Join us as we host the book launch for Marjorie St. Clair’s new memoir!
Marjorie joins us live from her home in Hawaii to read and talk about her latest book, her memoir: A Southern Belle in Paris: Bikinis, Bombs, de Beauvoir & Billy Bob. Marjorie reflects on being a young beauty pageant winner, military wife, and mother of two from the Deep South. After a move to France, she becomes part of the emerging feminist movement in Paris in the 70s. She tells her resistance to the patriarchy through humorous, authentic, riveting stories. A conversation with Yoko Ono and dance with Aristotle Onassis hint at Marjorie's future adventures when she returns as a Steel Magnolia to Alabama to complete a divorce and start a new life. For all women seeking a strong independent voice, this memoir is an avenue for their voices to be heard.
Reviewed by
-Jules Nyquist, MFA & Author of Atomic Paradise, 2021 NM/AZ Book Award Winner.
A brave and engrossing memoir detailing a Southern Belle's transformation from a sheltered, fundamentalist white childhood in Jim Crow's Alabama & Georgia of the 50s & 60s, to becoming an activist and leader in the Second Wave Feminism of the 70s and helping to establish the first international N.O.W. chapter in Paris, France. Spanning locales as diverse as the Deep South, to the deserts of New Mexico; the remote islands of Micronesia in the South Pacific; to Paris, she carries the reader along with her through the emotional and sensual spaces that make up a woman's life, weaving stories from her past and reflections of the present into a unique, poetic memoir.
MARJORIE BEENE ST.CLAIR, holds a BS in English and graduate degrees in Whole Systems Design and Women's Studies. Since beginning her career as writing teacher, coach and writing retreat leader more than a decade ago, she has focused her writing & group facilitating skills in helping women find their unique voice through writing and encourages them to publish.She has authored and published two writing workbooks. Her book "Wild Women Write: Re-Connecting with the Wild Feminine" contains a wide variety of myths and stories intended to help women identify their close connection to the wild things of nature and their own instinctual knowing that may have gone missing in their lives. Writing exercises throughout the book encourage writers to engage both mentally and emotionally with the material. There are also many art exercises that offer further opportunities to express creativity.Her second writing workbook "Writes of Passage: Writing Through the Seasons of Your Life" contains stories, myths, art and writing exercises that guide writers through six phases of life. Participants have used writing from this book as material for writing their memoirs. Art exercises and writing prompts are a key part of both workbooks.She was an activist in helping to create the global women's movement that emerged from work done in the Second Wave feminist movement and is honored to have her letters, photos, and notes from her time as President and member of the International NOW Chapter in Paris in the 70s be archived at the Women's History library at Lesley College at Harvard. She has also been a vision quest leader for women's groups on vision quests to the desert and also developed a women's empowerment program through a non-profit group she created called WomanSpirit Maui.Marjorie's first memoir, "A Southern Belle in Paris: Bikinis, Bombs, de Beauvoir & Billy Bob" will be available Fall/Winter 2022.Visit her at www.writersadventure.com where you can subscribe to her newsletter & check out new offerings; or connect with her on Facebook at Writers Adventure, or LinkedIn.
Denise Weaver Ross, the cover designer for this book, is an artist, poet and muralist. She has created five murals in the Albuquerque area, and her poems have been published in anthologies both nationally and internationally. As an artist, she explores her understanding of the world through images richly layered with mythological, natural, cultural, and historical references. For her, the magic happens when disparate images combine to make a new and unexpected image with layers rich with hidden meaning.