Here There Are Blueberries Reflections on a brilliant play based on a mysterious photo album from Auschwitz

My substack post for this month: Reflecting on "Here There Are Blueberries" open.substack.com/pub/kathysew...

home - Miami Book Fair ... Read More

Heading down to Miami ...
www.miamibookfair.com

This is scary. Good, hard working people & caregivers will r lose affordable health insurance. It's a fallacy that 1/2 the people on Medicaid do not work. See link in bio for stats. This bill isn't about balancing the budget. 😢 #healthcare #hemophilia @flsenrickscott @senashleymoody @hemophiliafed

The CDC’s vaccine advisory panel, empowered by RFK Jr., is just getting started The ACIP, the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel newly empowered by health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is just getting started.

You can't make this stuff up.
Fortunately, my brilliant colleague @jasonmast.bsky.social, was around to explain to you all what happened at the first meeting of the new #ACIP. www.statnews.com/2025/06/26/c...

Another good place to hang your hat …

Sounds about right. 😳

👏👏👏 Thanks to the amazing Tresa Chambers, marketing and brand specialist, for speaking to the South Florida chapter of the Women’s National Book Association. 📚

Book cover of Craig Johnson’s Return to Sender

Author Craig Johnson presenting at the Portsmouth Music Hall

And now for Walt Longmire fans! Author Craig Johnson is a fun, energetic presenter. Pictured here at The Portsmouth Music Hall June 3. There’s no asking this storyteller a quick question! 📚📖😃

Thousands, including my husband, died because of tainted blood. I’m afraid it could happen again Kathy Seward MacKay lost her husband in 1997 because of tainted blood-clotting products. She’s worried about history repeating itself.

I'm happy to announce STAT News published my opinion essay about my blood safety concerns in light of the HHS cuts. And I received a note from a former FDA commissioner who said my piece was "on target."
www.statnews.com/2025/06/18/b...

4 women standing up for democracy on No Kings Day

Taking a stand in West Palm Beach …

"NO KINGS" SOUTH PBC INDIVISIBLE BOYNTON BEACH CAR CARAVAN, MARCH, & RALLY · No Kings **In America, we don’t put up with would-be kings.** NO KINGS is a national day of action and mass mobilization in response to increasing authoritarian excesses and corruption from Trump and his allie...

I'm attending No Kings's event, “"NO KINGS" SOUTH PBC INDIVISIBLE BOYNTON BEACH CAR CARAVAN, MARCH, & RALLY” - sign up now to join me! www.mobilize.us/nokings/even...

An evening of non-stop laughter at Books & Books with Dave Barry at the kickoff event for his memoir CLASS CLOWN. @booksandbooks #indybookshop #writingcommunity @miamibookfair #writingcommunityofinstagram

It's all so scary.

My Meeting with a Harper Collins/William Morrow Editor Can I write better than Stephen King, Dave Barry, Mary Karr, and Amy Tan can sing?

When I announced my upcoming meeting with a Big Five editor (to discuss memoir pages) in a previous Substack newsletter post, I promised to share how it went—regardless of the outcome. ☺️ This follow-up piece was challenging to write, but here it is ...
kathysewardmackay.substack.com/p/my-meeting...

I love discovering new authors. I met Josie Cox & Clémence Michallon at the Miami Book Fair in Nov. Josie highlights the history of women fighting for equality, including UK suffragettes. Clémence’s psychological thriller is a page turner about a woman imprisoned by a beloved townsman.

DIFFICULT CHOICES IN LIFE : Most people in my situation may have chosen to NOT have children, although others like me did. Maybe it was a combination of my youth, my stubbornness, my pre-Internet research that told me to take a chance. . 😊
kathysewardmackay.substack.com/p/musings-on...

Yes, we have been through more than the public knows. Thank you for taking the time to read! ❤️

Tribute to a Warrior Remembering Ken Baxter, January 1966–February 21, 2025

I wrote a memorial tribute to my friend Ken, a true warrior for justice. POZ, a magazine/newsletter for people affected by HIV/AIDS published it. Like my late husband, Ken was a hemophiliac who contracted HIV from a blood products scandal (topic of my memoir in progress).
www.poz.com/article/trib...

I considered his form of protest as performance art. I’m happy to hear he had spent the last years enjoying time with his daughters and grandchildren. RIP my friend. ❤️

WARRIOR FOR JUSTICE
I first photographed Ken in ‘99. With his crimson face, he was protesting at the gates of Bayer, a biz that sold HIV-laced blood products. Ken, like my late hubby, was one of thousands of infected hemophiliacs. Once Ken learned the truth behind the scandal, his crusade began.

MLK DAY: These statues, alive & haunting, speak loud as the hands of the enslaved man & the female figure reach but cannot touch. The website for the once paved over Portsmouth African Burying Ground reads: : “Willful ignorance of the past is not a way to move toward a better future.”

"No Words" The limits of language in our most emotionally upending moments—and why to write through them

"No Words"
open.substack.com/pub/brookewa...

🤗📘🎉 TOP REASONS I’M EXCITED FOR THE DEEP DIVE SERIES 2025:
1.) To immerse myself in the amazing writing community Bianca, Carly, & CeCe have created; 2) To listen & engage w/top-notch speakers, including authors, agents, editors; 3) To discover and take away the unexpected. #dds2025excited

The sign to the Water Street bookstore.

A stroll through downtown Exeter and a visit to Water Street Books - a lovely indie bookstore.

Isn’t it wild?!!

Publishing Confidential | Kathleen Schmidt | Substack News and analysis about the book publishing industry that you won't read anywhere else. Click to read Publishing Confidential, by Kathleen Schmidt, a Substack publication with tens of thousands of sub...

Keep going! Ya never know what may happen in the future. Have you tried to get on any podcasts? Are you familiar with the Publishing Confidential Substack by Kathleen Schmidt? I've learned tons about PR & marketing from her.
kathleenschmidt.substack.com

THE RIVERRUN BOOKSTORE, PORTSMOUTH, NH … Sad to see the this store in downtown Portsmouth will close in February – especially after the Book and Bar shuttered earlier in the year. Perhaps another book store will take its place. 🤞📚🤓 #indiebooksellers #amreading #booklovers #writingcommunity

Good advice, Julie!

What a fun surprise to see Fabienne Josaphat’s first line of her new book, KINGDOM OF NO TOMORROW, in Poets & Writers magazine. Brava Fabienne!

“Nettie had grown accustomed to the kind of darkness the human eye couldn’t recognize, the kind that stared back and engulfed a person.”