Elizabeth Cunningham's Blog

Check out my latest for Feminism and Religion.

“I have a vivid childhood memory of being sick with the stomach flu and standing in the doorway of my parents’ bedroom looking for my mother. Her care for sick children was tender and thorough. She would bring us ginger ale and toast with jelly. When she had time, she read us stories. I can remember her steering me, heavy with fever, back to a bed that she had magically smoothed and cooled. But that day my mother lay in her own bed in an old nightgown, not stirring. She had the flu, too, and could not get up to care for the rest of us. It was a shocking and sobering moment.“

The post FEMINISM & RELIGION—Child of the Earth appeared first on Elizabeth Cunningham | Author Poet Counselor.

Music is a key element to the plot of All the Perils of This Night. Katherine grows up singing in the church choir under the tutelage of the fiery Miss Ebersbach. When she comes of age, soul music becomes Katherine’s passion and ultimately saves her life. I am honored to be speaking with singer, recording artist, and music historian Tim Dillinger about music in the novel and in the 1960s.

Elizabeth Cunningham In Conversation with Tim Dillinger

Music is a key element to the plot of All the Perils of This Night. Katherine grows up singing in the church choir under the tutelage of the fiery Miss Ebersbach. When she comes of age, soul music becomes Katherine’s passion and ultimately saves her life. Today (Thursday, August 27th at 7:00 eastern, live on Facebook), I am honored to be speaking with singer, recording artist, and music historian Tim Dillinger about music in the novel and in the 1960s.

Posted by Elizabeth Cunningham on Thursday, 27 August 2020

The post Let’s talk about music… appeared first on Elizabeth Cunningham | Author Poet Counselor.

So good to talk about books with my laugh-long, lifelong friend Cait Johnson. If you missed the interview live, here we are again! Thanks for joining us!

Elizabeth Cunningham In Conversation with Cait Johnson

Cait Johnson interviews Elizabeth Cunningham about her new novel. The authors explore how All The Perils of This Night connects with The Maeve Chronicles–and Elizabeth's other works.

Posted by Elizabeth Cunningham on Monday, August 10, 2020

The post In Conversation with Cait Johnson appeared first on Elizabeth Cunningham | Author Poet Counselor.

Lughnasadh, also known as Lammas (Loaf mass) celebrates the beginning of the harvest. It is, like so many rituals, a way to mark the great cycles of death, rebirth, and transformation. As the days grow shorter, the sun’s strength goes into the grain and fruit that nourishes us. At this High Valley-style ritual, with help from Cait Johnson, Kathleen Mandeville, and Debbie Stone, we called the elements and I led a guided meditation.

Virtual Lughnasadh with Elizabeth Cunningham & Friends

Join us for a grand experiment in translating the spirit of live, improvisational ritual to the screen.

Posted by Elizabeth Cunningham on Saturday, August 1, 2020

The post Virtual Lughnasadh with Elizabeth Cunningham and Friends appeared first on Elizabeth Cunningham | Author Poet Counselor.

Check out my latest for Feminism and Religion, an excerpt from All the Perils of This Night, available to preorder now and out everywhere on August 7!

“When I wrote Murder at the Rummage Sale, my agent warned: “You have to have a sequel in mind!” I was supposed to write a second domestic cozy, same setting, same characters, different victim. But what came to mind was a memory. When I was a troubled teen visiting England, my uncle gave me a map and let me go sightseeing in London on my own. It was early winter 1968, the war in Vietnam was raging. I did not want to be an American; so I faked an accent, wore an eccentric hat, and called myself Eliza Doolittle. When a man picked me up, I did not know how to break out of character. I ended up drunk in his flat. I just managed to fight off rape. The man must have figured out that I didn’t add up and could land him in trouble. He took me back to my uncle’s office. The kernel for All the Perils of this Night is: what if he hadn’t? What if, like so many others, I had been trafficked? I couldn’t shake that “what if.”  So I wrote the standalone sequel, no domestic cozy but what I would call a numinous thriller.“

The post FEMINISM & RELIGION—All the Perils of this Night: a preview by Elizabeth Cunningham appeared first on Elizabeth Cunningham | Author Poet Counselor.

My new collection of poems: Tell Me the Story Again is now available from all online purveyors including Indiebound:

https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781948796811

For some reason, I was unable to post on the appearances page. Here is the information on the upcoming performance of the poems.

“Tell Me the Story Again” based on selected poems by Elizabeth Cunningham

in a theatrical production created and directed by Rebecca Singer

Friday, October 18th at 8:00 at Green Kill

229 Greenkill Ave, Kingston, NY 12401

I see it is high time I posted again! Tell Me the Story Again, my new poem collection, is in production and will be published late summer, early fall of 2019. Here is a description:

In her latest collection of poems, Elizabeth Cunningham takes an imaginative leap into a magical world that is also palpably real, a once-upon-a-time place that could exist just after our own time or long ago. Here we meet a motley assortment of people, a temple sweeper, a sword woman, a morose fool, a merry drunk, an enigmatic ancient dreamer, among a host of others. Human voices mingle with those of animals—the mouse who thinks it’s an elephant, a flying pig—and also the voices of river, rain, tree, and stone. Through songs, dreams, and conversations, a story emerges, or many stories woven into one. Cunningham’s hypnotically beautiful language draws us into this story, one we may dimly remember and long to hear again.

Rebecca Singer is directing selected poems from the collection as a dramatic piece on Friday, October 18th at Green Kill “a handicapped accessible exhibition performance Space located at 229 Greenkill Avenue, Kingston, New York, 12401. More details soon on the appearances page. 

For those of you awaiting the sequel of Murder at the Rummage Sale (I hope with bated breath), you’ll have to wait just a little longer. We’ve decided to release All the Perils of this Night, much of which is set in the critical presidential election year of 1968) in 2020 when, whooeee!, we’ll be experiencing and even more nail-biting election year. More news as I have it.

Hope you are all well. Much gratitude for keeping in touch. The best way to reach me is through my Elizabeth Cunningham author page on FaceBook or Maeve Rhuad’s page on FaceBook. Blessed Be and Blessed Bees!

I recently completed a poem collection, Tell Me the Story Again. The poems are song-like, set in a future (or possibly ancient) world. The narrative voices are many: grey cat, grey mouse, temple sweeper, courage singer, sorrow singer, merry drunk, morose fool, sword woman, skeleton woman, mother rain, ancient dreamer to name a few. Here are a few selections.

the scribe waits under the oak
watching the last leaves fall
some red, some rust, some
holding the green edge of fire 

these are the leaves
these are the leaves
of the ancient book
the story is ending
tell me the story again 

the scribe waits for the river
or mountain, the small brave mouse
or shadowing raven, ready
to write the translation 

these are the wings
these are the feet
of the unwritten book
the story’s beginning
tell me the story again 

the scribe waits, scrapes
the flesh of her story
down to the bone, her own
blood will do for the ink 

this is the bone
this is the blood
of the book she is writing
the story still spinning
tell me the story again

I am the grey mouse
seed-eater, seed-keeper
I could save the world with my secret store
no one but the cat knows who I am anymore.
she might want to eat me but she sees
the shadow I cast at night
when I dance by firelight
my ears grow wide,
my nose grows long
on tree trunk legs I’m strong
I sway, still grey,
an elephant light as breeze.

they say the gods are gone from here
they said the gods are ghosts
dead as their devotees, but I remain
unsheltered from sun, from rain
in a roofless ruin where wildflowers
succor the last wild bees
there is pollen and leaf and snow
the gods still dance in motes of dust
I stir and sweep day after day
believing still in the slightest chance
someone will  come from far away, from long ago
to sweep me into the dance
by firelight our shadows will leap
and the gods will reappear. 

wear your life lightly
like the garment it is, don’t
clutch it to you tightly
let it ride the wind
sword woman, you say, where
is your armor, where is your shield
beloved, my armor is to yield
I fear no cliff edge
I fly from tree to tree
landing softly on a limb
death to one side, life
to the other, I love both
and fear neither, there is no strife
no shield but flashing sword
bright in the sun,if you kill me
I love you still, the same
if I kill you.

standing still in time, its wreckage
rushing past me, this temple,
that crusade, these bones, these bombs
exploded, this gun rusted, this crib broken
that three-legged kitchen table, this ruined painting
this scattered farmstead, rushing, rushing
I am a willow, bending and rooted,
I am lost to time, I am lost to myself.

our talk is not idle, not
human, not sound to silence silence
but sound to make silence ring
to wring the blue from the sky
and bring it drenching down
to the bone

what is hard for the ones who only walk
is easy for us, easy
to perch on the highest rock
or the top of a dead tree
easy to float on the wind
upside down , easy
to dive to the heart of a swamp
our beaks are curved and golden
our tails, the envy of crows

but our voices, oh, our voices
part the way between worlds
veils, mists, stones, life, death
you walkers can’t fly but you can
follow our cry, follow
if you dare

I am pleased to announce that the gorgeous 25th anniversary edition of The Wild Mother will be published by Imagination Fury Arts on November 1st, 2018.  Though The Wild Mother was my second published novel (the first was The Return of the Goddess, released in a 25th anniversary edition in 2017) this novel is in fact the very first novel I wrote. I began working on it in 1976 when I was a senior in college. I completed the novel in 1979 and waited fourteen years for its first publication in 1993. Because of its fairytale qualities and its foundation in the Midrash (the Jewish tradition imaginative retelling of biblical tales) I am happy to say the story retains its timeless qualities. If you have never read The Wild Mother, I hope you will. If you have, I hope you will read it again in this beautiful edition. The new cover design by Ray Curenton-Dillinger, incorporating artwork by the late Johanne Renbeck, looks exactly as I always hoped it would.

Other news: I have completed a draft of a poem collection working title Tell Me the Story Again. Many voices speak from a time perhaps just after (or long before) our time, in a real and magical world. You will meet such diverse characters as the Grey Mouse (who aspires to be an elephant) the Temple Sweeper, Sorrow Singer, Courage Singer, Storm Singer, the Merry Drunk, the Morose Fool, the Four Grannies, sundry Ravens, and many more. I have posted a sample on the poem page.

All the Perils of this Night is complete! It is a stand-alone novel that can also be read in conjunction with Murder at the Rummage Sale, as it carries forward the story of the four principal characters. Unlike Murder at the Rummage Sale, which is a cozy domestic mystery (do read it!) All the Perils of This Night defies genre, combining elements of mystery, thriller, and fantasy. I will keep you posted on publication progress.

The 25th anniversary edition of my critically acclaimed novel (also a genre defier) The Wild Mother will be published in 2018.

For more regular contact with my work and me, do befriend Maeve Rhuad on FaceBook and/or like and follow Elizabeth Cunningham’s FaceBook author page. I post a quotation from one of my books every Tuesday.

As of just now, I am beginning work on my next novel. Too soon to say more, but I will, ahem, persist.

Wishing you all the best,

Elizabeth