Category Archives: Writing

Gina Macdonald & Jen Payne: A Creative Collaboration

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Branford entrepreneurs Gina Macdonald and Jen Payne speak on their individual passions for their work, and how their creative interests in writing, art and mindfulness led to a collaborative effort on Gina’s new book Mind Your Own Body: A Body Image Handbook.

Wednesday, February 6
7:00 p.m. at Willoughby Wallace Memorial Library
146 Thimble Island Road, Stony Creek, CT

Copies of the Mind Your Own Body will be available for purchase and signing after the presentation.

Gina Macdonald MA,LPC,CEDS has more than 25 years of experience working with the eating disorder population addressing body image issues. A Certified International Eating Disorder Specialist/Supervisor and Licensed Professional Counselor with an Expressive Art Therapy Graduate Degree, she regularly lectures on college and university campuses to both staff and students.

Jen Payne is the owner of Words by Jen, a graphic design and creative services company founded in 1993. She is the author of two books, Look Up! Musings on the Nature of Mindfulness and Evidence of Flossing: What We Leave Behind, published by her publishing company Three Chairs Publishing.

New Haven Bioregional Group POTLUCK & POETRY

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SATURDAY, JANUARY 26 • 6:00 p.m.
First Unitarian Universalist Society of New Haven
featuring Evidence of Flossing by Naturalist Jen Payne

On Saturday, January 26, the New Haven Bioregional Group will host author and naturalist Jen Payne for a poetry reading and book signing featuring her book Evidence of Flossing: What We Leave Behind. The event, held at the First Unitarian Universalist Society of New Haven (608 Whitney Avenue, New Haven), begins with a potluck supper at 6PM, followed by the reading at 7PM.

Come listen to a selection of poems that are, at their heart, love poems to the something greater within all of us. Inspired by Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and Mary Oliver, they explore the human condition juxtaposed to the natural world and the possibility of divine connection.

Evidence of Flossing: What We Leave Behind follows on the heels of Payne’s 2014 well-received book LOOK UP! Musings on the Nature of Mindfulness, and continues a dialogue about our innate connection with nature. Both books will be available at the event, which is free and open to the public.

Jen Payne enjoys writing about our relationships with each other, with our natural world, and with our innate creativity. Installations of her poetry were featured in exhibitions at the Arts Council of Greater New Haven and Kehler Liddell Gallery (New Haven), and her work has been published by The Aurorean, Six Sentences, the Story Circle Network, WOW! Women on Writing, and The Perch, a publication by the Yale Program for Recovery & Community Health. Jen is a member of the Guilford Poets Guild and the Connecticut Poetry Society. You can find more of her work on her blog Random Acts of Writing, www.randomactsofwriting.net.

Connecting New Haveners to their life place, the New Haven Bioregional Group sponsors walks, films, canoe trips, potlucks, and other events to help us connect with our natural and built environment, and to build community and local resilience.

For more information about this event and others, please visit www.newhavenbioregionalgroup.org.