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Andy Couturier is the recent recipient of the gold medal for the 2017 Nautilis Book Awards in Green Living & Sustainability. He is an active and widely published author with more than forty publishing credits to his name, including the Pushcart Prize-nominated essay, “Selling Indulgence in Corporate Japan”, and two full-length books, Writing Open the Mind and The Abundance of Less, formerly called A Different Kind of Luxury, now going into its fourth printing in a brand new updated edition. His third book, Much, was performed live at the Marsh Main Stage in San Francisco. (Much is not yet available to the public.) His fourth, an ecological adventure novel entitled The Business of Monkeys (working title) is in its third draft. |
Andy’s work has been published in the MIT Press, Adbusters, The Japan Times, The Oakland Tribune, Creative Nonfiction Magazine, The North American Review, and Fiber Arts Magazine, among many others.
In addition to his enthusiasm for his personal writing projects, Andy loves to teach writing. He has directed The Opening, a writing center offering courses online and in Santa Cruz, CA, for more than 20 years.
Andy has taught writing in such far-flung environments as a botanical research station in the hills of Sri Lanka, a Silicon Valley corporation, SF MOMA, the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology and the inner-city classrooms of San Francisco. He has also taught in formal settings such as JFK University, Cal State University East Bay, and UC Santa Cruz and offers a Teacher Training Certificate Program through The Opening.
Andy has lectured internationally about his books at more than 40 locations, including the Commonwealth Club of California, Powell’s Books, and Book Passage. You can learn more about Andy's talks and reviews here, and listen to radio and podcasts that he has been interviewed in here.
In June of 2018, Andy is embarking on a month-long lecture tour in China to talk about The Abundance of Less and its message. This lecture tour is sponsored by Green Initiatives, a non-profit organization for environmental justice, promoting sustainability and change toward sustainable models of growth and consumption. With over 20 speaking engagements, this tour hopes to bring some of the wisdom from the people profiled in Andy's book to the residents of urban China, who are finding themselves stuck in the trap of industrialized, commercialized culture. You can find out more here.
Andy's book for Writers about Writing...
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“Powerful writing comes naturally when your mind is energized and experimental, when it can take risks and follow the unexpected wherever it leads. Forty-five rollicking writing exercises to liberate your writing process.”
Use the techniques in this book to jump-start your creativity, learn new tricks and expand your writing repertoire. - Use the surrealist technique of “automatic writing;” - Play with archetypal imagery from the Tarot; - Learn from the resonances of the body; - Write in diverse voices and styles; - Connect with the luminous natural world; - Scramble word sequences to break the habit of making “sense” |
This rollicking guide opens dozens of gateways to the subconscious world. Whether you are writing for publication or for personal pleasure, the practical tools and liberating philosophy found in this book will release the genius of the intuitive mind.
This rollicking guide opens dozens of gateways to the subconscious world. Whether you are writing for publication or for personal pleasure, the practical tools and liberating philosophy found in this book will release the genius of the intuitive mind.