Found Art Blog Tour

For the next three weeks, we are pleased to host Leeana Tankersley and her latest release, Found Art.

Debut author Leeana Tankersley constructs a literary collage of memories and mementoes from living in the Middle East during the Iraq War in her travel memoir, Found Art: Discovering Beauty in Foreign Places (Nov. 2009). If you enjoyed the writing style of Shauna Niequist (Cold Tangerines) or Elizabeth Gilbert’s travel memoir Eat, Pray, Love, then you don’t want to miss this one!

Even if you have not read the book yourself, you can participate in some of the projects on our tour (and have the chance to win a copy of the book!).

Photography Project (March 1-5):
Writer and Photographer Tasra Dawson (tasramar.com) will host a photography project on her blog. Participants will be asked to capture beauty, especially in something that someone else might not see as beautiful, and then given the opportunity to post a picture of something beautiful and explain why they find beauty there. You will be able to add a link to your photo from Tasra’s website to share in the project.

Please find all the details of the Photography Project here: http://tasramar.com/2010/03/found-art-discovering-beauty-in-foreign-places-giveaway-challenge/

Challenge and Blogging/Facebook Meme (March 8-12):
In her book, Leeana talks about her insecurities and shares with readers a short list of some of them. She talks about how identifying and sharing them helped free her from the power they held over her. Participants will be asked to list 5 things they get hung up on about themselves, and then they can encourage others to participate as well. The purpose will ultimately be to offer a little freedom from those insecurities to those who choose to participate in the challenge.

Artistic Response (March 15-19):
Writer and Artist Erin Teske (http://www.likepaperlanterns.blogspot.com) will kick off our artistic response project on her blog, They Hang Like Paper Lanterns.
Option 1: In Found Art Leeana talks about practicing silence. Participants will be given the challenge to practice silence for one hour (more if they are able). We’ll give a few thoughts or questions for people to ponder during that time of silence. Then we’ll ask them to create a collage as an artistic response based upon what they learn through that time

Option 2: Create a collage of your life. Use words and pictures from magazines, odds and ends from around your house, and original paintings or drawings or writings. Don’t worry about creating something perfect. Just be true to yourself and choose items that particularly resonate with you, even if you don’t know exactly why.

About Found Art:

After marrying a Navy SEAL, Tankersley moved over 8,000 miles away from her home in San Diego to Bahrain where her husband was stationed. She retraces her steps through the Middle East, and she recalls the subtle changes in herself that left her utterly transformed. Somewhere between bartering in a souq, a Middle Eastern market, and wearing a borrowed abaya, an Islamic overgarment, to tour the Grand Mosque, Tankersley found a profound beauty in the unknown that sunk beneath her skin.

Found Art is an insightful collection of stories that Tankersley crafts into a literary piece of artwork. With an artist’s eye she combines bits of memories and trinkets – a handwritten note from Kuwait, a braid of fringe from a Persian rug, a Navy SEAL Trident – to create her own piece of Found Art. She celebrates what most would overlook – a receipt from the Russian-Georgian restaurant on Louisiana Street, a bit of basting thread – to piece together a work of unexpected beauty.

“Writing, for me, is often about two things,” says Tankersley, “creative processing and authentic giving. The book has been my way of working through, and then salvaging, the bits and pieces of Bahrain. In that sense, I wrote it for myself, so that I would never forget. Also, I wrote the book for those who are feeling lost, as I have felt so often. Ideally it offers the honest gifts of permission and validation and hope and beauty.”

Perfect for book clubs or small groups, Tankersley includes discussion prompts broken down by chapter for personal or group reflection. Tankersley invites readers into her deepest insecurities and her greatest joys of living in a foreign place. Her writing encourages readers to discover the beauty of the foreign places in their own lives – whether it be a year abroad or entering a new season of life.

Found Art
By Leeana Tankersly
Zondervan
9780310291336
224 Pages
PUB DATE: November 2009