Lauren Kessler

An award-winning author's journey to turn off the comfortable cruise-control of midlife and reclaim the daring of her girlhood by dancing in the world's most popular ballet,The Nutcracker, with a professional company.

Big Dreams, False Starts, and My Midlife Quest to Dance the Nutcracker

Raising the Barre

Two Years, Six Lives, and the Surprising Path from Prison to Home

Uncaged

95 percent of the millions of American men and women who go to prison eventually get out. What happens to them? There's Arnoldo, who came of age inside a maximum security penitentiary, now free after nineteen years. Trevor and Catherine, who spent half of their young lives behind bars for terrible crimes committed when they were kids. Dave, inside the walls for 34 years, now about to reenter an unrecognizable world. Vicki, a five-time loser who had cycled in and out of prison for more than a third of her life. They are simultaneously joyful and overwhelmed at the prospect of freedom. Anxious, confused, sometimes terrified, and often ill-prepared to face the challenges of the free world, all are intent on reclaiming and remaking their lives. What is the road they must travel from caged to free? How do they navigate their way home? A gripping and empathetic work of immersion reportage, FREE reveals what awaits them and the hundreds of thousands of others who are released from prison every year: the first rush of freedom followed quickly by institutionalized obstacles and logistical roadblocks, grinding bureaucracies, lack of resources, societal stigmas and damning self-perceptions, the sometimes overwhelming psychological challenges. Veteran reporter Lauren Kessler, both clear-eyed and compassionate, follows six people whose diverse stories paint an intimate portrait of struggle, persistence, and resilience. The truth—the many truths—about life after lockup is more interesting, more nuanced, and both more troubling and more deeply triumphant than we know.

Two Years, Six Lives, and the Long Journey Home

Free

Elizabeth Bentley, the Spy Who Ushered in the McCarthy Era

Clever Girl

Best-selling author Lauren Kessler offers insights on the art of writing and the joys of reading that are provocative and heartening, thoughtful and funny, reassuring and real. Kessler distills lessons from a 25-year career to inspire writers to embrace challenges, push through the tough stuff and love the life they've chosen.

Essays on the Art of Writing and the Joy of Reading

The Write Path

Over the course of three years, award-winning author Lauren Kessler helped men facing life in prison confront the reality of spending the rest of their lives behind bars through writing workshops and brings her experience and some of their most powerful stories to light in A Grip of Time: When Prison is Your Life.

When Prison Is Your Life

A Grip of Time

A lighthearted assessment of the anti-aging movement as experienced firsthand by the author describes her experimentation with methods ranging from cosmetics and surgery to hypnosis and anti-aging retreats, offering insight into the less-explored aspects of actual physical youth maintenance. By the author of My Teenage Werewolf.

My Year of Hypnosis, Hormones, Dark Chocolate, and Other Adventures in the World of Anti-aging

Counterclockwise

Duncan McDonald

Offering solutions for today's cross-platform, multi-media writing environment, Kessler and McDonald's WHEN WORDS COLLIDE, 9e is praised by students and instructors alike for its straightforward presentation of grammar and writing guidelines. This versatile handbook is an excellent resource for beginning students as well as seasoned media writers. It delivers concise, clear explanations and examples, as well as quick and accurate answers to common grammar and usage questions. Its unique “from writer to writer” perspective guides readers step by step through the writing process. The Ninth Edition's emphasis on the importance of language skills helps students quickly learn to create effective prose. Its simplified rules appeal to readers from a variety of backgrounds, while engaging new boxed features reinforce key concepts. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version.

When Words Collide

Communists vilified her as a raging neurotic. Leftists dismissed her as a confused idealist. Her family pitied her as an exploited lover. Some said she was a traitor, a stooge, a mercenary and a grandstander. To others she was a true American heroine—fearless, principled, bold and resolute. Congressional committees loved her. The FBI hailed her as an avenging angel. The Catholics embraced her. But the fact is, more than half a century after she captured the headlines as the "Red Spy Queen," Elizabeth Bentley remains a mystery. New England-born, conservatively raised, and Vassar-educated, Bentley was groomed for a quiet life, a small life, which she explored briefly in the 1920s as a teacher, instructing well-heeled young women on the beauty of Romance languages at an east coast boarding school. But in her mid-twenties, she rejected both past and future and set herself on an entirely new course. In the 1930s she embraced communism and fell in love with an undercover KGB agent who initiated her into the world of espionage. By the time America plunged into WWII, Elizabeth Bentley was directing the operations of the two largest spy rings in America. Eventually, she had eighty people in her secret apparatus, half of them employees of the federal government. Her sources were everywhere: in the departments of Treasury and Commerce, in New Deal agencies, in the top-secret OSS (the precursor to the CIA), on Congressional committees, even in the Oval Office. When she defected in 1945 and told her story—first to the FBI and then at a series of public hearings and trials—she was catapulted to tabloid fame as the "Red Spy Queen," ushering in, almost single-handedly, the McCarthy Era. She was the government’s star witness, the FBI’s most important informer, and the darling of the Catholic anti-Communist movement. Her disclosures and accusations put a halt to Russian spying for years and helped to set the tone of American postwar political life. But who was she? A smart, independent woman who made her choices freely, right and wrong, and had the strength of character to see them through? Or was she used and manipulated by others? Clever Girl is the definitive biography of a conflicted American woman and her controversial legacy. Set against the backdrop of the political drama that defined mid-twentieth century America, it explores the spy case whose explosive domestic and foreign policy repercussions have been debated for decades but not fully revealed—until now.

Like generations of little girls, Lauren Kessler fell in love with ballet the first time she saw The Nutcracker, and from that day, at age five, she dreamed of becoming a ballerina. But when she was twelve, her very famous ballet instructor crushed those dreams-along with her youthful self-assurance-and she stepped away from the barre. Fast forward four decades. Lauren-suddenly, powerfully, itchingly restless at midlife-embarks on a "Transcontinental Nutcracker Binge Tour," where attending a string of performances in Chicago, New York, Boston, and San Francisco reignites her love affair with the ballet-and fuels her girlhood dream. What ensues is not only a story about The Nutcracker itself, but also an inside look at the seemingly romantic-but oh-so-gritty-world of ballet, about all that happens away from the audience's eye that precedes the magic on stage. It is a tale told from the perspective of someone who not only loves it, but is also seeking to live it. Lauren's quest to dance The Nutcracker with the Eugene Ballet Company tackles the big issues: fear, angst, risk, resilience, the refusal to "settle in" to midlife, the refusal to become yet another Invisible Woman. It is also a very funny, very real look at what it's like to push yourself further than you ever thought you could go-and what happens when you get there.

Stubborn Twig, originally published in 1994, is a classic American tale of immigrants making their way in a new land. Masuo Yasui arrived in America in 1903 with big dreams and empty pockets. He worked on the railroads, in a cannery, and as a houseboy before settling in Hood River, Oregon, to open a store, raise a large family, and become one of the area's most successful orchardists. December 7, 1941, changed the family's lives completely and forever. Forced from their homes and interned in vast inland "camps", the family was shamed and broken. But the Yasuis endured to claim their place as Americans in a diverse and sometimes troubled society. Lauren Kessler is the author of ten books, including her newest, Clever Girl: Elizabeth Bentley, the Spy Who Ushered in the McCarthy Era. She directs the graduate program in literary non-fiction at the University of Oregon in Eugene.

Three Generations in the Life of a Japanese American Family

Stubborn Twig

Words have impact. Thousands of journalists and would-be journalists used the first edition of this guide to make their words collide in a creative burst of energy. Now you, too, can use this new edition to become a master wordsmith -- one who writes correctly, concisely and with flair. In "When Words Collide: A Journalist's Guide to Grammar and Style" you'll find complete guides to: grammar; punctuation; word usage; journalistic style; plus, a new spelling guide! -- From publisher's description.

A Journalist's Guide to Grammar and Style

Pancho Barnes was a force of nature, a woman who lived a big, messy, colorful, unconventional life. She ran through three fortunes, four husbands, and countless lovers. She outflew Amelia Earhart, outsmarted Howard Hughes, outdrank the Mexican Army, and out- maneuvered the U.S. government. In The Happy Bottom Riding Club, award-winning author Lauren Kessler tells the story of a high-spirited, headstrong woman who was proud of her successes, unabashed by her failures, and the architect of her own legend. Florence "Pancho" Barnes was a California heiress who inherited a love of flying from her grandfather, a pioneer balloonist in the Civil War. Faced with a future of domesticity and upper-crust pretensions, she ran away from her responsibilities as wife and mother to create her own life. She cruised South America. She trekked through Mexico astride a burro. She hitchhiked halfway across the United States. Then, in the late 1920s, she took to the skies, one of a handful of female pilots. She was a barnstormer, a racer, a cross-country flier, and a Hollywood stunt pilot. She was, for a time, "the fastest woman on earth," flying the fastest civilian airplane in the world. She was an intimate of movie stars, a script doctor for the great director Erich von Stroheim, and, later in life, a drinking buddy of the supersonic jet jockey Chuck Yeager. She ran a wild and wildly successful desert watering hole known as the Happy Bottom Riding Club, the raucous bar and grill depicted in The Right Stuff. In The Happy Bottom Riding Club, Lauren Kessler presents a portrait, both authoritative and affectionate, of a woman who didn't play by women's rules, a woman of large appetites--emotional, financial, and sexual--who called herself "the greatest conversation piece that ever existed."

The Life and Times of Pancho Barnes

The Happy Bottom Riding Club

The story of one Japanese American family's century-long struggle to adjust, endure and ultimately triumph in their new country, which starts with the arrival of Masuo Yasui in America in 1903.

Kessler and McDonald's WHEN WORDS COLLIDE is praised by students and professors alike for its straightforward and clear-almost conversational-presentation of grammar. This versatile grammar and usage handbook works for both beginning and continuing media writers, providing concise, clear explanations and examples, as well as quick and accurate answers to grammar or usage questions. The unique 'from writer to writer' perspective engages students and guides them firsthand through the writing process. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version.

Beginning in 1903 with the arrival of sixteen-year-old Masuo Yasui in Oregon, the author chronicles the struggles and ultimate triumph of three generations of Japanese Americans

Funny, poignant, and insightful, "My Teenage Werewolf" explores the fascinating and scary world of today's teen as it comes to grips with the single most important relationship in a woman's life--the relationship between a mother and her daughter.

A Mother, a Daughter, a Journey Through the Thicket of Adolescence

My Teenage Werewolf

A Grip of Time (prison slang for a very long sentence behind bars) takes readers into a world most know little about—a maximum-security prison—and into the minds and hearts of the men who live there. These men, who are serving out life sentences for aggravated murder, join a fledgling Lifers' Writing Group started by award-winning author Lauren Kessler. Over the course of three years, meeting twice a month, the men reveal more and more about themselves, their pasts, and the alternating drama and tedium of their incarcerated lives. As they struggle with the weight of their guilt and wonder if they should hope for a future outside prison walls, Kessler struggles with the fiercely competing ideas of rehabilitation and punishment, forgiveness and blame that are at the heart of the American penal system. Gripping, intense, and heartfelt, A Grip of Time: When Prison Is Your Life shows what a lifetime with no hope of release looks like up-close.

Lauren Kessler

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