The Telling Image

A full High Five to celebrate! 

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A full High Five to celebrate!  Five book award competitions have chosen my book The Telling Image Shapes of Changing Times. It won Grand Prize Best Nonfiction 2019 from Next Gen Indie Book Awards, where it was recognized with a ceremony in Washington, D.C. during the American Library Association Convention. It was selected for the  Nautilus Book Award, which honors better books for a better world. The National Indie Excellence Award and the Independent Press Award also chose it as their winner. News of my fifth book award was just received from NYC Big Book Award, which selects for great ideas from around the globe. The Telling Image took home awards in three categories: Photography, Coffee Table Book, and Book Interior Design Nonfiction.

It is gratifying that ideas that sleep in my mind awaken in books that reach other minds. It is thrilling when my book is honored for its writing, photographs, design, cover, and quality. Writers write in isolation, not knowing if the words will land with welcome by readers. When awards are received, it lets the writer know that an invisible full circle has occurred - that an unknown reader and an unknown judge have sent their nod that an idea transferred from my mind to theirs. It is a sacred circle. 

New Podcast Interviews and Talks

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In July, I was interviewed by A Pretty Normal Podcast, a show that re-imagines what society considers normal. It was interesting to dive into my past as a documentary filmmaker and how I came to write my book, The Telling Image.

I also gave a talk to the Institute for Spirituality and Health in Houston, Texas. Some fantastic conversation came from the questions asked in the Q&A that I’m still thinking about today. You can watch the talk via Youtube.

The Telling Image is a bestseller on Amazon and you can grab your copy here. We can read the past and glimpse the future by watching when shapes shift. See what you think.

You Are My Other Self: Recent Articles and Mentions

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The virus may be invisible, but the rush of human activity reducing to a hush is visible on seismic readings. The Earth itself knows we are ceasing from disturbing her. Coronavirus lockdowns have changed the way Earth moves.

Breakdown or Breakthrough: Changing the Covid Crisis to Opportunity (International Coronavirus Journal)

Each day the Coronavirus unfurls in new dimensions, statistics, challenges. In April I wrote a feature and in May it was published in an International Coronavirus Journal. The exponential nature of this virus' spread and its consequences continually surprise. May strength and imagination be with everyone dealing with its developing consequences.

Through this pandemic, we relearn we are part of nature. Viruses are part of us, between us, in us, connecting us. Viruses are highly adaptive. They mutate easily. Maybe they are teaching us how to evolve.

My article was shared by Reverend Barkley S. Thompson, Christ Church Cathedral Houston, who has his own thoughts to share about the Covid Crisis:

Success Life Masters Series with Eric Reid

I recently interviewed with Eric Reid about my book, The Telling Image: Shapes of Changing Times. In these times, we need a bigger perspective. One that lets us read the past and glimpse the future by watching when shapes shift.

Check out the video interview here:


The Fifth Dimension Podcast with Evan McDermod

How can human perception and historical progress be tracked through the years? And based on what we know about the past, can we use it to see the direction we are heading in the future. When looking at different eras of human history, we can see our perception of reality encompassed through our methods of organization. By looking at our past, we can begin to enhance our own perspective to see the interconnectedness that does exist between all humans, and in turn create a society fueled by that widened lens.

The Telling Image Wins Independent Press Award

A happy surprise.

My book, The Telling Image: Shapes of Changing Times, just won its fourth book award from Independent Press Awards, an international competition.

This comes on top of being named Grand Prize Winner for Best Nonfiction 2019 from Next Gen Indie Book Awards, a Gold from Nautilus Book Awards, and an Indie Excellence Award. This book was 25 years in the making, so the satisfaction that it was understood and appreciated is immense. Enjoy shape-seeking.

A Third Win for The Telling Image

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The National Indie Excellence Awards emphasize a synergy of form and content in judging their award winners. My book, The Telling Image: Shapes of Changing Times delivers its message through its 200 images, as much as its text delivers its ideas - a synergy of form and content. So I was thrilled to be selected for its Excellence Award for both Arts and Entertainment as well as Cover Design.

As a former documentary filmmaker for NBC News, I had to find a telling image that conveyed the essence of the information that I scripted. In covering foreign cultures or national issues, I realized how important shape is in downloading the world into order and meaning. Shape itself can be a symbol that tells us the thinking, the mental map, of the culture that built a circular settlement, a pyramid, a town square, a roundabout or a downtown grid. These very shapes reflect whether a society is based on equality or hierarchy, on qualities or quantities, on flow or fixed places.

National awards for Indie books are especially welcomed as independent publishing, from university presses to hybrid publishing, are rising dramatically while traditional publishers are merging and shrinking. The more ideas that are shared, the stronger the society. Thanks to awards such as this, merit can still be recognized even within a system where all can enter. I am grateful to the National Indie Excellence Award judges for the difference their recognition makes for independent writers and excited to be recognized for excellence.

Goodreads Giveaway of The Telling Image

Goodreads Book Giveaway

The Telling Image by Lois Farfel Stark

The Telling Image

by Lois Farfel Stark

Giveaway ends December 27, 2017.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

Are you on Goodreads? I'm excited to announce that I'll be giving away 25 advance copies of The Telling Image: Shapes of Changing Times via Goodreads! To enter, click the above link. 

Announcing The Telling Image

The Telling Image

Shapes of Changing Times

by Lois Farfel Stark

Now Available for Pre-Order! 

I am very pleased to share with you the cover for my new book, The Telling Image: Shapes of Changing Times. This book has been ten years in the making. As many of my friends can attest, these ideas have been swirling with me since my years as a documentary filmmaker for NBC News. During my travels, I was trained to look for the telling image—a picture that gives the essence of the story. In covering countries in times of tension and transition, I had to look through other people’s eyes to learn how they saw the world. I filmed in Abu Dhabi before the United Arab Emirates were unified, in Cuba ten years after their revolution, in Northern Ireland when their religious conflict burst into urban warfare, and in Liberia covering its social split.

While history gives us versions of a story, a telling image has the power to tap a deeper understanding. I practiced seeing with new eyes, open to take in the unfamiliar and to discover clues to another culture’s worldview. Dropping into a foreign country and trying to understand it enough to present its various factions, historic background, and current controversy was daunting and humbling. I knew I needed to lasso the topics at play, and I knew I would never know everything. One approach I took was to step back and look at the situation with the largest lens, seeing all sides, noticing the geography that influenced the culture’s way of living, and learning the historic background. I had to find an image that could relay the issues and emotions, the culture and landscape, in a way that could convey more than words can explain.

Searching for the telling image of a story, I found one, hiding in plain sight. It was shape itself. Once I looked for shape, I saw it everywhere—in shelters, social systems, and sacred sites. From indigenous cultures to modern societies, our answers to survival, social bonding, and sacred symbols differ vastly. Yet the blueprint for each culture became clear when I looked for shape.

Now you can join in my journey. I extend my thanks to my friends, colleagues, and supporters who have been there with me along the way. Without you, this book wouldn't be possible.

If you'd like to receive more updates about my book, click here to sign up for my book newsletter and get a free excerpt of the book. Or you can pre-order your copy on Amazon. 

Upside Down

Upside Down

Have you ever looked at photograph of a human face upside down? It takes awhile for our eyes to process through our brain, to even be sure it is a face, much less a face we know.  Our automatic recognition of the world is keyed to frame and name the familiar. 
 
Today’s world can seem upside down. Accelerated change has made it almost impossible to find a fixed point that is not in flux. The shape of cities will alter as we go from cars we drive to cars that drive themselves. Drones multiply our capacities to see with 360 degree vision, both from above the landscape and within buildings .Think of astronauts floating in the space station, with no up nor down, somersaulting rather than walking. We relearn how to orient, how to pattern, while it’s all in motion.
 
Henry Ford said if he had asked people what they want, they would have said faster horses. If Steve Jobs had asked us, we could not have imagined icons that lead us to draw on a computer, icons that let us shop on a cell phone. So let’s be clear. Since we are in motion, since the new can come to us from any angle, we must start to see like a floating astronaut, alert in all directions.
 
Familiar patterns are coming to us upside down. Dylan the musician gave a concert in England in 1965 where the first half was his popular folksong style. The second half burst open with an electric band, full of unfamiliar sounds, that are now classics, such as Tell Me How Does It Feel from the song Like a Rolling Stone. Food is in fusion, from IndoChine to Tex Mex. Family systems now come in multiple combinations, as well as gender. It feels like a blend, a potpourri, but eventually fresh forms become their own new selves, like jazz, where African beats become American blues.
 
More voices are being heard today by more people than ever before. By voices I mean musicians, writers from all cultures, tech creations from drones to genomics.
It is the age of participation, of networking, of the inane and the incredible in the same mix.
It can disorient, seem raw, but also freshly intriguing, up to each of us to discern the pattern in unfamiliar terms, like recognizing a face upside down.
 

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