Dear Reader,

I am slowly being dragged into the 21st century and I celebrate every little milestone. Actually, the North Florida Center for Documentary Studies, Inc. website genius, Victoria Van Arnam, is dragging me and, so, today's milestone is really hers.

My prizewinning essay, "Waking Up in the Floodplain" is available for downloading at amazon.com; IT COSTS 99 CENTS. The essay chronicles hours spent in and around my stilt-legged house in the floodplain of Florida's famous river during the flooding, winds, alligators, canebrake rattlers, and several other surprises that arrived with the hurricane, Jeanne, a few years ago. It was a phenomenal experience for me, a moment-to-moment survival exercise; it was also difficult and very beautiful. Enjoy!

scauthen
24 June 2011

ACCOMPLISHED!

Thanks to the skills and hard work of Victoria Van Arnam, two books are now available as ebooks: Both THE SALVATION OF MAGGIE RIDER ($9.99) and a prizewinning essay called "WAKING UP IN THE FLOODPLAIN" (99 cents) are available at amazon.com + Sudye Cauthen + books.

Many thanks to Victoria and to those of you already downloading these books.

All the best,

s cauthen
18 June 2011

THE CENTRALITY OF STORY

STORY: connects the dots, names the places, makes sense of our lives.

----------------------JOIN SUDYE CAUTHEN---------------------------------------

2:00 p.m. - Hawthorne Branch Library - Saturday, 11 JUNE 2011

BOOK EVENT IN HAWTHORNE, FL

THANKS TO THE LABORS OF GUYLENE RESUE,

I'm looking forward to meeting friends of the work, THE SALVATION OF MAGGIE RIDER: Stories from Nokofta

and SOUTHERN COMFORTS: Rooted in a Florida Place at:

2 P. M. Hawthorne Branch Library, Hawthorne, FL - Saturday, 11 June 2011

The HAWTHORNE BRANCH LIBRARY has partnered with the



HAWTHORNE HISTORICAL SOCIETY which will host a RECEPTION immediately following the reading.

I'm looking forward to seeing old friends and meeting new ones. This is my last scheduled event for the calendar year 2011.

MEMORIAL DAY - SUWANNEE RIVER -- 2011

A good breeze on the deck at 8:00 p.m. Some laughter, the revving of an auto engine, voices fade, and night descends. Here's a shot from above the river, courtesy of Robert Baxter:

ENRAPTURED, 21 May 2011

It only lasted a few minutes, but sitting by the river as night came on it seemed that everything was right--the river's details swaddled in gold, the black stripes on a golden bumblebee, the river uncurling from light into dark, on its way across this grand old peninsula where--near what Daddy called Cedar Keys (plural)--it enters the Gulf. Perfect, the world is perfect, its light spilling upriver from the west, blasting cedar trunks into golden staves, woven and rewoven daily in the flights of its birds--small, black, white with yellow legs, the red-shouldered hawk--all stitching the invisible shirt of the world that holds me here, beneath the delicate call of the screech owl.

ENRAPTURED, 21 May 2011

(PHOTO: Robert Baxter)



It only lasted a few minutes, but sitting by the river as night came on it seemed that everything was right--the river's details swaddled in gold, the black stripes on a golden bumblebee, the river uncurling from light into dark, on its way across this grand old peninsula where--near what Daddy called Cedar Keys (plural)--it enters the Gulf. Perfect, the world is perfect, its light spilling upriver from the west, blasting cedar trunks into golden staves, woven and rewoven daily in the flights of its birds--small, black, white with yellow legs, the red-shouldered hawk--all stitching the invisible shirt of the world that holds me here, beneath the delicate call of the screech owl.