Book
The Pink Stone Companion Book
Swimming Rabbit Arts
“She begins high in the mountains, nestled in the heart of seven rugged peaks. Against the towering crags and plunging valleys, she is a small presence, great-great-great granddaughter to the glaciers that once crept their way through stone, clearing her way to the sea.”
For a brief time, Laura Brady (know musically as Wren) called Moose Lodge, a cabin in the Okanogan Forest, her home. Creatively adrift and physically unwell, over her months in the Methow Valley her strength began to return. With it came her voice, and she penned a series of songs and writings inspired by the surrounding golden hills, wild river valleys, and mountain peaks.
The result was a new album of music —Pink Stone: Songs from Moose Lodge—and an extended lyric book of essays, vignettes, song lyrics, journal entries, and letter excerpts. Featuring artwork by Anna Briggs and photography by Sol Gutierrez, the Companion Book tells her story of perseverance and renewal in the beautiful Methow Valley.
Printed on natural paper with a velvety cover and vibrant photos and illustrations, this 5.5 x 5-inch, small-format chapbook is designed to nestle side-by-side with the physical album on your shelf, a lifelong companion to the music.
Available in PRINT & PDF Formats
Purchase separately or as part of a bundle with the accompanying folk album
Poetry
“Sign of Life” - Lowell Observer [forthcoming]
>> First Prize in the Marley Foundation Astronomy Discovery Center Writing Contest
“H(e)art Prairie” - Poetry Maps, Museum of Northern Arizona & ARTx [forthcoming]
>> One-year placement on Flagstaff city buses and display during ARTx Festival
“My Friend Reminds Me We Are Wild Mustangs” - Channel Magazine [forthcoming]
“11th Anniversary” - Poet Lore [print]
“Concessions” - Gathering Points: A High Country Public Reader, The Northern Arizona Book Festival
“I Seek Healing in the Usual Places” - Cutleaf Journal
“Cygnet Passage” - Cutleaf Journal
“Seal Boy” - Cutleaf Journal
“Correspondence Between Blank Page and Tired Writer” - Cutleaf Journal
“Concessions” - A Body You Talk To: An Anthology of Contemporary Disability, Sundress Press
“Windflower” - EcoTheo Review [print]
“Dream of Seals, Circling” - Cold Mountain Review
>> Nominated for a Pushcart Prize & The Best of the Net
“What Happened in the Branches” - Cold Mountain Review
>> Nominated for a Pushcart Prize & The Best of the Net
“Tyrni” - Reckoning Press
“Life on the Mountain” - Curios Magazine
“The Mouse’s Chance” - Curios Magazine
“Magical Cloud Bubble Bath” - Scribendi
“The Boat Letters” - Bricolage (25)
“Self-Portrait as Departure and Return: Mérida, Venezuela Emergency Room 4pm and a Long Flight Home” - Bricolage (25)
“Ten Second Rule” - Nudge Literary Arts Journal
“Chime” - Self Portrait: Poetry on Buses (Seattle’s 4Culture)
Nonfiction
Essays
How to Return
The Fourth River [print]
“I don’t remember what my friend Zach and I were talking about on the phone that day, cozied in our prospective homes in the midst of a Flagstaff windstorm—if what he asked me was related to our conversation or simply out of the blue. But the question is now the only part of the conversation I’m able to recall.
‘Are you sick in your dreams?’ he asked.
The question made me pause, in the way that any really good one can. Questions, after all, often air truths far better than any direct statements of fact.”
Sick Gal Seeks Rare Elk Sighting or Mate
Chronic illness already made dating hard. And then the pandemic arrived.
Hobart Pulp
“‘I almost forgot—’ my childhood friend interjected as we were wrapping up a phone call on a blustery September day. ‘I talked to Lindsey and she agrees that you don’t need to put a disclosure on your dating profile. You can just cross that bridge if you meet someone you like.’
Her comment startled me from my meditative walk-and-talk on the golf course in my backyard; I had already put aside the profile dilemma and was trying not to think about it too often, this question of how someone like me might date. And even more complicated: how someone like me might date years into a pandemic that—as far as most people are concerned—is long over.”
Hey Bianchi
Flagstaff Cycle-Zine
“I didn’t worry about the future, if we’d ever get to travel far again on our own power. Whether this was a one-time thing or the start of something new, I simply needed to know if I could still feel it.”
Pebble Linings
The Rappahannock Review
“I would not be here if not for illness. And being here is good. Must I then consider the illness, even if only in some small part, beneficial?”
Out Back
Brevity: A Journal of Concise Literary Nonfiction — Special Issue on Chronic Illness & Disability
“I scan my new home: the tent at the base of the big maple; Dad’s improvised tarp structure protecting my bins of essentials; the card table workstation under the fabric awning. Down the slope, a zigzag of wash-line weaves through the garden.
I’m living in my parents’ backyard. Not quite what I had in mind nearing my thirtieth birthday.”
Book Chapters
DIY Food Preservation: An Introduction to Canning & Preserving [Chapter]
Our Food, Our Right: Recipes for Food Justice, 2nd Ed., The Community Alliance for Global Justice, 2012, pp. 182-202
“Two generations back, canning wasn't a special skill; it was a basic part of maintaining the household, wedged into its natural place between spring-cleaning and the autumn pumpkin harvest.Since then, with the advent of cheap, commercially canned food and fruit shipped in easily from far away during the winter, canning has slipped from being considered 'normal' to, all too often, 'dangerous' and 'unsanitary.’”
Container Gardening: How to Eat out of your Bookshelf [Chapter]
Our Food, Our Right: Recipes for Food Justice, 1st Ed., The Community Alliance for Global Justice, 2010
A guide to scrappy urban gardening using found and repurposed objects.
“City-dwellers often have the misinformed impression that growing food is something that can only happen out in the country on rolling, rich fields. In reality, you can tend your own bountiful garden just about anywhere that sunlight reaches a few hours a day.”
Stories of Food Justice in Action from Around the World [Chapter]
“Food as a Right in Belo Horizante, Brazil” & “Roof-Top Gardening across the U.S.”
Our Food, Our Right: Recipes for Food Justice, 1st Ed., The Community Alliance for Global Justice, 2010
“In 1993, Brazil’s fourth largest city, Belo Horizante, was much like many other poor cities of the developing world, complete with a staggering population of disadvantaged, malnourished residents living in slums. With a population of 2.5 million people, 11 percent of its inhabitants were living in absolute poverty, and nearly 20 percent of its children were going hungry…”
“When it comes to green roofs, Cuba and Europe have long led the way. In Germany, France, Austria, and Switzerland, green roof products and services are already part of a strong, multi-million-dollar market that has continued to grow steadily…” Read More >
Articles
“For decades the sugar industry quietly skewed public understanding of diet and health. As the truth becomes known, consumers are fighting back. In a movement likened to the battle against “Big Tobacco,” soda and the sugar industry as a whole are under attack from all sides.”
From Veggies to Panels: Solar Energy from Farms
PCC Sound Consumer, April 2016
“Farmers always have been acquainted intimately with the power of the sun. ‘As far as clean energy, we are in the solar business ourselves,’ says Mike Shriver of Rent's Due Ranch in Snohomish County. ‘We're farmers.’”
Sunscreen and Coral Reefs
PCC Sound Consumer, July 2016
“Anyone can tell you the difference a drop of sunscreen can make: many of us have missed slathering some on a patch of skin and ended up with a painful, red tattoo for a few days. But for corals, the difference can mean life or death.”
Resisting the National Narrative: Charisma and the Venezuelan Cooperative Movement Within the Context of the Bolivarian Revolution
intersections online journal, 10.1 (2009)
“I first traveled to Venezuela in August 2006, eager to witness first-hand the country that I was convinced had become the site of a revolutionary social movement. A year prior, Venezuela had invoked little in me beyond a vague notion of oil, Caribbean beaches, and strangely colored rainforest parrots. However, after watching The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, an independent film that followed the 2002 coup attempt on President Hugo Chávez, my interest was instantly piqued.” Read More >
Awards
Marley Foundation Astronomy Discovery Center Writing Contest - First Prize, 2024
“In lyrical and assured language, this poet offers up an intimate moment that suggests, in midst of all the uncertainty that comes with being human, there is room for exuberance and wonder.” - Melissa Sevigny
The Kenyon Review Developmental Editing Fellowship — Poetry Finalist, 2024
4Culture Art Projects — Award Recipient, Poetry Manuscript, 2023
Pushcart Prize Nominee — Poetry, 2022
The Best of the Net Nominee — Poetry, 2022
Tucson Festival of Books Finalist — Poetry, 2022
4Culture Art Projects — Award Recipient, Musical Album, 2018
UW Library Research Award for Undergraduates, 2009
Interviews
Contributor Spotlight, December 2020, The Rappahannock Review