Hope Mueller has written an inspirational memoir about her early life in the United States, life lived in a commune – something most of us know little about or tend to misconstrue.

The passage Hope reads takes us right into her world on a cold school day morning, as she bakes a tray of donuts for breakfast, careful not to step on the scalding heating grate, while her mom smokes (and it’s not a cigarette).
Throughout, Hope portrays not only the difficulties of a precarious existence, but the resilience she acquired thanks to a solid foundation of unconditional love and encouragement. This is what Hope most wants us to take away from her book: that we too can overcome and do anything.

This memoir has resonated with hundreds of readers, and Hope loves to hear from every single one of them, so don’t hesitate to reach out to her.

Bio:
Hope Mueller is an author, inspirational speaker, busy executive and active non-for-profit volunteer.  A results-driven leader and change agent, Hope’s passionate about career development, youth STEM promotion, and local community service, among others. With her early years marked by the experiences on a hippie commune, Hope’s unique childhood shaped her approach and interaction with the world, with a gift of creating order out of chaos and turning vision into reality. She lives with her husband in northern Illinois and actively parents her four daughters through the phases of their lives.

Email: [email protected]
Website: www.hopey.net
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HopeMuellerAuthor/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/hpmueller242
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hpmueller242/

Enjoy!
-Lisa Carter, Founder & Creative Director, Intralingo Inc.

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Miho Kinnas speaks to us about her most recent collection of poetry: Move Over, Bird.

This beautiful, slim edition contains an awesome array: original poetry in English, Japanese poems translated into English, translations of traditional haiku, a linked poem, found poems, and prose poems, poems written in the US, in China, and in Japan. There is something for everyone.

Indeed, it’s Miho's hope that everyone who reads her book will find one poem that speaks to them or even inspires them to create one. (She shares a wonderful approach, writing one line every hour during a single day, as she did in two of her poems here.)

Miho publishes books to meet people, so be sure to reach out to purchase a copy of Move Over, Bird, and talk to her about her work!

Bio:

Miho Kinnas, a 2019 Pushcart Prize nominee, is a Japanese poet/translator living in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina in the USA since 2014. She is the author of two poetry collections, Today, Fish Only (2015, Math Paper Press) and Move Over, Bird (2019, Math Paper Press).  Her current associations are with Poetry Society of South Carolina and Island Writers’ Network. She teaches poetry classes at various locations through organizations such as Pat Conroy Literary Center, the local school system and Life Long Learning, and Bluffton Book Festival.

Her books are available at https://www.booksactuallyshop.com/ (Books Actually bookstore in Singapore), locally from the BookLady Book Store of Savannah, McIntosh Book Shoppe and Pat Conroy Literary Center in Beaufort, Bo Art in Hilton head in the low-country area or by sending US $15 to her Paypal account associated with miho.kinnas[at]gmail[dot]com.

Enjoy!
-Lisa Carter, Founder & Creative Director, Intralingo Inc.

Support the show (https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=BRYNFE5JTBFES&source=url)

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit booklove.intralingo.com

We’ve got a double feature for you on the speculative fiction novel Warriors & Warlocks: Outcast, with interviews from both Timothy Gregory, translator from the Arabic, and Saudi author Monther Alkabbani.

In my interview with Tim he says: "I like to grab a book every once in a while that's outside my norm and just try it, see what happens."

That's exactly what I did with this novel and it was an excellent decision! Reading Outcast completely shook preconceived notions of what I would or wouldn't like based on what I normally read. Do check out this wonderful book!

And if that’s not enough encouragement, maybe the cliffhanger Tim leaves us with in his reading will entice you even more:

It was a bare femtosecond (one thousand trillionth of a second) before [Murad] slammed into the pavement when everything puffed to smoke – as though nothing were real. From the void, he heard a familiar voice whisper, “Nothing will be that has not already been, nothing will end that has not already ended.” 

Bio:

Tim Gregory was born in Seattle, WA; joining the US Marines after high school, he found himself at a military language school in California studying Arabic. Loving the language, he never looked back. After more than 15 years as an in-house and freelance translator, he decided to merge his love of Arabic with his love of SF (whether you call that science fiction, science fiction/fantasy, speculative fiction or all of the above) and pursue translation of Arabic works in that genre. He earned an MA in Translation and Interpretation focused on literary translation from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2018.

http://www.tarjema.com
http://www.facebook.com/tarjematranslations

Warriors & Warlocks: Outcast can be purchased online or from your local bookstore!

Enjoy!
-Lisa Carter, Founder & Creative Director, Intralingo Inc.

Support the show (https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=BRYNFE5JTBFES&source=url)

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit booklove.intralingo.com

In this episode, Dr. Monther Alkabbani and I chat about his first book in English, Warriors & Warlocks: Outcast, translated by Timothy Gregory. A work of speculative and historical fiction, it is “genre-bending” and being enjoyed equally by audiences in both Arabic and English.

“It makes me really happy to see that the book resonated with English speakers, just as it did in the Arab world. It means that there’s a lot of commonality between people throughout cultures. […] A book can resonate with more than one culture, and more than one language.” -Dr. Monther Alkabbani

Bio:
Dr. Monther Alkabbani is a Saudi surgeon and best-selling novelist born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in 1970.

His novels have become some of the top-selling Arabic books of all time, generating considerable interest and some controversy.

Dr. Alkabbani has spoken at numerous literary events throughout the world, including the Paris Book Fair 2019 as invited speaker and WORLDCON 75 in Helsinki, Finland, to talk about Arabian fiction, plus festivals and conferences in the UAE, Kuwait, and Bahrain.

Online:
https://twitter.com/MontherKabbani
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1297551._

Enjoy!
-Lisa Carter, Founder & Creative Director, Intralingo Inc.

Support the show (https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=BRYNFE5JTBFES&source=url)

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit booklove.intralingo.com

Carla Damron’s fiction is very much inspired by her social work and social justice efforts. The themes of home, homelessness, addiction, loss, humanity, resilience, opening ourselves up, and moving forward run through her amazing literary novel and our conversation about it. 

“There are five threads in The Stone Necklace, five story arcs. I hope that you find the one that you need to read, and that it touches you the way that it needs to.” -Carla Damron

Bio:
South Carolinian Carla Damron is a fiction writer, clinical social worker, and author of the novel The Stone Necklace, the recipient of the 2017 Women’s Fiction Writers Association Star Award for Best Novel.  It was also selected the “One Community Read” novel for Columbia SC in 2016, resulting numerous book club and workshop appearances. Damron is also the author of the Caleb Knowles mystery novels Keeping Silent, Spider Blue, and Death in Zooville. Her essay, “Sarah Leverette”, was published in Setting the Supper Table, 2019. Her short stories have appeared in The Offbeat Literary Journal, Fall Lines, Six Minute Magazine, Melusine, In Posse Review, Jenny Magazine, and Jasper’s Marked by Water collection. She’s had op-eds published in Social Work Helper, the State Newspaper, and The Sumter Item newspaper.

Following a thirty-year career as a mental health therapist and program manager, Carla Damron took on the role of Executive Director for the National Association of Social Workers, SC Chapter where she conducted trainings and advocated for vulnerable populations served by her profession. Her careers of social worker and writer are intricately intertwined; all of her novels explore social issues like addiction, homelessness, mental illness, and human trafficking. Named the 2014 South Carolina Social Worker of the Year, Damron holds an MFA in creative writing and a master’s degree in social work.

Website: www.carladamron.com
Twitter: carlawritesfic
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/carladamronwrites/
Find The Stone Necklace at Amazon, OR, even better, order it through your local bookstore!

Enjoy!
-Lisa Carter, Founder & Creative Director of Intralingo

Support the show (https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=BRYNFE5JTBFES&source=url)

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Allison M. Charette and I have a wonderful chat about her latest translation, Return from the Enchanted Island, a novel by Johary Ravaloson. Only the second novel from Madagascar ever to be published in English, you're in for a treat!

Bio:
Allison M. Charette translates literature from French into English. She has received an NEA Literary Translation Fellowship and a PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant, been selected for the Translation Lab residency at Art OMI, and been nominated for the Best of the Net. Her most recent translation is Return to the Enchanted Island, by Johary Ravaloson—only the second novel to be translated into English from Madagascar, it was published in 2019 by AmazonCrossing. Allison also founded the Emerging Literary Translators’ Network in America (ELTNA.org), a networking and support group for early-career translators. Her other translations have appeared in the New York Times, Words Without Borders, The Other Stories, Two Lines, Epiphany, and others. Find her online at www.charettetranslations.com.

Book: https://www.amazon.com/Return-Enchanted-Island-Johary-Ravaloson/dp/1542093511
Twitter: https://twitter.com/sunshineabroad
Website/blog: http://charettetranslations.com/

Special thanks to Amazon Crossing for the review copy of this book.

Enjoy!
-Lisa Carter, Founder & Creative Director of Intralingo

Support the show (https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=BRYNFE5JTBFES&source=url)

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit booklove.intralingo.com