Two cool things!

One: Library Journal has put THE SHANGHAI MOON on their Best of 2009 list! You need to scroll down because it’s not in Fiction, it’s in Genre Fiction. Leaving aside what I think of that division, these are their categories, and I’m thrilled to be there!

Two: I’ve been nominated for a Career Achievement Award by Romantic Times Magazine! By whom? Yup, it’s true. Romantic Times is into Bill and Lydia, I guess. Or Joe and Ann, from IN THIS RAIN. Or that complicated crowd from ABSENT FRIENDS. This info came to me in a PDF, which I’m not smart enough to include here. I can’t find it on their website, but maybe one of you guys can find it and figure out how to link it. In my category, Mystery, Thriller, and Suspense, the other nominees are Patricia Cornwell, Marcia Muller, and Tamar Myers.

From S.J. Rozan - see more about her award-winning mysteries at www.sjrozan.com

Tune in to Great Performances your local PBS station tonight (9 P.M. CST) to see Charles Hobson’s “Harlem in Montmarte: Paris Jazz.” Charles said that he worked on and off 5 years on this project. France took an active interest in the documentary - the French Embassy in NYC had a gala premiere August 12.

For a preview, here’s a link to NYC’s Channel 13.

Next summer Art Workshop International will offer an extraordinary opportunity for aspiring filmmakers to take a class with Charles Hobson, who has won multiple awards for his work. The very limited class will be personally selected by him.

We congratulate Charles on his latest documentary!

Chris Spencer

Here’s a few basic things that may make your trip to Italy a little easier.
BEFORE YOU LEAVE, first double-check your passport is valid (hey, it’s happened). And, stash a copy of your passport and credit cards in another spot of your luggage or trade with your partner. I always carry important documents in a travel pouch around my neck under my blouse/shirt. Better safe, I say.
LABEL YOUR BAG with the Hotel Giotto address: Via Fontebella 41; 06081 Assisi; Perugia, Italy and phone number 39-075-812744. Put your name and address inside the bag- you can label the bag the reverse on the way back. That way, your bag can follow you if it gets separated!
ARRIVING at the international gate in Rome, you will exit through a glass door (just like in domestic airports) into the lobby. This is where a driver will wait for you with an Art Workshop International sign.
TO CHANGE MONEY, there are ATM machines everywhere, including the airport. Some credit cards are better than others - try to find one that has a commercial, not forex, rate of exchange and is set daily. There probably will be an surcharge, too. Brokerage firms tend to be better than banks.
IF YOU LOVE COFFEE, try one of the stand-up bars. You order and pay first at the cashier, then show your ticket to the barrista who will fill your order.
TO CALL HOME, buy a phone card. Don’t use it with a cellphone - it will still be expensive. Your family and friends back home can do the same, for example, with a www.nobel.com access code.
A few words can get you far - per favore (please), grazie (thank you), mi scusi (excuse me), buon giorno (good day), parla inglese? (do you speak English).
Most of all, relax and enjoy the differences!
Ciao, Chris Spencer

Small travel tip–call your credit card customer service number to alert them to the fact that you’ll be using it out of the country. Last year I could charge, but couldn’t withdraw money on mine because it was considered “suspicious activity.”

Barbara Shoup

TURNING HEADS, frocks in flight
a site-specific dance created for Sitelines 09

TURNING HEADS, frocks in flight is an exuberant dance for women inspired by 15 unique “Dresses of Transformation” created by artist Caterina Bertolotto. Colorful and fanciful dresses adorn this celebration of freedom and personal transformation.

Performances at the South Cove of Battery Park
August 3-13th, 2009
M, T, TH @ 12:30pm
W@ 6:30pm
Tickets: FREE

Click on www.lmcc.net or www.rivertoriver.com for more information & directions.

Produced by Sitelines and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council
in association with the River to River Festival.

“As a member of the Danish group Corners, I am joining 8 other members to teach at an art school in Inner Mongolia. The school is part of a museum. We will also show at the museum. I am bringing a CD with 80 images that will be shown on a loop and left with them. The group will first meet in Beijing and go together to Houhot, the capitol of Inner Mongolia.

Tell a friend about us

June 15th deadline is extended!
Art Workshop International is unique - more NEWS about our instructors

Edith Isaac-Rose Invited to Teach in China.

“As a member of the Danish group Corners, I am joining 8 other members to teach at an art school in Inner Mongolia.”(more on the blog).

From beginning to professional artists, participants excel under Edith Isaac-Rose’s wise guidance.
Participate in her Drawing Course August 5-18 in Assisi, Italy.
Independent Program, suit your schedule.

Duke University approaches Bea Kreloff.
Historians at The Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture are talking wtih her about her career and archives.
To take Art Making with Bea Kreloff, legendary artist and teacher, is the opportunity of a lifetime.
July 22 to August 18, 2,3, or 4 weeks.

Preview of American Airlines magazine article about Art Workshop International by alumna Linda Stasi (”New York Post” columnist, author, and TV host).

More about our Visual Arts, Creative Writing, Italian language, and culinary arts
on www.artworkshopintl.com. Email info@artworkshopintl.com.
You can also apply online.

Art Workshop International - the 29th year!
Join us this summer in Assisi, Italy
July 22- August 18, 2009: 2, 3, and 4-week sessions
Live and Work in a 12th-Century Hill Town
Respond to this email and you will still qualify for early-bird enrollment.

Critiques, lectures, field trips, and visiting artists
Beautifully situated 3-star hotel, air-conditioned room and bath, two meals, studio

Independent Program for professional and advanced artists and writers.
Work on your project, have one-on-one consultations.

For more information: Art Workshop International

463 West Street, 1028H, New York, NY 10014
Toll Free: 866-341-2922 Fax: 212-691-1159
E-Mail: info@artworkshopintl.com

EDITH ISAAC-ROSE, BEA KRELOFF, CHRIS SPENCER, DIRECTORS

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Sandra Perlow consulted with Edith Isaac-Rose in Assisi, Italy, last summer as an Independent Artist. We’re pleased to announce her upcoming Exhibition at the Linda Warren Gallery June 26th to August 15th. If you’re in Chicago, Illinois, stop in at her Opening Reception on Friday June 26th, from 6 P.M. to 9 P.M. The address is 1052 W. Fulton Market, Chicago, IL 60607. Her website is sandraperlow.net.

Sandra wrote to me recently: “I want to put one of the pieces I did in Asissi in my show at Linda Warrens gallery. I wrote an artist statement for the show, which mentioned a connection to the light around religious figures and light emanating from different types of light fixtures.”

Award-winning author Rosellen Brown teachers “Many Ways to Tell a Story” July 22 to August 4 in Assisi, Italy

“I was the moderator of a panel on the short story at the Chicago Tribune’s Printers’ Row Literary Festival in June featuring four very diverse writers in lively conversation. This year I’ve been publishing a series of stories from a book in progress to be called Late Loves. (Seven of Rosellen’s stories have been included in the annual O. Henry Prize Stories, Best American Short Stories and Pushcart Prizes.)

One more thing: Though I do a lot of contest judging, this year I chose a few prize-winners for one of the most interesting magazines I’ve run into: The Bellevue Review is published out of NYU’s medical school; it’s devoted entirely to stories and poetry about health, healing, illness, the mind, and the body and it’s amazing how much good work it contains. Check it out at www.blreview.org.”

For Summer Sleuths: Best Mystery, Crime Novels

by Maureen Corrigan (National Public Radio)

Ethnicity aside, Lydia Chin, the protagonist in S.J. Rozan’s The Shanghai Moon, is a private investigator very much in the brisk Nancy mold (that is, if Nancy were grown up and Chinese-American). In her ninth novel in the terrific Edgar Award-winning series, Rozan elegantly riffs on the stolen jewels plot that constitutes about 99 percent of the classic Nancy Drew mysteries.

Lydia is hired to trace a cache of jewels that’s recently been unearthed in a garden in Shanghai and swiped by a corrupt Chinese official who’s now believed to be hiding in New York’s Chinatown. The box containing the jewelry had been buried since World War II and may contain a brooch called the Shanghai Moon, which, in the intervening decades, has become the stuff that dreams are made of.

Lydia’s race to find the stolen gems before various plug uglies can lay their paws on them constitutes one plotline; another takes readers back to wartime Shanghai. As The Shanghai Moon demonstrates, there’s plenty of possibility lurking in the old missing-jewels plot. It just takes a master like S.J. Rozan to restore the luster of a classic.