CONFLUX PRESS FEATURED AUTHOR: Jan VanStavern Jan VanStavern grew up in Columbus, Ohio, and studied poetry at Oberlin College and UC Davis before moving to Portland, Oregon, where she now teaches at Chemeketa Community College. Jan first met her adopted Chinese daughter, Zoe, then ten months old, in a provincial office in Nanjing, China, and let her chew on her sunglasses. The adoption experience and their developing bond resulted in Jan's Conflux Press poetry collection, The Long Birth. Jan has done an amazing job promoting her book to a receptive, focused audience. First, she decided a book about her daughter should be fun even for six-year-olds to hear read, so she enlisted Zoe to help her recite "Fish, fish, what do you wish?" at kid-friendly readings with music by Lorin Wilkinson in Portland. She created a web site for the book, advertised her readings on Facebook, and sold copies on Amazon marketplace and in her college bookstore, as well as at small bookstores in Portland. Readings included performances with Wilkinson (some kid friendly, some evening and martini friendly), a cross-continental reading in Ohio, and contact with the school librarian at her daughter's Chinese immersion elementary school. To deepen the connection to the Chinese adoptive community, she also donated a portion of the proceeds from the book to Half the Sky Foundation, a charity that supports orphanages and training in China. Bearing a Child an Ocean Away Between the devil        and the (deep blue)     Sea, this littlesweetness                 this toy in a mouth (books about how to do this. Too much advice)  & the random tadpole of chance, with its peach tail, & the way kindness and betrayal both smell like cake— there were seeds to sow, and some evenings here were mornings.       There                 were deadlines to meet, & a fertility doctor said, “Make me proud,” so I sang softly   (to my                         it turns out empty womb, in a Target store.) So technically our first shopping trip as mother/daughter Occurred                     when you were not               there & hadn’t been born. Time had plans for little                         Shoppers.  (and in erotic action            across the ocean,     two mystery guests in a difficult situation created their best accident): You,          growing in her ocean: finger, finger; bone, bone, heart; a muscle ripe as a rainy Valentine. You would become a baby in China. I would bear you like an imaginary friend I couldn’t                           stop thinking of, wearing out the paperback of our love. Meanwhile, somewhere in China:                       your lungs opened at first breath, & in Ohio, your Grandmother ordered a quilt with your name on it. You little water,               evening river, fluting torrent, quiet spring: (Your first lady disappears. You were left                                    without the usual necessities.) Know this: you did not enter alone. - from The Long Birth