Christa Avampato's Blog, page 21

The galley of my novel, Emerson Page and Where the Light Leads, is finalized

From the author page of my book

Buzzing with excitement! The watermarked galley (proof copy) of my novel, Emerson Page and Where the Light Leads, is finalized! The press release and sell sheet are in progress. The manuscript along with the press release, sell sheet, and cover letter comprise the media packet. These will start to go out to media reviewers next week, as well as feature editors, book sellers, podcast hosts, book award competitions, and potential partners.

My website and socials will be updated, as well as my newsletter, in the new year. The next season of my podcast, JoyProject, will focus on the book, writing, and publishing. I want this book to be a bright spot, not a blind spot. I want Emerson’s story to be a respite so everyone who slips into her world for a short time can gather the strength and inspiration they need to keep going. A trip through a magical version of New York City and Ireland can do wonders for the imagination!

Publishing a book is akin to starting a business, marketing and promoting a book is a joint responsibility between the publisher and the author. My experience in business (specifically as an entrepreneur and product developer) is enormously helpful in my work as an author. Because I’m often pitched to as a journalist, I work hard to craft my pitches so they’re personal, relevant, and as interesting as possible. I need to make it easy to want to read and share my book, and I’m grateful to anyone and everyone who takes the time to even consider my pitch. I know how precious time is.

To that end, if you or someone you know would be interested in reviewing or selling the book in any medium or channel, please let me know at christa.avampato@gmail.com. A million thank yous!

Rewilding the World with Ben Goldsmith

Rewilding the World with Ben Goldsmith

If you’re interested in rewilding—the practice of restoring and protecting wild places and the many species who call those wild places home — the podcast Rewilding the World with Ben Goldsmith is incredible. Ben speaks to some of the most influential people behind the most exciting and dramatic rewilding projects across the globe including Turkey, the Balkans, Chile, Argentina, Africa’s Sahel, India, England, Scotland, the UK, Spain, Portugal, Western North America, Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, the Sinai peninsula, Transylvania, Carpathia, Romania, and the Great Plains of the U.S. (What a list!)

Not only has this podcast further ignited my passion for rewilding and the promise it holds to make this a healthier, more sustainable world for all beings, but it’s also grown my list of places to travel to, my reading list, and my desire to care for wild places in any and every way I can. In a world that’s often dark and difficult, rewilding is a bright light of hope and joy that shows us what’s possible when we realize we are a part of nature, not apart from nature. 

Right now there are 20 episodes to enjoy, and Ben will be back again with a fresh set of episodes in early 2024. I’m so grateful for his efforts and the work being done by all of his inspiring guests.

The Most Creative Look to the Future

From the UN Global Pulse . https://www.unglobalpulse.org/

Too often our society is quick to label people, to put us in a box as creative or not creative, and that term is not always used as a compliment. Regardless of our profession or where we work, we are all creatives. Our imagination is the most powerful tool we have to build a brighter future.

UN Global Pulse, The United Nations Secretary-General’s Innovation Lab, just published “The Most Creative Look to the Future” that offers learnings and recommendations about how creative practices can help the UN embrace uncertainty and complexity through peace, unity, and collaboration. The creation of the UN itself was a bold creative act borne out of darkness and difficulty, and continues to be a work in progress in a complex and complicated world. This publication is valuable for organizations of any size and type. My favorite take-aways from it:

– Our imaginations give us a way to connect with one another, even those of us who have been previously disconnected.

– Creativity helps us to give voice to emotions and values, and offers us a new way to see others and to be seen by others.

– Storytelling is one of the oldest forms of technology, allowing us to describe and grapple with complex systems to model change and play out a wide variety of scenarios.

– A more peaceful, sustainable, healthier, and happier future begins in the imagination, and we can imagine ourselves and our world into a better state.

– Imagination is a team sport, and becomes richer and more meaningful when we collectively pool our creativity.

The publication concludes with further resources and frameworks that organizations can start using today to embed creative practices into their work and teams. In the new year, I’m excited to share these with my teams as we begin to shape our future work together.

You can download a free PDF of The Most Creative Look to the Future here: https://christaavampato.files.wordpress.com/2023/12/the-most-creative-look-to-the-future.pdf

My dream job at the New York Climate Exchange

After returning from a week at University of Cambridge / Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL), I’m thinking a lot of about what’s next for my career after I finish my dissertation in July 2024. I envy people who have a single passion that drives them. I’m interested in so many areas and I’m not sure which path to choose.

At Cambridge, one of my favorite session was run by Louise Drake whose scholarship I deeply admire. She asked us to reflect on CISL’s new Leadership for a Sustainable Future Framework principles: connected, collaborative, creative, and courageous. Our task was to consider how we might move forward our careers in one of these areas. I chose courageous, and it was an emotional reflection for me. Questions that flooded my mind included: How might I be more courageous in my career choices and actions?; What is the most impactful way to use my time and talents?; Am I taking enough chances, risks, and big bets?; How do I ensure I don’t regret how I spend my time?

After this reflection, some of my friends helped me see that my many interests and desire to connect and rally people through storytelling, joy, and hope is my superpower. I believe in breaking down walls and repurposing those walls to build a longer table for people to connect, collaborate, and create together. These friends and Lou helped me reframe what I thought was a distraction into a focus, and I’m immensely grateful for their wisdom.

Reflecting on this, I do have a dream job and it’s right in my backyard of New York City where my ancestors entered this country 120 years ago. The New York Climate Exchange (“The Exchange”) is a first-of-its-kind non-profit organization and partnership network based at Governor’s Island in New York Harbor (near the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island) comprised of leading universities, businesses, and community groups collaborating to accelerate climate change solutions for NYC and beyond. Its mission is to confront urgent climate impacts and issues of environmental injustice, breaking down silos through an innovative, scalable, and sustainable model that will rapidly develop new urban climate solutions. In 2024, I’d love to join the team at The Exchange that’s embarking on this grand adventure.

Already, Domus has named the design of The Exchange’s 400,000 square-foot-campus by Skidmore, Owings, & Merrill (SOM) as one of the best urban regeneration projects of 2023. With a combined ~$700 million investment, construction is anticipated to begin in 2025. Collaborative projects, including research initiatives, programs with community groups, workforce training programs, and K-12 outreach will begin earlier.

This is a place that can be the massive lever for change we need to mitigate, adapt to, and become more resilient to climate change impacts. I hope I can give my talents to such an incredible cause and place. https://nyclimateexchange.org/

All images above are renderings from the New York Climate Exchange website.

Let love lead

Dinner at Selwyn College. Photo by Mitch Reznick.

I’m flying back to the U.S. now after a week at University of Cambridge / Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL) with passionate, intelligent, and inspiring classmates, presenters, professors, and the CISL team. This time I grew as much personally as professionally. I was able to ask questions, have discussions, and voice ideas I’ve previously struggled to articulate. I couldn’t have done that without my classmates and friends who listened, provided kind and constructive feedback, and offered their ideas, perspectives, and experiences. This is a gift I carry with me now. I’m so grateful for all of it.

Humour, play, creativity, and imagination played a role in many of our classes and social activities, and they helped bring joy, light, hope, and optimism into this challenging field. The work we do, on this course and in our lives as we attempt to tackle climate change issues from many different angles, is intense. It can also be intensely fun.

On a personal note, I began the week thinking of my stepfather who was my Dad-by-choice. My family lost him a year ago exactly on the day this workshop at Cambridge began. I honoured him in my pecha kucha presentation by sharing the last words he ever said to me in-person. I went to see my family right before our first workshop in September 2022. He said to me, “Hey, I know you’ll work hard at Cambridge, but please try to have some fun over there, too.”

My Dad knew me well, and it’s been difficult to lose someone who was always in my corner and read every piece of writing I’ve ever published. I could feel his spirit with me all week, encouraging me to embrace laughter and love whenever possible, especially during challenging times. Love and laughter serve as resources to help us stay with the trouble. They make us resilient. When we lead with love, we can open people up so that we deeply connect, collaborate, and create to tackle the most serious challenges together.

These photos show our formal dinner together at Selwyn College, my view from the train leaving Cambridge, and my Pops. As I go back to my New York life, I will do my best to put into action everything I learned in this beautiful, inspiring sanctuary with these beautiful, inspiring people. I’m already looking forward to July when we’ll be together again in Cambridge. I’m the luckiest person to be a part of this.

My view from the train – Cambridge to London. Photo by Christa Avampato.

The season of soft things

My view on the train to Bristol, UK. Photo by Christa Avampato.

It is the season of soft things. Warm tea. Thick blankets. Crackling fires. Cozy sweaters. Candle light. Woollen socks. Hugs. Laughter. Kindness. Whispers. Dreams. The world seems especially hard right now, with sharp edges that cut and harm. I find myself craving comfort, ease, and quiet. Seeking out people who exude warmth, welcome, and joy.

Our world, especially our working world, often demands structure and immutable processes. Too often telling us what is and has been must continue to be. This relentless beat can make me tired and worn. It’s in these moments that I remind myself the value of flexibility, the ability to bend so we don’t break.

We so often prize efficiency and abhor redundancy, until we recognize that nature in all her glorious wisdom has survived and thrived for nearly 4 billion years because of her integrated systems that are stronger than the sum of the parts, with pieces that back up one another so that as a united whole they can weather the storms, accommodate change, and retain balance, even and especially in crisis. And there are always storms, and change, and crises.

Nature built herself to flex, to make room, to expect the unexpected, to support. What if that became our goal, for ourselves, our organizations, our government, our world? How then might be change, grow, evolve, and be? I suspect that in this season of soft things, I may find answers to those questions by the time the light of spring returns.

Grateful for the year that’s past and the year ahead

Prospect Park, Brooklyn. Photo by Christa Avampato.

Real talk: every day I navigate the waters between disappointment and joy. Today I found out I didn’t get a fellowship I applied to, and that I may have some additional writing work coming my way that’s completely aligned to dream work I’d like to do. 

This is the yin and yang of being a creative of any kind — we win some, and we lose a lot so we have to constantly put ourselves and our work out there. We never know what will resonate with others, and the only way to know is it to give it a try and see what lands.

This time of year always puts me in a reflective mood. I take some time to take a breath. I take stock of how I’m doing, how I’m feeling, and where I want to go from here in the year ahead. Most importantly I reflect on what I’ve learned and how I’m going to carry those learnings forward.

Today I’m starting that journey to reflect on this past year, and I’m excited to share what I find as a sift the sands of 2023 over the next month. I do know that 2024 is shaping up to be a pivotal year in my life, and I’m grateful to be here for all of it. Happy holidays to all celebrating this week.

How Rilke and the forest became part of my graduate school dissertation

Me surrounded by ginko gold in Prospect Park

I’m deep into the work of my University of Cambridge dissertation. The more I learn, the more questions I have. I’m sitting at my laptop, looking at the research and also monitoring the news. Where do I begin with all of the problems, pain, and promise in the world? How can I make a difference?

I close my laptop and go to the forest, where I always go when I don’t know what to do. My forest is Prospect Park in Brooklyn. The ginko trees are putting on a show—my favorite kind of gold. Walking there among the crunchy colorful leaves on the forest floor, the autumn sun on my face, breathing in the cool dry air, I think of Rilke and his beautiful quote about living the questions in the book Letters to a Young Poet. 

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” ~Rainer Maria Rilke

Maybe the point of my dissertation is not to find an answer, but instead to find a way to ask powerful questions that help readers live into answers of their own making and choosing. Maybe I’ve been trying to make my dissertation a solution when what’s really needed is a mirror, using stories to reflect individual truths back to people who haven’t yet seen them on their own, to help them stand in the power they don’t know they have to shape the world in a way where everyone brings their gifts and resources to the table and uses them to collaboratively to win together. 

This is how a forest operates, the flora and fauna sharing with and caring for one another, each taking what they need and giving what they have. Diversity is celebrated, and necessary for health. Abundance is created through deep cooperation. Imagine a human society like that. Maybe I’ve found an answer after all. 

The National Climate Assessment shows us we can save the world

Photo by Shane Rounce on Unsplash

Look at your hands. Coupled with your mind and heart, your hands, joined with mine and with people across the globe, have the power to save the world. We can choose to be the artificers of our own bright and bountiful future.

Today we have a once-in-human-existence opportunity — the chance to create a healthy, vibrant, sustainable world for all beings. And not just for our children and grandchildren, but for ourselves and all beings alive right now.

The 2023 National Climate Assessment released Tuesday in the U.S. lays out the dire possibilities from global warming. It also shows that collectively we have all the knowledge, money, and creativity we need to halt emissions that cause global warming. There is proof the solutions work. Climate solutions are being deployed nationwide in every region and annual emissions dropped 12% from 2013–2019. We need them to drop much more but this is progress.

The one remaining hold out is us. Do we have the will to save ourselves and life on Earth?

“How much more the world warms depends on the choices societies make today,” states the report. “The future is in human hands.”

The report is hefty and so is the opportunity before us. Let’s not waste it.

JAY-Z: entertainment, music, and social justice icon

If you see only one cultural exhibition in New York City between now and December 4th, get yourself to the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library at Grand Army Plaza to see the JAY-Z exhibit—The Book of HOV: A celebration of the life and work of Shawn “JAY-Z” Carter. (HOV is a play on Jehovah, another name for God, because people marveled at his incredible ability to improvise and create whole songs in minutes.) A few weeks ago, I used my morning run to wind my way from my Brooklyn apartment through Prospect Park to the library.

On the terrace in front of the library, pictures of JAY-Z with people such as President Barack Obama and performing on stage rotate on over-sized screens. The front facade of the library is wrapped in lyrics from his music. It brought me so much joy to see so many people — every age, race, and creed — enjoying the library. This is exactly why JAY-Z and his Roc Nation team decided to stage his exhibit here: to have it be free and within walking distance to the Marcy Houses, the public housing project in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn neighborhood where he grew up, so everyone could be part of it.

Inside, there are photos of JAY-Z, examples of the many products he’s created, collaborations he’s forged, and awards he’s won. Visitors can play his records on turntables, look at his original masters (which he now owns after making a deal with Def Jam — he agreed to be President of Def Jam for 3 years provided that his masters would then be returned to him), sit inside a re-creation of the main room of his Baseline Recording Studios, walk through an immersive experience celebrating his achievements, and marvel at the array of memorabilia that commemorate his many accomplishments. 

As amazing as all of this is, what absolutely stunned me and what I can’t stop thinking about is how JAY-Z has used his fame and fortune more than any other artist to make the world a better place by standing up for those who could not stand up for themselves. He and his team at Roc Nation were unrelenting in their demands for justice for inmates at Parchman Farm, a maximum-security prison in the Mississippi Delta. They fight rampant racism that runs through businesses and organizations around the world. They hold a social justice summit in New York City. They make documentaries including Time: The Kalief Browder Story and Rest in Power: The Trayvon Martin Story. They stand against hate crimes, gun violence, and police brutality, not only with their words but with funds to provide pro-bono legal support and with their time to walk with the people they’re helping on their journeys. They champion artists, athletes, and Black-owned businesses. The list goes on and on. 

Sometimes celebrities sit back after they leave the stage. They enjoy their retirement, and I don’t begrudge them for that. We all have a right to decide how to live our lives and spend our time. What I find so impressive and admirable about JAY-Z is that he looked at his celebrity and fortune, and rather than take a well-deserved rest, he accelerated. He’s done even more off the stage than he did as a performer. And for someone as prolific and influential in entertainment, that is a feat maybe he didn’t even foresee. 

I’m a fan of JAY-Z’s music, but to be honest, I’m even more of a fan of who he is as a human and what he’s done to further humanity as a whole. He’s still got a long runway ahead and I can’t wait to see what he does next. 

The Book of HOV is on exhibit until December 4th, JAY-Z’s birthday. If you can’t get to New York, the website that accompanies the exhibit is excellent. You can also watch the recording of JAY-Z’s November 14, 2023 prime time interview with Gayle King on CBS.  

All photos taken by Christa Avampato.