Michelle Goodman Discusses Nightmare Clients!

Michelle Goodman, author of My So-Called Freelance Life: How to Survive and Thrive as a Creative Professional for Hire is going to be giving an online presentation with the Freelancer's Union on how to deal with a nightmare client!

Michelle will discuss how to:

• Sniff out a client’s reputation ahead of time
• Chase down missing checks
• Set better boundaries with clients who make excessive demands on your time
• Close up contract loopholes that could come back to haunt you later
• Decide whether a relationship with a client is salvageable
• Gracefully let a troublesome client go

Learn more about the presentation and register online here. Check out her book for more information on troubleshooting other freelance problems!

Join LInda Furiya as she reads from How to Cook a Dragon

Linda Furiya, a San Francisco Chronicle food critic and author of the poignant coming of age memoir Bento Box in the Heartland, has just released her second book, How to Cook a Dragon: Living, Loving, and Eating in China. How to Cook a Dragon describes the difficult and rewarding six year period she spent living in Beijing and Shanghai. Furiya moved to China to start a life with her boyfriend Eric, but she never expected to fall in love with China through her amazing culinary experiences.

Linda Furiya will be reading at the following venues:

February 22nd, 2009 at 7:00pm
Book Passage Corte Madera
51 Tamal Vista Blvd
Corte Madera, CA 94925
(415) 927-0960

February 24th, 2009 at 7:00pm
A Great Good Place for Books
6120 La Salle Ave
Oakland, CA 94611
(510) 339-8210

February 25th, 2009 at 7:00pm
Get Lost Travel Books
1825 Market Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
415-437-0529

Maria Raha, author of Hellions: Pop Culture's Rebel Women, wins the Emily Toth Award

It's been announced today that Maria Raha, author of Hellions: Pop Culture's Rebel Women, has won the Popular Culture/American Culture Association's Emily Toth Award for the Best Single Work in Women's Studies in Popular and American Culture in 2008. Congratulations, Maria. The award will be presented at the PCA/ACA Conference in New Orleans in April.

Rachel Kramer Bussel gives advice on book gifts for Valentine's Day

Watch this great video of Rachel Kramer Bussel's recommendations for Valentine's Day as she walks around San Francisco's Booksmith! She's the author of more than 22 erotic anthologies including Seal Press' Dirty Girls. Watch out for her mention of Fucking Daphne, an anthology about having sex with local legend Daphne Gottlieb!

Yes Means Yes receives a starred review from Publishers Weekly

Seal Press is excited to share an amazing review from Publishers Weekly for Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape, edited by Jaclyn Friedman and Jessica Valenti.

In addition to the starred review below check out the Yes Means Yes blog.

Congratulations to the editors, contributors, and all involved, for this review. It's so well deserved.

*Yes Means Yes! : Visions of Female Sexual Power & A World Without Rape
Jaclyn Friedman and Jessica Valenti. Seal, $15.95 (256p) ISBN 9781580052573

Activists and writers Friedman and Valenti (He's a Stud, She's a Slut) deliver an extraordinary essay compilation focusing on the struggle to stop rape in the U.S. and the importance of sexual identity and ownership. Early on, Thomas MacAulay Millar and Rachel Kramer Bussel explain how the “no means no” concept (sexual consent equals the absence of no) must be rejected in favor of a “yes means yes” mentality: the idea that consent means affirmative participation in the act itself, a broader definition that better protects women while encouraging power over—not fear of—personal sexual identity. Other topics include body image and self-esteem issues as well as incest, the dangers faced by female immigrants and the public perception of rape; in “Trial by Media,” Samhita Mukhopadhyay looks at the Duke Lacrosse rape case and finds the media acting in the tradition of slavery by commodifying the young, female African-American body. Though surprisingly entertaining throughout, with no shortage of wit or humor, unexpected topics (Friedman on enjoying sex, transsexual writer Julia Serano on the mixed cultural messages that lead “nice guys” to sexual aggression) keep the book dynamic. Sure to empower and inform, this is an important and inspiring read for assault survivors, educators, activists, experts and those on a path to self discovery. (Jan.)

Campus Progress.org spends Five Minutes With: Jessica Valenti

On February 3rd, Sarah Karlin of Campus Progress, interviewed Jessica Valenti, founding editor of Feministing.com and the author of the upcoming Purity Myth (due out April 2009) In this interview Jessica talks about her new book, her motivation, and how feminism shapes her daily life. Check out the interview here.

Yes Means Yes Blog Tour!

The editors and contributors of Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape (Seal Press / January 2009) will be participating in a blog tour starting today. Join Jessica Valenti, Jaclyn Friedman, Cara Kulwicki, Samhita Mukhopadhyay, and Miriam Perez for a 3PM livechat on Feministing to kick things off.

Below is a listing of the tour as it progresses:

Feministing - 2/2
Kickoff livechat with Jaclyn Friedman, Jessica Valenti, Miriam Perez, Samhita Mukhopadhyay & Cara Kulwicki

The F-Word - 2/3
Q&A with Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

RH Reality Check - 2/4
Live chat with Julia Serano & Latoya Peterson

Our Bodies Our Blog - 2/5
Q&A with Brad Perry & Lisa Jervis

Shakesville - 2/9
Live chat with Jaclyn Friedman

Scarleteen - 2/10
Heather Corinna on the notion that post-feminism, young women are expected to have a LOT easier time with the yesses, with their sexuality, but that that simply is often not so, in part because they have a whole new set of challenges to grapple with.

Angry Black Bitch - 2/11
Q&A with Tiloma Jayasinghe

Shapely Prose - 2/12
Q&A with Kimberly Springer

Bitch Ph.D. - 2/16
Guest blogging with Jaclyn Friedman & Jessica Valenti

Shameless - 2/17
Q&A with Jill Filipovic

IMPACT - 2/18
Q&A with Anastasia Higginbotham

Radical Doula - 2/19
Q&A with Hazel/Cedar Troost

Feministe - 2/20
Grand finale conversation: Rachel Kramer Bussel, Toni Amato, Javacia Harris, Kate Harding, Stacey May Fowles, Hanne Blank, Heather Corinna