"Tolerance is love;
acceptance is a greater love still"

~Carolyn Howard-Johnson

"Diversity has been written into the DNA of American life; any institution that lacks a rainbow array has come to seem diminished, if not diseased. In fact, there is a general acknowledgement, in all but the most troglodytic precincts, that our racial diversity is a major American competitive advantage in the global economy."
~ Joe Klein,
Time Magazine, Dec. 18, 2006

"Tolerance is not enough because there's no educational component to it."  ~   Gustav Niebuhr, author of Beyond Tolerance

"We are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who happen to think differently than we do"
~Barack Obama in his elegy at the memorial for those who died in the Tucson shooting, 2011

Mark Twain said, "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow mindedness." Read some of my travel-inspired poetry on my
Travels with Carolyn page.

Carolyn Howard-Johnson sees intolerance (or better, lack of acceptance) as the root of the evils that have afflicted men and women, probably since Ardipithecus, and in modern times from the world wars to 9/11 to the  political and religious stalemates we have been experiencing  in the last few years. Here you will find resources of everything from organizations to plays, books, and other artistic pursuits that promote tolerance. This from a lovely personal friend of mine, now deceased, she leaves you this thought:

"May we become all the Love we receive!"
~ in memory of Nade Haines, writer and survivor

Resources and Food for Thought

Nonfiction

Galileo's Daughter by Dava Sobel is a pure delight as well as a beautifully designed book.

Perception and Deception: A Mind-Opening Journey Across Cultures by Joe Lurie. Published by Cultural Detective. ISBN 97881512113266. Should be required reading for all high school civics classes.

Leaving the Fold by Jim Ure

Beauty Bites Beast by Ellen Snortland

Check out the titles from Gorgias Press. They specialize in books on things like the genocide of Syrian Christians during WWI, Iraqi folk tales, Christian minorities in Turkey, etc.

The works of George Marsh Fredrickson (1934 to March, 2008).~ Hazel Rose Markus, Stanford professor, says his studies "should be required reading for anyone concerned with changing the world or creating a better one." They include his Pulitzer Prize finalist and others:

  • The Inner Civil War: Northern Intellectuals and the Crisis of the Union
  • The Black Image in the White Mind: The Debate on Afro-American Character and Destiny
  • Black Liberation: A Comparative History of Black Ideologies in the United States and South Africa and Racism: A Short History. 
  • His most recent, published just before his death is Big Enough to Be Inconsistent: Abraham Lincoln Confronts Slavery and Race.

Recommended Nonfiction

Reminder to Keepers of
the Constitution

"Free speech is everything, the whole ball game. Free speech is everything!"

~Salman Rushdie,
Nobel Prize Winner

Stop the Press: How the Mormon Church Tried to Silence the Salt Lake Tribune (Prometheus Books) by James W. Ure.

The History of Anti Semitism by Phyllis Goldstein. Foreword by Sir Harold Evans

The Assault On Reason by Al Gore

God Is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens

Einstein by Walter Isaacson

Buddha Is as Buddha Does by Lama Surya Das

Beyond Tolerance (Viking, 2008) by Gustav Niebuhr Neibuhr says "Religion is to the 21st century what ideology was to the 20th."  He believes there is an need for a dialogue and acceptance between faiths because religion is a danger to the world, a danger as serious as the Cold War of the 20th Century. He also believes that, though much work needs to be done, there is an important shift in the air, one of cooperation and understanding between religions.


Fiction and Poetry

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Worthy Brown's Daughter by Phillip Margolin, courtroom drama, historical fiction, and page-turning mystery all in one, by a New York Times bestselling author

The Kite Runner by Kaled Housseini

This Is the Place by Carolyn Howard-Johnson may be purchased as a used book with the Amazon new and used feature.

"[Howard-Johnson's books are strengthened with behind-the-scenes details of Mormon life and history in a book suitable for all collections, particularly those where . . .
Orson Scott Card's religious books are popular"

~ Library Journal

 

"This Is the Place is a love letter to Utah." ~ Debra Gold, consultant and actor

First the Raven by Leora Krygier

One Sister's Song by Karen DeGroot Carter
Audrey Conarroe, a biracial woman, never planned to move back to her small, predominantly white, hometown in western New York. But when she was named guardian to her teenage nephew, she had no choice but to do just that. Eight months later, Audrey prepares to sell her sister’s old farmhouse when a series of discoveries forces her to rethink everything she’s ever assumed about love, race, and respect. One Sister's Song explores challenges faced by individuals and families of mixed-race heritage as well as single parenting, grief recovery, and the Underground Railroad.

The Vast Unknowing poems by Nancy Shiffrin and Game with Variations are both books of poems with various themes on tolerance.

"Shiffrin explores the questions Who are we? and What made us that person.?
She explores a number of sources of our identity . . . . [in the
poem] “My Shoah” [Shiffrin] brings together many of her disparate
threads—family religion...evil...details from her personal history—and
makes them work together. When she is at her best, as in this poem,
Shiffrin produces deep powerful poetry. ~ G. Murray Thomas, poetix.net

Boy's Pond by Warren Stucki, M.D. "BOY'S POND was first published in 2002, yet six years later interest remains strong. Set it St. George, Utah, ts themes are timeless. It is a multi-layered story that explores the ramifications of the Yucca Flats radiation fallout and sickness that ensued; government lies and cover up; early death and conventional religion impotence in explaining this tragedy as well as religious and native American prejudice. A classic and well worth the read."

Finding Bluefield,  By Elan Barnehama:  Can love between Barbara and Nicky survive 1960’s small town Virginia, a time when relationships like theirs were mostly hidden and often dangerous?

Fiction for Children

Red in the Flower Bed, a picture book by Andrea Nepa, fills a special niche in helping children understand interracial adoption. A review by Katie Hines of this fantastic book is available at http://katiehines.blogspot.com/2009_03_15_archive.html

A Purrfect Love by D. K. Abbott. Most of us feel different in one way or another. Here's a little book for preschool children about a kitty who is a different color from his siblings and makes a very unkitty like sound when he mews. It is sure to teach youngsters (subtly, of course!) acceptance--of others and of themselves. I give it five stars for content. I also liked the illustrations. They were, well...gentle. Perfect for the subject matter. http://www.amazon.com/Purrfect-Love-D-K-Abbott/dp/1450543472/

Fiction Depicting the Repression of Women

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Kaled Hosseini

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See

Peony in Love by Lisa See

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Don't You Marry the Mormon Boys by Janet Kay Jensen. "A light mystery-romance set with a polygamist cult background. Insight and sensitivity. Sound research."

Peace and Love Train Photo
With thanks to Frank McMillon

If a family can't afford to educate both its son and its daughter, "give the education to the girl."
~From a local saying in the village in the Gojal region of Pakistan nestled between the Karakorum Mountains
near China and Afghanistan where all children are now going to school and most speak four languages.
Source: National Geographic, April, 2017.


Articles

  • "Intolerance Is Scary Halloween Proposition" by Walter Brasch, author, columnist and journalism professor.
  • "Racism and the American Media" (illegal immigrants) (column) by Walter Brasch, author, columnist and journalism professor.
  • The study guide in This Is the Place.

    "At the end [of This Is the Place]  there is a Reading Group Guide of questions for serious discussion, which transforms this novel into a textbook about closed societies & their impact."
    ~  Rebecca Brown of  RebeccasReads.com
     

  • Click here Carolyn's first person essay, "Beating Time at Its Own Game," that explores age and gender discrimination.
  • Carolyn wrote an essay on her experience at the death camp Terezin after she traveled to the Czech Republic to study and dug it up from her files in February of 2007 after 60 Minutes aired a segment  (January, 2007) on the camp.  Scroll down a bit on this page.
  • For more of Carolyn Howard-Johnson's essays, poems, and other work on subjects related to war, peace, tolerance, and acceptance visit her "Back to Literature" column on MyShelf.com (where old columns are archived) , or check out her books This Is the Place, Harkening, Tracings and the foreword in the book Support Our Troops: Quotations on Patriotism and Prayer (published by Andrews McMeel).
  • Danusha V. Goska on "Homosexuality and the Bible"  for The Bloomington Voice, South Central Indiana .

Videos/VHFs/DVDs/

Although Jahangir Golestan-Parast's primary purpose is to forge acceptance and understanding between the peoples of Iran and America, his work also covers important events like the 6.6 earthquake that devastate Bam. So in addition to the video on Iran, you may also want to look up Bam 6.6, on his site. Golestan-Parast's motto is "Humanity Has No Borders."


List of Peace and Tolerance Museums

Click Here for a list of peace and tolerance museums.

Websites

Andrew Carnegie's Endowment for International Peace seeks to end wars.
For opinions on a naturalistic worldview; an introduction to the
brights.
Facing History and Ourselves works to increase understanding between peoples.
United planet holds a contest for poetry that promotes cross-cultural understanding.


Anti-Bias Programs

  • Temple Israel's (Hollywood) A World of Difference Institute.

  • Santa Ana Unified School District's Kinder Readiness Program  Join us at NCORE 2008

  • Second Annual National Conference on Race and Ethnicity In American Higher Education.


Movies

I believe writers of all genres can learn much from one another. I am an avid film goer, learning much from film story structure and screenwriters. Follow my reviews on Twitter by going to htp://twubs.com/MovieReviews or just #MovieReviews. Many point out techniques writers of other genres can use. I rate the movies from one to ten.

God's Army earned a cult following, both Mormon and Non Mormon for its balanced portrayal of the LDS missionary experience. My husband, Lance Johnson,  plays the coffee mug guy in this movie. Available on DVD.

Skin is not about sex as one might imagine but about the horrors and inhumanity that are the result of intolerance. A fine independent film, poignant and--in spite of its theme--full of love. A portrait of what it means to be fully human.

The Help is both a novel and film. I expect it to be an Academy Award nominee in 2011.

Invictus, directed by Clint Eastwood. Courage, inspiration, tolerance, forgiveness coupled with a great story.

Undertow. About tolerance. Violation. Redemption. Search it out. Spanish with Eng subtitles. A Ten.

Even the Rain. About tolerance, friendship, caring and the importance of our art. Spanish with English subtitles. Nine of Ten.

In Darkness is an amazing depiction of mankind's inhumanity to man, based on a true story. It was inspired by the book In the Sewers of Lvov by Robert Marshall. This film is one to study for near-perfect screenplay construction (and, by default, novel construction).

The Flat is a memoirish documentary by Israeli Arnon Goldfinger that explores forgiveness, acceptance, and denial while searching for what his family never talked about,  the years of the Holocaust.

The Other Son explores acceptance, bigotry, and political and religious beliefs. An Arab and Jewish child get accidentally switched a birth. A poignant portrayal of how both the grown brothers and the parents come to terms with others and themselves.

#MovieReviews: WADJA for anyone who want more than 1 1/2 hours of entertainment. Exquisite little film with big content. 10 of 10  You might want to Google the making of the film, too. It's entertainment of its own sort.

Belle, an Academy Award winner for sure!

Ode to My Father gives us lessons on the myriad ways war touches everyone's lives, this one set in Korea.

Selma, though not as true to history as I'd like it to be, film must first of all entertain and that means they must somehow take fact and shape it for a story arc including conflict as this film does.  Still the intent of this film reaches toward greatness and I gave it a ten of ten.

Woman in Gold is a glorious mix of theme and visual delight the underscores the destructive nature of intolerance.

Tangerine might have won the Oscar for Best Picture if it had been nominated for that instead of Best Foreign Film. It is perfection from start to finish.

Bridges with Tom Hanks and directed by Steven Spielberg has some amazing scenes of the buidling of the Berlin Wall, something few westerners ever saw for themselves or even as media images.

Rock the Kasbah with Bill Murray is a flawed film but the message and inspiration are worth the seeing!

Suffragette (2015) is a portrait in courage and an inspiration to continue the fight. (Saudi Arabia has "promised" by October of 2015 to give women the vote.)

Follow Carolyn's Reviews of Movies at
#MovieReviews

Plays

Watch for these plays in your hometown.

  • Missionary Position, written and performed by Steven Fales may be on its way to Broadway soon.

  • Confessions of a Mormon Boy by Steven Fales.

  • Stormy Weather, conceived and written by Sharleen Cooper Cohen. The life of Lena Horne. Very long but rated excellent. Watch for it in your home town.

  • A Los Angeles theatre often features work that celebrates tolerance, is Celebration Theatre.

  • The Sierra Made Playhouse is featured The Foreigner by Larry Shue. If you didn't get to see the production directed by Stan Kelly, watch for it elsewhere. A pure Downsouth spoof on the klan. Sometimes intolerance is better tackled with humor.  626 355 4318.

  • Stoop Stories by Dael Olandersmith closed at LA's Center Theatre Group, the Kirk Douglas Theatre. When it comes to your town, hope you'll consider seeing it. She is a veritable story-telling storm and her acting is just as good. She also wrote Bones.

  • Author Miller's Incident at Vichy is a superb examination of the all-too human tendency toward intolerance--and heroism. It may be even more fascinating read than on stage. The subtleties could be studies and absorbed better.


Insight and Understanding
into

Utah, Its Religion, and Culture

Books

  • Leaving the Fold by Jim Ure

  • Sister Wife by Natalie Collins

  • Don't You Marry the Mormon Boys by Janet Kay Jensen. Find my review of this book.

  • Of course, my This Is the Place and Harkening and, yes, even Tracings.

  • Mormon America by Richard Ostling and Joan K. Ostling (Harpers). ISBN 0061432954)

A little Utah Memory

 

    

Carolyn and very long time Utah friend, Karen Bryner, in Big Cottonwood Canyon, Utah.
On the left we are in front of the old Brighton general store. It's been around since I learned to ski.
Right, Karen and I  watching moose. Ahem, the moose is center, just in case you have never seen a moose in Utah.
He was watching us watch him.


Quotations
That Unfortunately Prove That Intolerance
Is Still Alive and Corrosive

The articles mentioned below are all from one issue of a Time Magazine. Really. Just one week's news!

Time Magazine, August, 2007: Michelle Obama, wife of Barack Obama is addressing her husband's biracial credentials at a Women for Obama event on Chicago's South Side. It was predominantly an audience of black women.

"We're still playing around with the question, Is he black enough? Stop that nonsense." 

Won't it be nice when we don't have to address color at all?

------

Time Magazine: August 2007: I. A. Rehman, a human-rights activist from Pakistan, addresses the relations between India and his country:

"We must learn to be good neighbors. And I'm optimistic. People cannot be foolish forever."

---------

Time Magazine: August, 2007: Vice president of soccer's international governing body, Jack Warner, in a statement that he will block an English Bid to host the Soccer World Cup of 2008:

"Nobody in Europe likes England. England invented the sport but has never made any impact on world football."

-------

Time Magazine, August, 2007: "Eight years after the U.S. and its NATO allies went to war to stop former Yogoslav President Slobodan Milosovic's ethnic-cleansing campaign in Kosovo, efforts to integrate the province's two ethnic communities have produced disappointing results."


The War Museum at Oslo

From Tracings.  
Finalist in performance in
Norwegian Cruise Lines Star Search.

Available for reprint at no charge with permission from the author.)
 
By Carolyn Howard-Johnson (c)

Raindrops surf my windshield, slip across my reflection, tears

not fettered by gravity. I look into my father’s face, decades gone,

rather than my own. Years later I search for family

 

seeds. Norway’s fjords shed salty droplets

on faces like my father’s. Round faces. Eyes dilute-blue

like the pale skies above them. Men who fought

 

as Churchill’s voice crackled through smuggled vacuum

tubes. Here miniature battles, cotton snow, charcoal

clouds, tiny lead replicas of soldiers now gone, desperate

 

photo-faces of the condemned. Only days before I reached this spur,

I saw my grandson off to war, alone. A sacrifice.

A trade. For my father who never marched. Travis’ face

 

flat, pasted behind a window, an upside down smiley

pattern behind windows tinted khaki, his bus taking

him away from me. I leave the dark halls, history

encased, to sit outside fortress walls, put my head

between my knees. Gasp for comfort. Fragile. A portrait

on my bureau at home. Acidglass shores up the image

 

murlled by time. My father, stands in sepia snow,

round face, eyes look beyond the frame at me. He wouldn’t know

these boys his age, his blood, resisting Hitler’s hand

 

raised, his arms against them. Oceans, bodies of land

between my father and these others. Here a disconnect,

a link I cannot touch or breathe. Once I was a child

 

who did not have to say goodbye, now a grandmother

who must pay the price. My grandson. Heads for heat

and oil and sand. He, too, resists. He, however,

 

unsure, doesn’t know quite why or who or what.

This Nordic rain does not, cannot wash

the memory or the present clean or clear.

 

Copyright© Carolyn Howard-Johnson 2007.


Taking a Dose of What’s Good For You

Ever Heard of Terezin?

(Available for reprint at no charge with permission from the author.
Learn more about Terezin from DVDs produced by 60 minutes; available on Amazon.
)

By Carolyn Howard-Johnson (c)

It was the side trip no one talked about. And then everyone did. Some were interested. Some were afraid. No one was enthusiastic.

"It will be good for the younger students. You know…to learn what we remember," one of we more mature students enrolled in the Glendale College Summer Studies Program in Prague said. We nodded solemnly. In the end we all—young and old--went to Terezin because we felt we must.

This was not a death camp in the strictest definition of the word. It was a camp where people were "retained" before they were sent on to Auschwitz or one of the others where there were facilities for mass destruction. Still there were ovens to cremate those who died of mistreatment or starvation or overwork or natural causes. It was no wonder there was some reticence among us.

Our tour guide was Michal. She was from Israel and spoke so many languages I lost count. Perhaps in her late 20’s, with curly dark hair and dark eyes that sometimes reflected generational pain, she had come to Prague at the suggestion of one of her professors in Israel. "My wish for you is that one of you will find unique blessings of Prague," he had told her. She was searching for a place to practice her arts. She was a puppeteer, a performance art enjoyed by many Czechs. She was also a writer. Sometimes, as an avocation, she led tours to Terezin because she wanted others to learn from its history. Her grandmother had perished there.

When I first saw her she was sitting on one of the stairs among students piled on the stairs with their daypacks. She wore a long black dress with huge yellow hibiscus printed on it. Black for mourning? Yellow for hope? I was busy with a journal, one of the assignments for writing class I was taking at Prague’s Charles University.

"Are you a writer?" she said. I noticed later that she managed to ask every one of her charges a personal question about themselves, welcoming them with her soft accent. She invited me to a poetry reading for later that week. "It’s in a cellar. Just like you think of when you think of Bohemians."

I told her that I only write in English. "Prague is for everyone," she said. "So is Terezin."

And she was right. From the bus we could see fields unfurled like flags of orange and yellow. Poppies, sunflowers, mustard weed. We were travelling Northwest from Prague and wouldn’t be too far from Dresden when we arrived. Berlin was beyond that. We would be in the Sudentenland, the Czech lands where most spoke German. They were given over to Hitler without a shot fired.

There was a fortress on the right. Graves with poppies carefully placed at the headstones. Past the Ohre river. Into a village. A museum where we saw the stuff of life—sewing projects, drawings, music, even plays—works of art done by those held in the camp. There was a wall in the museum that had been frescoed into a permanent display with the images of official lists of human cargo the trains held. They were like human ghosts on bills of lading.

Michal read one name. It was that of a child, born the same day and month I was. I was overwhelmed and did what writer’s do. The journal I was to keep for my creative writing class came in handy:

Terezin Fresco

Crystal memories
Fragmented shards
Cleansed scraps
Congealed into
Stucco tears.
LÖWNER THOMAS
Child of terror
Born in April
Like me.
On the fourth
Like me.
1935
I am 60.
He is never.

When I finished writing, my group had disappeared. I wandered the streets of the little town searching for them. It was extremely hot (one of the few hot days in the entire month we were there) and there was hardly anyone about. Finally I gave up my quest, exhausted. I sat in a town square next to an old woman who was crocheting.

"Was tust du?" I said in the familiar of German, because I couldn’t remember the formal.

 She didn’t seem to mind my impertinence. She took out piles of doilies from a basket and told me she made them to sell. She also discovered that I was "lost" and found someone who led me back to my group. I decided that, though it was good to be back with them, I was meant to have had this idle time sitting with an old lady on a shady park bench. It was a view of a town with a horrible past that somehow goes on living in the present.

We went on to another memorial where trees "give a beautiful shadow," as Michal worded it. A place too beautiful for a massacre.

This memorial had been placed at Terezin by a newer generation of Israelis. They had noticed that their generation has been deprived of aunts and uncles for they were all dead. They also became aware that they never saw anyone wearing boots because the memories of boots were still too vivid. There were no dogs, either. Watchdogs had not been their friends. The scars were still evident, two and three generations later. A memorial would help us all to remember.

So, in honor of Michal, I will not dwell on the morgue or the ovens but on hope for a better future. A better future ensured if we visit Terezin, in person or in print. The student who said this visit would be good for the younger students was wrong. It was good for all of us. This was a place of horror. But it was also a monument to the strength of spirit, both of those who died and those who survived and those who still make a life there. Those of us who visit history may choose to do things differently in the future. We may respect life, the way those Jews and Gypsies and Intellectuals and Homosexuals did, even in the face of death.

Copyright© Carolyn Howard-Johnson 2007


On the Holocaust

Note from Carolyn: 
This is published anonymously from
those missives sent around on the web with no attribution.
I feel the author will forgive me. 
I also must note that most of us would
rather deny that which offends us or reflects poorly on us.
That is part of the human condition. Only those with courage
own up to the reality of whatever they dislike
most about their own past.

Eisenhower in Dachau

    It is a matter of history that when Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, General Dwight Eisenhower, found the victims of the death camps, he ordered all possible photographs to be taken, and for the German people from surrounding villages to be ushered through the camps and even made to bury the dead.
 
    He did this because he said in words to this effect:  'Get it all on record now - get the films - get the witnesses - because somewhere down the track of history some bastard will get up and say that this never happened.  All that is necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing'.
 
    This week, the University of Kentucky removed The Holocaust from its school curriculum because it 'offended' the Muslim population which claims it never occurred.
 
    This is a frightening portent of the fear that is gripping the world and how easily each country is giving into it.
 
    It is now more than 60 years after the Second World War in Europe ended.
 
    This e-mail is being sent as a memorial chain, in memory of the 6 million Jews, 20 million Russians, 10 million Christians and 1,900 Catholic priests who were murdered, massacred, raped, burned, starved and humiliated with the German and Russian peoples looking the other way!
 
    Now, more than ever, with Iran, among others, claiming the Holocaust to be 'a myth,' it is imperative to make sure the world never forgets.  This e-mail is intended to reach 40 million people worldwide!

 

    Be a link in the memorial chain and help distribute this around the world.  Don't just delete this.  It will only take a minute to pass this along.
 

Tip

None of us is without intolerance. Not only gender, race, religion but the things that "don't count" like fat and fashion. The trick is to recognize even the ones we consider unimportant when they occur, take ownership of them if they're ours, and refuse to act on them. If they belong to others, gently--ever so gently--point to their existence. 

Find at least one tip on every page of this Web site. 


Buy Links for Carolyn's Books

Great Fiction
Purchase THIS IS THE PLACE
and
HARKENING at Amazon in their new and used feature.
Both of these books are out of print. They are available only on Amazon's New and Used feature for about $1.

Great Poetry
Purchase TRACINGS (Finishing Line Press) at Amazon.
IMPERFECT ECHOES: Writing Truth and Justice with Capital Letters,
lie and oppression with Small

Give the gift of poetry with a chapbook from Magdalena Ball's
and
My Celebration Series

CHERISHED PULSE: Unconventional Love Poetry
IMAGINING THE FUTURE: Ruminations on Fathers and Other Masculine Apparitions
SHE WORE EMERALD THEN: Reflections on Motherhood
BLOOMING RED: Christmas Poetry for the Rational
DEEPER INTO THE POND: Celebration of Femininity
SUBLIME PLANET: Celebrating Earth and the Universe
 

HowToDoItFrugally Series for Writers
Purchase THE FRUGAL BOOK PROMOTER,
THE FRUGAL EDITOR
Second Edition
GREAT LITTLE LAST MINUTE EDITING TIPS FOR WRITERS
GREAT FIRST-IMPRESSION BOOK PROPOSALS
HOW TO GET GREAT BOOK REVIEWS FRUGALLY AND ETHICALLY

Survive and Thrive Series of HowToDoItFrugally Books for Retailers
A RETAILER'S GUIDE TO FRUGAL IN-STORE PROMOTION
FRUGAL AND FOCUSED TWEETING FOR RETAILERS
YOUR BLOG, YOUR BUSINESS

Most of Carolyn's books are also available for the Kindle reader.
Did you know that with the Free app, Kindle can be adapted to any reader--even your PC!

 

 "Careers that are not fed die as readily
as any living organism given no sustenance." 
~
Carolyn Howard-Johnson

Studio photography by Uriah Carr
3 Dimensional Book Cover Images by iFOGO
Logo by Lloyd King


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Frugal E-Book Tip

Kindle E-Books Aren't
Just for Kindle Anymore

Amazon’s Kindle e-books are available on Kindle for everyone no matter how they prefer to read their digital books. On their PC. On any reader or device from iPad to iPhone to Blackberry. And Amazon stores your purchase to their cloud so if you should change devices, all your e-books are still available to you.

 

Tip

Those of us who think we are without bigotry aren't doing our best to eradicate it. We must first recognize it in ourselves before we can stand against it in others.

  Find tips on writing, promotion, or tech on every page of this Web site. 


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and get a FREE copy of
Great Little Last-Minute Editing Tips for Writers

"I have been a professional writer 40 years, and am also a tenured full professor of journalism. Carolyn's Sharing with Writers newsletter is  most useful for me--and for my students. I emphasize to them that while research is 90% of writing, and the actual writing is about 10%, there's another 100% out there called promotion. Carolyn shows numerous ways to get the message to the mass media."
~Walter Brasch, author and educator

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Find Carolyn on the Web

  writers retailers

Quotation of the Year

"Free speech is everything, the whole ball game. Free speech is everything!"

~Salman Rushdie,
Nobel Prize Winner

 


Tip

"We can't begin to explore the issue of religious bigotry in this country until we ask, 'Would you vote for an agnostic or an atheist." ~Pam Wright, Pasadena, CA. Quotation taken from Time magazine.

  Find tips on writing, promotion or tech on every page of this Web site. 


Carolyn's Blogs

Sharing with Writers
All things publishing with
an emphasis on book
promotion. Named to
Writer's Digest
101 Best Website list.


The New Book Review
Great way for readers, authors, reviewers and publicists to get more
mileage out of
a great review.


The Frugal Editor Blog
This is the Frugal, Smart
and Tuned-In Editor blog.
Covers editing, grammar, formatting and more.
Get the answers you need.



Carolyn's Awards

Awards for Carolyn's Books, Blogs and More

The New Book Review
Named to
Master's in English.org Online Universities'

101 Essential Sites for Voracious Readers

Writer's Digest 101 Best Websites
for
Sharing with Writers blog.


Best Book Award for The Frugal Book Promoter (2004) and The Frugal Editor (2008) and the Second Edition of The Frugal Book Promoter (2011).

 

Reader Views Literary Award for The Frugal Editor

New Generation Award for Marketing and Finalist for The Frugal Editor

Book Publicists of Southern California's Irwin Award

Military Writers Award of Excellence for
Tracings, A Chapbook of Poetry.


A Retailer's Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotion wins author Military Writers Society of America's Author of the Month award for March, 2010

 

Gold Medal Award from Military Writers Society of America, 2010. MWSA also gave a nod to She Wore Emerald Then, a chapbook of poetry honoring mothers.

The Frugal Editor Named #! on Top Ten Editing Books list.

Finalist New Generation Book Awards 2012, The Frugal Book Promoter; Finalist 2010 The Frugal Editor;
Winner 2010 Marketing Campaign for the Frugal Editor


The Oxford Award
recognizes
the alumna who exemplifies the Delta Gamma precept of service to her community and who, through the years, devotes her talents to improve the quality of life around her.

The Frugal Book Promoter is runner-up in the how-to category for the Los Angeles Book Festival 2012 awards.

Glendale City Seal
Winner Diamond Award for Achievement in the Arts
Glendale California's Arts and Culture Commission and the City of Glendale Library,
2013

And more than a dozen other awards for Carolyn's novel, short story collection and poetry. See the awards page on this site.


Published Works Almanac


Carolyn's  Social Media

Find my favorite social media on the
social media page.


Other Interests

Acting
Speaking
Travel

Tolerance


Carolyn's Poetry

Tracings
Imperfect Echoes
Celebration Series
Travel


Carolyn's Literary Works

This is the Place
Harkening
Published Shorter Works


Carolyn's HowToDoIt Frugally Series

For Writers
For Retailers


Website Sponsor

As Featured in Publishers Weekly

This unique book is the perfect book to help immigrants and those who need better English skills to deal with Americans. You'll love the chapter on language and accent reduction. And love even more how the author uses idioms throughout the book--and explains them!

Available on Amazon bookstores worldwide, at Vroman's in Pasadena and other fine bookstores.


Proud to Support

World Wild Life
Fund

with Sublime Planet
book of poetry
celebrating
Earth Day

Featured in
Pasadena Weekly
Arts and Entertainment Section

All Proceeds to be donated to the World Wildlife Fund


A Selection of Carolyn's Past Speaking Engagements

National Stationery Show May 17-20, 2009 Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, New York, NY Consider this a business essential.

Presenter 2009, 2010

Presenter, 2008, 09, 10, 11

Panel moderator, 2007

National Span College
presenter 2002

Fellows presenter, 2007, 08

Co-sponsor and presenter,
2007, 08, 09, 10, 11

University of Dayton Erma Bombeck Writers' Conference, 2006, 2008

Sisters in Crime,
Pasadena, 2009

On the Los Angeles Valley College Campus 2012, Rancho Library 2013,
Valley College Spring 2014

Wisconsin Regional Writers Association
Presenter, Keynote 2010

Book 'Em, NC,
Three Panels 2013


Presenter, 2013


Seminar Speaker, 2014


Keynote, 2013; 2014


Secrets of Great
Dialogue, 2015

Digging Up Memories and Bringing the Dead Back to Life
2015


Frugal Book Promotion.
Judith Briles' Extravaganza,
Denver, CO, 2016


Philadelphia, Nov. 2017

Learn more about Carolyn's conferences.


Best New Writing 2013, 2015

My short story “Love Story” is included in 
Best New Writing 2013
and
"Dr. Pena's Lesson on
Culture" is included in

Best New Writing of 2015

Both are published by Hopewell Publications.


Carolyn's  Book Review Blog Featured...

...as essential site at
MastersInEnglish.Org

and
Online Universities'
101 Essential Sites for Voracious Raders


Video Trailer

Click on the logo below to see an example of Reno Lovison's trailer for my Survive and Thrive Series of books.

Authors Broadcast for reasonably priced and thoroughly professional video book trailers. 


Endorsements

What Utah Authors Are Saying about
This Is the Place:

“[This Is the Place] instills the conflicts of Mormonism so gracefully and incisively...”
~
James W. Ure, author of Leaving the Fold


“It's been a week … and still the characters fight for attention in my thoughts.”
~
Warren Stucki, author of Boy’s Pond

This Is the Place is out of print. It is available using Amazon's new and used feature.


Carolyn's Awards

Awards for Carolyn's aid to
better writing and
publishing,

The Frugal Editor

 

  • Winner Reader Views Award for Best Professional Book

  • Winner USA Book News Award

  • Finalist Next Generation Book Awards

  • Winner Next Generation Book Awards for the Marketing Plan for that book

  • Honorable Mention from Dan Poynter's Global E-Book Awards

  • Book Publicists of Southern California (BPSC) coveted Irwin Award

 


Proud to be Instrumental in Helping Other Poets

Poetry Mystique: A modern text edited by Suzanne Lummis with commentary from the editor.

Poems by selected students from Suzanne's many poetry classes.

 


Carolyn's Poetry

Cover art by Vicki Thomas, Poetry by Magdalena Ball and Carolyn Howard-Johnson

"Cherished Pulse is full of poems that describe love from the eyes and hearts of young and old. We see love in its youthful stage, stirring the hearts of man and woman alike and tying a bond that even death cannot break. As we continue reading, we understand that love deepens into an awesome, but quiet joy as the couple grows older. These poems renew our faith in love as they remind us of our own experience with this most sought after emotion."
~ Lucille P Robinson for Alternative-Read.com

 

Third in the Celebration of Chapbooks with Magdalena Ball, Imagining the Future is written expressly for fathers "and other masculine apparitions."

She Wore Emerald Then is a book of Moods of Motherhood: thirty poems by award-winning poets Magdalena Ball and Carolyn Howard-Johnson, with original photography by May Lattanzio. A beautifully presented, tender and strikingly original gift book, ideal for Mother's Day or any day when you want to celebrate the notion of motherhood in its broadest sense.  Share this collection with someone you love.

More on Blooming Red: Christmas Poetry for the Rational on this Web site.

Sublime Planet is an e-chapbook and paperback published in the time-honored tradition of poets everywhere. This collection of ecologically oriented poems traverses a wide terrain, moving from the loss of species to the beauty of the natural world, from drought to the exploration of alternative planets. It's an exhilarating collection that breaks boundaries and leads the reader deep into the personal heart of perception. Released by award winning poets Carolyn Howard-Johnson and Magdalena Ball to celebrate Earth Day, this is a collection of poetry that weaves the personal with the universal. Photograpy by Ann Howley.

“Whatever your age these poems celebrating women will speak to you of times to look forward to or to remember. These are not poems to be read once. They will stay with you forever.” ~ Nancy Famolari, author.

Also by Carolyn:

Tracings is winner of the Military Society of America's Award of Excellence and named to the Compulsive Reader's Ten Best Reads of 2005

Imperfect Echoes is Carolyn's newest poetry book. Writing Truth and Justice with Capital Letters, lie and oppression with Small. 

Cover and interior art by Richard Conway Jackson
All proceeds go to Amnesty International