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IN-PERSON EVENT: An Evening with Helene Simkin Jara & Stephany Buswell

Monday, February 13, 2023 - 7:00pm

FREE IN-PERSON EVENT: Join us for a glimpse into the lives of two local memoirists, Helene Simkin Jara and Stephany Buswell, as they share their books Life on the Stand: Memoir of an Artist Model and Tasting Life Twice: A Memoir with Recipes Included. This event is cosponsored by The Wellstone Center in the Redwoods.

"Life on the Stand is a lively, funny, head-spinning account of Helene Simkin Jara’s experiences as an artists' model in the hedonistic, let-it-all-hang-out era of the 1970s." —Wallace Baine

"This is my story of rising from the ashes to creating my tasty life." —Stephany Buswell, Tasting Life Twice

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Helene Simkin Jara is an actor, director, and writer. Her poems, stories, and plays have been published 34 times, winning various awards. She wrote her first book in third grade. Her self-published book Because I Had To, a collection of short stories, plays, and monologues, was on Kindle’s best-seller list in July 2014. She has also self-published True Doll Stories We Remember and Turn Left at the Gorilla and Go Down the Hall, and just released her fourth book, Life On The Stand, a memoir of her time working as an artist's model. Helene has a BA in Theatre Arts (UCLA, 1969) and lives in Santa Cruz, California.

Local baking legend Stephany Buswell, a certified master baker, member of Les Dame d’Escoffier, and a finalist on the 2017 Food Network’s Holiday Baking Championship has mixed batter in many of Santa Cruz’s finest scratch bakeries: in the early days of Staff of Life when the trend was all natural, Gayle's Bakery where she indulged in European style baking, The Buttery and Beckmann's where she served as operations manager. But getting there wasn’t easy. The child of alcoholic parents, she ran away to The Haight in the 1960s and, as a teenager, lived on the street panhandling and couch surfing her way through the Summer of Love. Her memoir, a journey through baking trends, heartbreaking personal challenges, and the hilarious antics of a woman in search of herself is full of what really goes on inside bakeries and reveals how baking saved her life. And there are recipes, too!

Life on The Stand: Memoir of an Artist Model By Helene Simkin Jara, Julia Huff (Editor), Nancy Gotthart (Cover Design by) Cover Image
By Helene Simkin Jara, Julia Huff (Editor), Nancy Gotthart (Cover Design by)
$17.99
ISBN: 9781734477535
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
(Please note: This book cannot be returned.)
Published: Helene Simkin Jara - June 7th, 2022

Tasting Life Twice By Stephany Buswell Cover Image
$20.00
ISBN: 9781956949414
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Book Writing Bureau NYC - July 25th, 2022