07/11/2024 with Natalie Goldberg

It has been 38 years since Natalie Goldberg’s beloved breakthrough book Writing Down The Bones inspired tens of thousands of hesitant writers and seasoned authors. So I am honored that Natalie can join me today in person with Writing on Empty: A Guide to Finding Your Voice. Yet, “Empty,” you ask? How could one of New Mexico’s and the whole country’s most gifted and prolific writers struggle to find her creative voice after publishing at least fifteen books of poetry, Haiku and personal stories and teaching writing practice around the world ? It wasn’t writer’s block, reveals Natalie early in our interview. Writers block is something solid, entrenched, yet really it is fluid and movement of any measure, body and mind, can begin to free the stuckness. Writing on Empty is part memoir, part travel journal, part teaching, storytelling at its best, yet to categorize this book in any genre is to succumb to the image of something set in stone. 160 pages of evocative imagery, Natalie takes us from our sweetest leafy park to Abiquiu Lake and blessed parts of our loved nation in between. Read it over a couple of evenings or savor slowly. Writing on Empty: A Guide to Finding Your Voice. Published by St. Martins and available everywhere, especially at your local bookstores.