I consider Susie Avon to be one of the most influential people I have had the opportunity to work with early on in my professional career.  Susie is vivacious, opinionated and has a finely tuned gut and relies on it to make decisions quickly. She gets people and their motivations better than anyone I have met. That being said, I had never actually seen her eat anything but chips or sit at a desk. Turns out, she had a bit of renaissance in her late 50's and to the surprise of us all, is a well-regarded fitness instructor. Is she perfect? Definitely not. Did she make a tremendous change in her life? You bet she did! Here is her story.

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Susie Avon is a rock star in her own mind.  By day she helps manufacturers & industrial companies grow their business by taking advantage of online & digital marketing.  Early mornings and early evening are devoted to help people grow through fitness classes focused on strength and conditioning.  As a trainer her focus in fitness is believing that if you are having fun and getting stronger – however you might measure that - then you’ll keep going.  Life is too short to eat kale.  She started her fitness career at the ripe age of 56 and when she is bragging, she tells people that she can lift more than your boyfriend.  Now at 68 she isn’t afraid to show-off and take the consequences (i.e., embarrassment).  However, her greatest joy is in trying to make a difference in whatever she does and helping others be strong in heart, mind and body.    

You can reach out to Susie at [email protected].  She will gladly give you her opinion on almost anything.  

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Have you always wondered how a performer thinks? Or perhaps you have secretly considered yourself a performer looking for a place to happen! This episode we have the pleasure of chatting with Monique Jenkinson, aka the multifaceted, always complicated and definitely delightful Fauxnique, the first cisgender woman to win a drag queen pageant. She has toured the world with her many amazing shows including "The F Word." She chats with us about artistic expression, her process and how her winding path led her from ballet, to international recognition to her forthcoming memoir. 

You can learn more about Fauxnique at www.Fauxnique.net

View some of her performances here  or on Vimeo

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I am an artist, performer, choreographer and writer. I made herstory as the first cis-woman to win a major drag queen pageant and subsequently my solo performance works have toured nationally and internationally in wide-ranging contexts from nightclubs to theaters to museums — from Joe’s Pub, New Museum and the historic Stonewall in New York City, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, ODC Theater, The Stud, CounterPulse and de Young Museum in San Francisco, and in Seattle, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Provincetown, London, Edinburgh, Berlin, Zürich, Paris, Reykjavik, Rome, Catania and Cork.

I have created space for kids to dress drag queens at a major museum and created college curricula. I played the DIRT (originated by Justin Vivian Bond) in Taylor Mac’s Lily’s Revenge and Eurydike in Anne Carson’s ANTIGONICK. I engaged in public conversation with Gender Studies luminary Judith Butler and RuPaul bestie Michelle Visage within days of each other. I am currently writing a memoir.

Honors include residencies at Headlands Center for the Arts, Tanzhaus Zürich and Atlantic Center for the Arts, an Irvine Fellowship and residency at the de Young Museum, GOLDIE and BESTIE awards and 7X7 Magazine’s Hot 20. I have been nominated for the Theater Bay Area, Isadora Duncan Dance (IZZIE) and Herb Alpert Foundation awards and have received support from San Francisco Arts Commission, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, CHIME, Center for Cultural Innovation and the Kenneth Rainin and Zellerbach Family foundations.

Artist Statement

My work exists at the crossroads of Cabaret and Contemporary Dance and considers the performance of femininity as a powerful, vulnerable and subversive act. I emerged out of a feminist, postmodern, improvisational dance and choreographic lineage, and grew toward a tradition of radical queer performance that uses decadence and drag both to entertain and transcend. My practice of feminism celebrates glamour as masterful artifice, and my intimacy with both the oppressive and empowering effects of feminine tropes allows me to create a zone of play from which I make my particular critique.

Since 2003 I have been deeply engaged in an ongoing performance project, my drag queen persona Fauxnique. As a lens through which I magnify my artistic concerns, Fauxnique typifies and expands the evolution of drag-based performance and furthers the feminist line of inquiry in my work. As Fauxnique, I approach the established tradition of the drag lip-sync as a dance in its own right, and bring to it the rigor of my dance training. I am on the vanguard of what is now a common practice: museums and larger institutions embracing nightclub culture as queer history and contemporary art practice.

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Have you always thought you might have a story to tell? Been curious to start writing, but maybe aren't confident or quite sure about how to get started? Us too! Listen in on Author and Teacher, Matthew Clark Davison as we chat about how anyone with inspiration can get started writing.

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Introducing Booksmith's newest Upstream author: Matthew Clark Davison!

Upstream, for the uninitiated, is our ongoing (and ever-growing) effort to partner with local authors to provide an unending supply of signed books available for purchase—without events, lines, or hassle. Order and enjoy.

Matthew Clark Davison's debut novel, Doubting Thomas is writer/editor Michael Nava’s first acquisition for the newly-minted Amble Press. His textbook, called The Lab, Working Across Genre, co-authored by bestselling writer Alice LaPlante, will be published by W. W. Norton in 2022. Partially based on the (now online) non-academic school Matthew started in 2007 in a friend's living room, also called The Lab, the book aims to help readers (whether or not they consider themselves writers) generate new and surprising material, then shape it.

His prose is anthologized in Empty The Pews (Epiphany Publishing) and 580-Split; and published in Foglifter, The Advocate, Guernica, The Atlantic Monthly, Lumina Magazine, Fourteen Hills, Per Contra, Educe, and others; and has been recognized with a Creative Work Grant, Cultural Equities Grant, Clark Gross Award for a Novel-in-Progress, and a Stonewall Alumni Award.

Matthew earned a BA and MFA in Creative Writing from SFSU, where he now teaches creative writing full-time. “An unlikely outcome,” Matthew says, as he left home at fifteen, a runaway and high school dropout, who eventually landed in San Francisco. Labeled "high-risk” for AIDS, he somehow survived, and Janice Mirikitani encouraged Matthew to study Creative Writing at SFSU, soon after he started his first writing class with Jan and June Jordan in the basement of Glide Church.

Matthew has also coached writing at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business and continues to coach established and aspiring writers on their creative manuscripts. He served as the Chief Artistic Strategist at Performing Arts Workshop, where he worked for eleven years as a teaching artist (his first residency was a twelve-week writing workshop for LGBTQ+ Youth) and as a mentor to newly-hired teaching artists who aimed to bring intensive residencies in various art forms to young people.

A recent transplant from San Francisco to Oakland, Matthew lives with his husband Ansu, an immunologist, HIV and cancer researcher.

To order Doubting Thomas for pick-up or free Bay Area shipping, order below and put your signature request in the comments field.

Doubting Thomas: A Novel (Paperback)

By Matthew Clark Davison

$16.95

ISBN: 9781612941998

Availability: Coming Soon - Available for Pre-Order Now

Published: Bywater Books - June 8th, 2021

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A great conversation with Jeff  Szilagyi from the podcast How Humans Work, bringing some clarity to how men think and how men can change.

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About How Humans Work Podcast
Season #01: Finding Fathers 

Follow Jef Szi as he ventures along the overlooked trail of fathers, seeking to find father stories of meaning in each unique episode. Listen along an you will find how fathering leaves all kinds of tracks in the lives of children, even when they’ve grown. Travel with Jef as he learns again through the real and raw stories of season #01’s guests how fathers matter. 

• Episode #01: Talismans of Trust w/Jonah Larkin (Out Now)
• Episdoe #02: Owning Your Life w/Luis Rodriguez (Out Now)
• Episode #03: The Yoga of Love w/Araceli Santos Bieber (Out Now)
• Episode #04: Showing Up for Dads w/Chris Brown (Out Now)
• Episode #05: The Logic of Evolution & Shadows of Brilliance w/Robert Trivers (Out Now)
• Episode #06: The Legacies My Father Left For Me w/ Alexie Dossa (Out Now)

About the HHW Podcast

How Humans Work Podcast explores the landscape of human experience and the facets of our human nature. With an eye for vitality and courage to uncover the subtext of stress, join host and renaissance acupuncturist Jeffrey Szilagyi as he draws his body of diverse knowledge to reveal the stories, the dramas and the humanity in the motivations, the choices and the moments which shaped the real lives of real people.

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About Jeff

Serving the San Francisco Bay Area since 2001, Jeffrey Szilagyi provides a powerful and integrative approach to health and healing. With expertise in pain, stress, and staying balanced with the demands of fast-paced lifestyle, Jeffrey uses his healing skills of acupuncture, bodywork, coaching and more to help patients recover from challenges to their health.

Motivated by a deep love for the challenges of being human and a respect for the intrinsic wisdom of the natural world, Jeffrey blends his knowledge of Chinese Medicial therapies with a deep knowledge of the Human Stress System and the importance of psychological transformation through the different stages of life.

His clinical therapies are highly informed by Sports Medicine Acupuncture Certification, which utilizes an antomical understanding of the body, orthopedic and postural testing, along with innovated acupuncture and myofascial approaches to create healing and restoration.

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We had the pleasure of hosting Julie Kramer on Your Life: The Sequel. Julie has helped 1000's of people to move past that point of being stuck to being fulfilled. It's not uncommon for someone to want to be a successful career person and get all caught up in the trappings of that life and then feel unsatisfied.  Julie chats about working with different types of clients to help them to become fulfilled individuals living their best lives.

Some resources from her time on the podcast:

Julie Kramer Coaching https://kramercoaching.com/the-good-life/
From Grief to Gratitude on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Grief-Gratitude-Grieving-Julie-Kramer/dp/1736516604/ref=sr_1_4
Her reviews https://kramercoaching.com/reviews/

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Julie Kramer is a transformational coach, author and speaker. She is committed to using her
background to expand awareness for people to transform themselves to achieve fulfillment.
Her services focus on helping people become the hero of their own life story as they integrate
lost parts of themselves.

Her life as an executive coach and search consultant has led to success in high tech start-ups,
Fortune 500’s, and venture capital firms. In the corporate world, she has hired top talent for
100’s of high growth companies and coached over 1,000 people to advance, pivot, or change
careers.

In the arena of health care, she has a Master’s Degree in Public Health Administration from the
University of Michigan and has served as Director of Planning for a Large Hospital developing
long range growth plans.

In the arena of coaching, personal counseling and grief support, she has served people dealing
with life crisis, substance abuse, loss of loved ones, and loss of direction and lack of purpose.
Her Master’s Degree in Values from San Anselmo Theological Seminary, provides the
foundation for value assessments and conflict mediation work.

All together, she has provided spiritual direction, personal and executive career coaching to
over 10,000 people. In addition to receiving a Master’s Degree in Systematic Theology from the
Graduate Theological Union, she has a certificate in Spiritual Direction from Mercy Center in

Burlingame, CA, and has worked for 8 years as a Hospital/Hospice Chaplain. In addition, she
taught classes in world religion at Contra Costa Junior College.

After coaching thousands of people to find their calling, purpose and mission, she would like to
share her knowledge and guide you on your transformational journey to achieve fulfillment.
Her 30 years of work as a career coach, spiritual director and speaker has led her to develop
this program and she is excited to work with you to transform your life!

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