Stephanie Valente lives in Brooklyn, New York, and works as an editor. One day, she would like to be a silent film star. She is the author of Hotel Ghost (Bottlecap Press, 2015) and Waiting for the End of the World (Bottlecap Press, 2017). Her work has appeared in dotdotdash, Nano Fiction, LIES/ISLE, and Uphook Press. She can be found at her website.
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Weekend Ritual: Grounding & Visualizing with Vinyl Records
Stephanie Valente lives in Brooklyn, NY. She has published Hotel Ghost (Bottlecap Press, 2015) and waiting for the end of the world (Bottlecap Press, 2017) and has work included in Susan, TL;DR, and Cosmonauts Avenue. Sometimes, she feels human. http://stephanievalente.com
Light Magic for Dark Times: Practices for Magical Living, Resiliency, & Self-Care
BY LISA MARIE BASILE
Hello, Luna Luna readers—it's your long, lost editor-in-chief. This post is looooong overdue, but alas, summer languidness and a lack of time. So, I've got an announcement: I wrote a book, and it's called Light Magic for Dark Times! It is available for preorder now, and it's out in September.
In a way, this book is the official Luna Luna collection of rituals and practices for grief, resiliency, shadow work, sex magic, writing magic, body and identity appreciation, regeneration, love, trauma, creativity, and glamour. I'm so out of my mind excited!
In the fall of last year, I was approached by a publishing house, Quarto Books (the leading global publisher of illustrated nonfiction!)—whose editor had been reading Luna Luna (and one of my posts about grief rituals). They asked me if I'd be interested in writing a longer book of what they'd seen—so we went back and forth on some ideas. As a poet and essayist, this felt like a beautiful challenge, but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't difficult. I had been practicing magic for so long—and in a really intimate, quiet, chaotic, eclectic and solitary way (more on that here), so I wanted to make sure that my work was accessible and inclusive to be understood and used by anyone, including people who also had their own set ways of practicing. Magic is something we all have within us, and I believe removing barriers to that personal power is so important—especially in times when we feel we've lost our autonomy or sense of joy.
As a former foster care youth, a trauma survivor, and someone with a chronic illness, feelings of out-of-control-ness have been no stranger to me. Those feelings can impact your self-esteem and your creativity, your resiliency, your hope, your desire, and the way you engage with the world around you. I wanted to share some of my personal practices and rituals that helped me through all of that. And I brought my experiences as a poet, empath, community builder, and writer to the book, too (so, yes it's even got a poetry section).
It was important to me that the book be a collection of practices that could both honor and manage our shadow selves and our light. They're one in the same, I think; they just move along on a spectrum, sometimes hand in hand, sometimes separately.
Oh, and the foreword is written by Kristen J. Sollee, the amazing, inimitable, wonderful author of Witches, Sluts, Feminists: Conjuring The Sex Positive.
Would you like to preorder the book?! You can do just that anywhere you can get books (Amazon, your local indie book store, B&N, and more). It can be preordered in the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada here. It can even be preordered at Target and Walmart (wild, right?).
Oh, and here are some photos from the writing & editing process: