, then asked me to call.
What were your 1-2 biggest learning experience(s) or surprise(s) throughout the publishing process?
When Jack (my husband and co-store-owner) and I realized we'd need someone to watch the shop while we were gone at various book launch things, we asked around for a retired librarian or some such who would enjoy staying in our guest room for two months. We live above the bookstore. The shop is small and in a small town, and we had read about Shakespeare and Co., the bookshop in Paris that had students stay above it free in return for working there, so we cold-called two people - Kim Beatty, Goodwill Librarian on Facebook, and Robert Gray, a columnist with Shelf Awareness - to ask if they could help find someone for us. Kim put the info on her page, and the next day it had been shared some 200 times. Bob then offered to write a column, and that thing went viral. NPR called a week later and had us on Weekend Edition. A magazine in Sweden and two in France put a notice in their editions (and Jack still regrets not inviting the two Swedish girls who applied). The LA Times and several New York online publications picked it up. One of them called us "the last great job in America." And the Huffington Post followed the whole story. Then SIBA offered to set up a shopsitting service for small bookstores like ours, because they said it was a felt need in the whole community, and we worked with them on that.

It was just amazing to see the shopsitter thing snowball, when all we'd wanted was someone who would enjoy being here and not burn the place down to keep it going while we were away. So I guess that was the first surprise, in two ways. First, bookstores are not dead in the public imagination and interest, no matter what anyone says. And second, as much as one hears about how the whole publishing industry turns on money and fame and who's bigger than who, suddenly here was this little silly story about a tiny bookshop and people were so happy for us and 158 people applied. That reaffirmed for me that sincerity, just doing your thing, and being yourself, is still a viable way to live AND to write. No one was asking anyone to sell their soul in a pact with the devil to get published. We were just living our lives, and suddenly a bunch of people wanted to be part of it. I think sometimes my publisher and the whole Ober agency laugh at my over-the-top stereotypes of Big Bad New York City. But then both my editor and agent are small town girls who transplanted to rise to successful careers in publishing, so sometimes we all laugh together.

(BTW we found a great shopsitter. His name was Andrew Whalen, he was a native of Ohio living in NYC, and our one regret is we'll never be able to have a shopsitter again, because he was perfect. Responsible, sensible, he took great care of our dogs and cats, and by the time we got back the whole community loved him and were stuffing him with casseroles and trying to introduce him to their daughters home from college for Thanksgiving.)
What would you have done differently if you could do it again?
Worked faster and more steadily on the edits instead of procrastinating. I was holed up in a cabin with no Internet or phone the last three days before the final draft had to be in, editing like a mad fiend. That's not as much fun-or as productive-as taking each day as it comes, getting the work done but enjoying doing it. I'd really found the writing, editing, marketing, figuring out how it all worked as a newbie process, etc. pleasurable until those three days. They were writing Hell.
Did you have a platform in place? On this topic, what are you doing the build a platform and gain readership?
As you've heard, I definitely didn't. Although I had assets and resources to bring to a platform, I didn't know what they were. First Pamela, and then Cassie and Kim (marketing and publicity, respectively) at St. Martin's Press helped me harness what I had and develop what I didn't. They taught me the value of Twitter and Pinterest (I was already a Facebook addict) and they kept e-mailing with little gems like "By the way, you're going to be in People in October" and "buy a copy of Redbook this month; you're in it" and "Your book is being published in Korea." Stuff I hadn't done diddly to get. They knew who was interested in a sweet, funny story about two naïve people carving a bookstore into a community, and they kept that interest going.

For my part, Jack and I set up visits to about 20 independent bookstores around the Eastern seaboard and as far west as Missouri. People we knew in the business, or people who emailed in the pre-publication days to say how much they liked the book. And while we had a blast doing that, the horrible truth is that only about 3-6% of all books sold in America are sold via small independent bookstores. Jack and I networked and made friends and had a great time going to Parnassus and Winchester Book Gallery and Larry Bowen's Reader's Corner, but that's our world. Cassie and Kim worked their world, and they worked it well. We're under no illusions about which had more immediate results, but we like to think that we're helping change attitudes toward saving money versus investing in community-both in retail and in publishing, if that makes sense. Jack and I believe in, understand, share with other booksellers (particularly those at Malaprops, who have been espousing this philosophy for 30 years) a belief in the power of small, community-oriented shops. A LOT of books about bookstores came out this season, and we hope we're a part of keeping indies around.
Best piece(s) of advice for writers trying to break in?
Two pieces of advice, and they're intertwined.

1) Be yourself. That way if you do find someone interested in publishing what you have to say, it will be your voice and not a made-up person you feel trapped into being for the whole rest of the process. And if you don't find someone to publish you, you can enjoy the ride, then self-publish with wisdom and a sense of humor and insider discernment.

2) Celebrate every step from your first draft through hunting the agent, through hooking a publisher, through editing and marketing to publication day. Not only is publishing fickle, but the world is a pretty random place; you never know what will or won't happen tomorrow. When I finished the draft that ultimately became the book, we called over a dozen friends and had a "Wendy wrote a book and it'll probably never get published but it was fun" party. And no one at that party, Jack and I included, really gave credence to anything happening after that. When I started querying agents, I didn't have confidence. And then bang bang bang the dominoes fell. The party was in February, Cami emailed in April, Pamela and I worked on the proposal throughout May and June, then she put the manuscript and proposal out July 3 and on July 20 two houses were bidding on it. When I told the friends who attended the draft party, they were laughingly trying to hide how surprised they were. (And of course we had another party.) Cami, when she got Pamela as her agent, had an "I got an agent" party. Celebrate everything. The journey is more than just the destination.
Something personal about you people may be surprised to know?
I have the world's worst sense of direction. I can get lost in my own bookshop. Put me down two blocks from my city hotel in a straight line, and you'll find me two hours later, wandering the suburbs.
Favorite movie?
Almost anything with a strong female lead in period costume.
Website(s)?
www.wendywelchbigstonegap.wordpress.com is our blog and has the bookshop calendar, links to Jack's music and the annual tour he leads to Scotland and Ireland, and other fun stuff.
What's next?
People are beginning to visit the bookshop from outside our region; they have lunch in our café and explore downtown Big Stone (which takes about an hour but is worthwhile, nonetheless!) and go down to Carter's Fold or over to Barter Theatre and have a great weekend out. We're enjoying meeting so many people from such varied lifestyles and places.

Right now we're just riding that wave, being in the moment, enjoying the visitors and also opportunities the book's brought to participate in events like the VA Festival of the Book, the Whipporwill Festival in KY, library and bookstore talks, giving a writing workshop (the next one, WRITE COMES TO THE CUMBERLANDS, is in August and can be found on our Facebook page) here or there-fun things that start to fill up the calendar around daily obligations. Between and behind the busy-ness I'm writing, and when things calm down I'll get back to working harder on it. (She said, smiling.) Honest.

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Wendy is editor of HIGH HOPES: how Appalachian prescribers and therapists are facing down the opioid crisis (McFarland Press, 2020). Her previous book is FALL OR FLY (Ohio University Press) about adoption and foster care during the Appalachian Opioid Crisis. Listen to the podcast here. Wendy Welch was named New River Gorge Writer in Residence...

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the Radical Path of Divine Feminism Hidden in the Rosary.

I am enjoying this practice and community.

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Putting our best book forward

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the way of the rose: the radical path of the divine feminine hidden in the rosary

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religion / christian living / inspirational

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religion / christian rituals & practice / general

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religion/christian rituals & practice - general

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wisdom; religious history; spiritual self help; mother earth; meditation books; spiritual gifts for women; spiritual gifts; inspirational books; inspirational; religious gifts; spirituality books; clark strand; rituals; catholicism; catholic; history books; history; gifts; rosary prayers; meditation; prayer books; prayer; rosary; religious books; religion; spiritual books; spirituality; spiritual; self help books; self help; divine feminine; gifts for women; feminist gifts; feminist books; feminist; feminism

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religion / christian living / inspirational

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religion / christian rituals & practice / general

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religion/christian rituals & practice - general

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The Way of the Rose: The Radical Path of the Divine Feminine Hidden in the Rosary

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The Way of the Rose: The Radical Path of the Divine Feminine Hidden in the Rosary - Kindle edition by Strand, Clark, Finn, Perdita. Religion & Spirituality Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.

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The Heroine's Journey through Folklore

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dorothy cleveland & barbara schutzgruber

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beyond the sword maiden: a storyteller's introduction to the heroine's journey

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dorothy cleveland & barbara schutzgruber

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social science / feminism & feminist theory

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social science/feminism & feminist theory

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social science / feminism & feminist theory

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social science/feminism & feminist theory

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Beyond the Sword Maiden: A Storyteller's Introduction to the Heroine's Journey

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Beyond the Sword Maiden: A Storyteller's Introduction to the Heroine's Journey [Dorothy Cleveland & Barbara Schutzgruber] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Beyond the Sword Maiden: A Storyteller's Introduction to the Heroine's Journey

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Hanne is an amazing writer, thinker, baker, opera singer and... check out her Reasons Not to Quit Patreon and her new book, Fat- linked in comments.

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Dr. Hanne Blank

Dr. Hanne Blank is a historian, writer, editor, and public speaker whose interdisciplinary work lies at the intersection of bodies, selves, and cultures. Her fascination with the ways bodies-and all that we experience and enact through them-help to create us as members of cultures with highly specific individual and social identities have led her to work on topics ranging from fatness to heterosexuality and feminist health to virginity.

The author or editor of ten books that include Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality (Beacon Press), Virgin: The Untouched History (Bloomsbury), and the forthcoming FAT (Bloomsbury, fall 2020), Dr. Blank joyfully bridges the town/gown divide with a deep commitment to public history as well as more traditional academic work. Other publications include, but are certainly not limited to, chapters in The Oxford Handbook of Music and the Body , numerous articles and book reviews, and a forthcoming monograph on feminist women's health activism in the U.S. South from the 1960s to the 1990s.

Dr. Blank received the Ph.D. in History from Emory University, where she was also trained in the Emory Center for Ethics. As an educator-activist who combines historical and bioethics work in the causes of feminism, women's health, LGBTQIA+ liberation, disability rights, radical body acceptance, and progressive Judaism, she has been a guest instructor, lecturer, and community advocate at institutions including Emory Healthcare, the Emory University School of Medicine, Emory University, Harvard University, Congregation Bet Haverim, Dickinson College, Bloomsburg University, the Virginia Festival of the Book, St. Mary's College, Johns Hopkins University, Minnesota College of Art and Design, and many others.For the past 3+ years, Dr. Blank has also been committed to a social-media based activist project, the Reasons Not to Quit (#reasonsnottoquit), which provides daily doses of politically progressive, affirming mental and social health support to all via Facebook and Twitter.

Currently a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Women's and Gender Studies department at Denison University, Dr. Blank teaches courses including "Issues in Feminism," "How Sexuality Shaped America," "Women, Bodies, and the Making of Medical Knowledge," and "Being Lesbian: Same-Sex Loving Women in the U.S. from 1800-2000" as well as advising advanced research.

Dr. Blank lives in a small town in central Ohio with her husband, a liberal distribution of dogs and cats, and ever-expanding collections of books, fountain pen inks, lipsticks, and yarn.

"...informative, funny and provocative."

Publishers Weekly

© Hanne Blank

"Blank is open and honest about her own life throughout, she doesn't share in order to titillate or provoke or posture or impress. She doesn't urge us to think well of her, or poorly - nor does she include unnecessary information. Blank wields the personal..."

Los Angeles Review of Books

Research & Writing

Current Projects

FAT is Hanne Blank's entry in the celebrated Object Lessons series, forthcoming in late fall 2020.

Public enemy. Crucial macronutrient. Health risk. Punchline. Moneymaker. Epidemic. Sexual fetish. Moral failing. Necessary bodily organ. Conveyor of flavor. Freak-show spectacle. Never mind the stereotype, fat is never sedentary: its definitions, identities, and meanings are manifold and in constant motion. In a culture in which fat is demonized in medicine and public policy, adored by chefs and nutritional faddists (and let's face it, most of us who eat), simultaneously desired and abhorred when it comes to sex, and continually courted by a multi-billion-dollar fitness and weight-loss industry, it's ironic that for so many people, "fat" is nothing more than an insult or a wail of despair. In Hanne Blank's book we find fat as state, as possession, as metaphor, as symptom, as object of desire, intellectual and carnal. Here, "feeling fat" and literal fat merge, blurring the boundaries and infusing one another with richer, fattier meanings.

Southern Women, Feminist Health documents twenty-five years in the annals of five southeastern U.S. feminist women's health organizations. With a broad view of the part played by these organizations in popularizing feminist health priorities and clinical practices throughout the southeast, this monograph delves deep into relationships between politics, place, and women's bodies.

In this monograph, Blank surveys previously unhistoricized organizations including the Mari Spehar Health Education Project(Fayetteville, AR), CHOICES - Memphis Center for Reproductive Health (Memphis, TN), and the Tallahassee Feminist Women's Health Center (Tallahassee, FL) as well as bringing new material and analyses to the histories of the Atlanta Feminist Women's Health Project (Atlanta, GA) and the National Black Women's Health Project (Atlanta, GA). In these chapters we discover the ways in which feminist health advocates created and disseminated not only new healthcare opportunities but new models and new ways of thinking about what it means for women to obtain quality health care, particularly in the traditionally conservative southern U.S.
Fucking Dykes: Lesbian Feminist Radical Sexual Histories, 1960-1990

So-called "second wave feminists" often took their politics into the bedroom, dreaming of a sexual culture in which women could be free of the expectations and demands of patriarchal, hierarchical, capitalist, and sexist culture. They wanted a sexual reality in which women who desired women could do it openly, bountifully, joyously, and with all the pleasure they could generate.

With this on their minds, lesbian feminists experimented with multiple relationship formats including nonmonogamy, polyamory, celibacy, group and line relationships, and casual sex. Gender was much on their minds as well, from the androgyny some women thought would liberate them from sexist gender roles to discussions of the presence and meanings of masculine and feminine "energy" to the controversial butch-femme dynamic. They also experimented widely in terms of sexual activity, variously enjoying and fighting bitterly over practices ranging from penetration to bondage to pornography to using sex toys. Well before the infamous "lesbian sex wars" that emerged in the early 1980s, well before HIV and AIDS transformed a nation's sexual imaginary, lesbian feminists were deeply invested not just in understanding sexuality and its meaning in their lives, but in creating a liberatory sexuality that went way beyond just being able to take the Pill.

Contact Curriculum Vitae

With impeccable research and detail, Hanne Blank uncovers the fascinating, often hidden, history of heterosexuality. Straight is a marvelous cultural history that is as entertaining as it is profoundly enlightening and necessary for understanding the world in which we live.

Michael Bronski

Public Speaking

Since the 1990s, Hanne Blank has been a popular speaker at colleges and universities. Dr. Blank speaks with humor and insight on her research, activism, and, in particular, on issues of embodiment and bodily experience including sexuality, sexual orientation, and body size/fatness.

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Dr. Hanne Blank / Historian, Writer, Speaker,

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Dr. Hanne Blank is a historian, writer, editor, and public speaker whose interdisciplinary work lies at the intersection of bodies, selves, and cultures. Her fascination with the ways bodies-and all that we experience and enact through them-help to create us as members of cultures with highly specific individual and social identities have led her to work on topics ranging from fatness to heterosexuality and feminist health to virginity.

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storytelling resources from my favorite tellers

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Parkhurst Brothers Publishers focuses primarily on the American storytelling movement, publishing books by ethnic and professional storytellers writing for general readers, educators, librarians, and fellow storytellers.

Among publishers today, our team has remarkable experience shaping and marketing materials conceived by storytellers-and material useful to anyone using stories for work, education, spiritual life, avocation, and personal enjoyment.

Whether you are a teacher or librarian, a faith worker, manager, entertainer, or bedtime reader, our titles will excite your passions and help make you the best you can be.

Parkhurst Brothers Publishers also publishes selected psychologists, including George K. Simon, Ph.D., a thinker who is often called the world's leading authority on manipulative people and how to live, work, and co-exist with them without losing your wits and self-esteem.
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Parkhurst Brothers Publishers is a sponsor of the National Storytelling Summit, Northeast Storytelling, the Northlands Storytelling Network, and the Tejas Storytelling Association.

Attend and support your local, regional, and national storytelling events!

Click on a Book Cover - Buy a Book!

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Parkhurst Brothers Publishers focuses primarily on the American storytelling movement, publishing books by ethnic and professional storytellers writing for general readers, educators, librarians, and fellow storytellers. Among publishers today, our team has remarkable experience shaping and marketing materials conceived by storytellers-and material useful to anyone using stories for work, education, spiritual life, avocation, and personal enjoyment.