Happy Monday WNBA-ers! Welcome to our February members news update. Check it out below, and be sure to give them a congratulatory high five in the comments.
Hannah Bennet, former WNBA-NYC blog editor, is launching a new website: KafkaRotica. This new website features humorous erotica in the style of classic authors, along with parody poetry, original short stories, and more. In celebration of the website’s launch, the creators of KafkaRotica have decided to throw a launch party! Join them March 3rd at the Parkside Lounge, 317 E Houston St, from 7:30 – 9:30 pm, and enjoy a free drink! They will also be reading original erotic poems and excerpts, playing live music, and premiering their music video. Simply say you’re there for KafkaRotica, and you will receive a free drink voucher.
Mingmei Yip had two books pulished in 2013 — her fifth novel THE NINE FOLD HEAVEN (Kensington Publishing), story of an ex spy and nightclub singer who undertakes an emotional 
and dangerous journey to reunite with her lost lovers and the baby she was told was stillborn, and to discover the secret of her parents’ murder. The other book is her second children’s book GRANDMA PANDA’S CHINA STORY BOOK: TRADITIONS, LEGENDS, AND FUN (Tuttle Publishing), which she both wrote and illustrated. Her sixth novel SECRET OF A THOUSAND BEAUTIES will be published by Kensington in December 2014. Visit her at www.mingmeiyip.com.
Jaime Nelson is a publicist at Princeton Architectural Press. One of her authors, Stephen Powers, will be painting a mural on the 12th Street exterior wall of The Strand Bookstore in New York City to launch his book, A LOVE LETTER TO THE CITY. A book launch party will follow March 25th at The Strand.
Professor Stephanie A. Smith’s the third novel in the WARPAINT Trilogy, CONTENT BURNS, is being published March 1st by Thames River Press in London. The
novel chronicles the lives of two women in the same family separated by three centuries, both of whom survive an historical trauma that changed the course of America. The first CONTENT BURNS, a Pequot who assimilates to Puritanism, and marries into the Burns family, survived the massacre of the Pequot nation in 1637; the second Content “Cabbi” Burns survives 9/11. Visit her atwww.stephanieasmith.net
Harriet Shenkman‘s chapbook of poetry “Teetering” will be published by Finishing Line Press. It is available for preorder from February 18th through April 6th at www.finishinglinepress.com. Click on “Preorder forthcoming titles.” The poet Jennifer Franklin says of the poems: “Harriet Shenkman’s striking debut, Teetering, offers us poems that prove the sustaining power of art. Much like Dostoyevsky’s proclamation in The Idiot, that “beauty will save the world,” the speaker in these simple and haunting poems takes the reader on a journey through the art, music, and artifice that allowed her to survive and even thrive in the face of personal and familial tragedies. These poems mine painful and weighty topics—abandonment, the Holocaust, divorce, disability, dementia—with great sentiment, without being sentimental. This poetry, in its blunt honesty, is hard as armor but protects a beating heart beneath its façade. Unlike the doll with blinking eyes that appears in several of these poems, the perceptive eyes of the poet remain open and see the hard truths of life for what they are. The strength emanating from these poems is palpable so we know, by the end of the collection, that the speaker is going to prevail, no matter what: “I am desperate to conclude,/ no plunder possible.//That loss of mere objects could not obliterate us,/ should the troops arrive.”
Anna Olswanger has launched an Indiegogo campaign to raise funds to film her middle grade Holocaust novelGREENHORN. Indiegogo can help find donors with search rankings, 
placement on their site, featured spots in their newsletter or blog, and inclusion in their press outreach. All this is determined by the “gogofactor,” which is an algorithm that measures the activity of a campaign. Anna is asking everyone to please visit the Greenhorn Film Project page on Indiegogo and click on the Follow button, the Facebook Like button, the Tweet button, the Google Plus button, Email button, or to comment on an update. Any of those actions will help raise our “gogofactor” and give us a chance to be noticed by visitors to the Indiegogo site, especially visitors who might be interested in funding a Holocaust-related film.
Asya Pekurovskaya finished her book called UNPREDICTABLE BRODSKY both in Russian and in English, about a Nobel laureate in literature of 1987. She wrote three more books of her phantasy series, SPARK THE STONE MAN (both in Russian and in English). She has five books of the series illustrated by Olga Titova, a British Academy Award recipient and an Oscar nominee in the category of animation. She is scheduled to present the results of her work in the Erarta museum on April 2, 4, and 5 of this year. Along with her illustrator and composer, Asya is preparing a package for a musical to be presented in theaters in America and Russia.
Julia E. Antoine, writing under her pen name, Ju Ephraime, had a new title out this month, COMPLETE SURRENDER. Set in the French Caribbean Island of Martinique, Ephraime took us
back to the location of her first romance, STATE OF ECSTASY, in which she had introduced us to the LaCasse family. Complete Surrender is her third installment in the series. Writing under Dr. Julia E. Antoine, she has just released her tenth children’s book and the sixth in her Too Clever series, TOO CLEVER VI: JASON’S EAGLE.
Cheryl J. Fish will be one of the featured poets/panelists celebrating the publication of the Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish-American Poetry to be held at the Center for Jewish History, 15 W. 16th Street on Sunday, March 23rd at 5 p.m. //www.facebook.com/events/238309839681689/. An excerpt from Fish’s novel manuscript, OFF THE YOGA MAT was recently featured on Stefanie Lipsey’s Writing Yoga Blog: //www.writingyoga.com/off-the-yoga-mat-a-novel-excerpt-by-cheryl-j-fish/
Pamela Milam is a contributor to www.rewireme.com. You can find her articles here: //www.rewireme.com/author/pamela-milam/#sthash.69NGfjIM.dpbs. She is also writing the occasional guest blog for The Bilerico Project. Her most recent post is a theatre review which can be found here: //www.bilerico.com/2014/02/intimacy_confronting_our_divinely_private_selves.php
Joan Regen-Ramirez has a new book out, GO FOR IT LEADERSHIP HANDBOOK FOR ALL STUDENTS. It’s available on Audible.com and Amazon.com.
