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Rita M. Gardner

Goodreads Author

Born

August 21

Website

http://www.ritamgardner.com

Twitter

ritamgardner

Genre

Memoir, Nonfiction, Poetry

Member Since

March 2014

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Rita Gardner grew up on her expatriate family’s coconut farm in the Dominican Republic during the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo. In 2015, her memoir "The Coconut Latitudes" was awarded Gold Medals from two national publishing organizations in the category of Memoir. (The 2015 Benjamin Franklin Awards sponsored by IBPA, and the 2015 Next Generation Indie Awards.) It was also listed in "Best of 2014 in Expat Books" by The Displaced Nation, an international blog for creative expatriates worldwide. She is also a contributor to a new collection "The Magic of Memoir: Inspiration for the Writing Journey" (2016). In addition, she is featured in "Wandering in Andalusia: The Soul of Southern Spain", a travel anthology in the award-winning series pu ...more

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Rita M. Gardner’s books

Average rating: 4.25 · 199 ratings · 71 reviews · 9 distinct works

	The Coconut Latitudes: Secrets, Storms, and Survival in the Caribbean 4.30 avg rating — 175 ratings — published 2014 — 7 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Travel Stories and Highlights: 2018 Edition by Robert Fear (Goodreads Author) (Editor), Alison Galilian (Contributor), Alison Ripley Cubitt (Goodreads Author) (Contributor) 3.84 avg rating — 25 ratings — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Organizational Behavior Management Approaches for Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities by James K. Luiselli (editor), Rita M. Gardner (Goodreads Author) (Editor), Frank L. Bird (Editor) 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Training, Supervision, and Professional Development in Human Services Organizations: EnvisionSMART™: A Melmark Model of Administration and Operation by Helena Maguire, Rita M. Gardner (Goodreads Author), Frank L. Bird 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Clinical Systems and Programming in Human Services Organizations: EnvisionSMART™: A Melmark Model of Administration and Operation by Frank L. Bird, Helena Maguire, Jill M. Harper 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Educational Practices in Human Services Organizations: EnvisionSMART™: A Melmark Model of Administration and Operation by Helena Maguire, Silva Orchanian, Frank L. Bird 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Educational Practices in Human Services Organizations: EnvisionSMART™: A Melmark Model of Administration and Operation by Helena Maguire, Silva Orchanian, Frank L. Bird 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Behavior Safety and Clinical Practice in Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities by James K. Luiselli (Editor), Frank L. Bird (editor), Helena Maguire (editor) 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Behavior Safety and Clinical Practice in Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities by James K. Luiselli (Editor), Frank L. Bird (Editor), Helena Maguire (Editor) 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Rita M. Gardner's Blog

Giving Voice to Your Courage Podcast on April 7

I'm pleased that author Dorit Sasson, host of the global radio show "Giving Voice to Your Story" will be interviewing me live on April 7, 2016. The podcast is "Giving Voice to Your Courage", and we will discuss my memoir "The Coconut Latitudes" through the lens of courage. For additional information: http://bit.ly/1UQKynH
Dorit also writes for the Huffington post and other publications; her new mem Read more of this blog post »

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Published on March 27, 2016 18:20 • Tags: courage, family-dysfunction, memoir

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Rita is Currently Reading

Rita Gardner is currently reading

The Coconut Latitudes: Secrets, Storms, and Survival in the Caribbean

by Rita M. Gardner (Goodreads Author)

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Rita Gardner has read The Long Hot Walk by Deborah McCarroll	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Sep 13, 2024 12:13AM · like · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of The Long Hot Walk by Deborah McCarroll. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — The Long Hot Walk by Deborah McCarroll <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">

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Around the World ...: Dominican Republic	24	486	Sep 21, 2025 03:22PM

Rita’s Quotes

“The universe is a continuous web. Touch it at any point and the whole web quivers.”
― Stanley Kunitz

1076 likes

“You must be careful not to deprive the poem of its wild origin.”
― Stanley Kunitz

tags: poetry

25 likes

“For those who write memoirs, memory is not a mere recollection of facts; it is a ragbag we pick through, salvaging scraps to craft into literature. We take half-remembered events and stitch them together to form a larger story that will, we hope, resonate with others and help them make sense of their own”—Erika Schikel”
― Rossandra White

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“Memoir writing draws on all aspects of who we are, body, mind and soul. We are challenged to dig deep, to remember, and once again inhabit the skin of who we were and what we have learned. Writing memoir is an act of testimony, witnessing, healing. When you write a memoir, you draw upon layers of your consciousness and discover your true nature, your essential self, and are transformed the process.” Linda Joy Meyer”
― Rossandra White

tags: consciousness, essential-self, healing, testimony, true-nature

3 likes

“Like writing, publishing is not easy. No endeavor worth pursuing is. Discomfort and fear are easy outs—and ultimately dead ends. They are responses to keep us locked in the role of victim. Empowerment is encapsulated in the written word. Writing about trauma is more than simply documenting experience—it’s about illuminating life on earth. It’s about transforming tragedy into art, and hoping that somehow that piece of art may help someone else who’s gone through something unbearable and who doesn’t yet see that there is truly a light at the end of the tunnel. . . . It’s about transcendence. It’s about where we go from here.” Tracy Strauss”
― Rossandra White, Loveyoubye: Holding Fast, Letting Go, And Then There's The Dog

tags: publishing, transcendence, unbearable

4 likes

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No pretensions: just poetry. Stop by, recommend books, offer up poems (excerpted), tempt us, taunt us, tell us what to read and where to go (to read No pretensions: just poetry. Stop by, recommend books, offer up poems (excerpted), tempt us, taunt us, tell us what to read and where to go (to read it!) Goodreads honors wordsmiths: poets and poetry promoted and prompted here. ~~~ "Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits." -- Carl Sandburg “God has a brown voice, as soft and full as beer.” —Anne Sexton On Clouds – “…what primitive tastes the ancients must have had if their poets were inspired by those absurd, untidy clumps of mist, idiotically jostling one another about…” —Yevgeny Zamyatin “If the poet wants to be a poet, the poet must force the poet to revise. If the poet doesn’t wish to revise, let the poet abandon poetry and take up stamp-collecting or real estate.” —Donald Hall “Poetry is a rich, full-bodied whistle, cracked ice crunching in pails, the night that numbs the leaf, the duel of two nightingales, the sweet pea that has run wild, Creation’s tears in shoulder blades.” —Boris Pasternak “Wanted: a needle swift enough to sew this poem into a blanket.” —Charles Simic “Language is a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity.” —Gustave Flaubert “Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It’s that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that’s what the poet does.” —Allen Ginsberg. ~~~~~ Amy King, Moderator Amy King is the recipient of the 2015 Winner of the WNBA Award (Women’s National Book Association). Her latest collection, The Missing Museum, is a winner of the 2015 Tarpaulin Sky Book Prize. She serves on the executive board of VIDA: Women in Literary Arts and is co-editing with Heidi Lynn Staples the anthology, Big Energy Poets of the Anthropocene: When Ecopoets Think Climate Change. She is also co-editing the anthology, Bettering American Poetry 2015, and is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at SUNY Nassau Community College. ...more

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A place to share memoirs, biographies, autobiographies (and maybe even fiction-based-in-reality) that you have enjoyed!

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This is a group for people who enjoy many different genre's. If you are someone who appreciates a good book, regardless of the genre...this is the gro ...more

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This group will feature books written by Caribbean Authors and books that are Caribbean themed. Please feel free to recommend books, even if it is you ...more

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