Out of the Fire

The Out of the Fire anthology, a collection of written and visual art primarily from the Calaveras County community, has been a natural outcome of the human need to share stories. At the height of the Butte Fire destruction and then into the following days and months of rescue and recovery, people gathered to comfort one another, restore hope, and share their experiences. Manzanita Writers Press put into motion a project to provide blog space for all community members to submit writing, photo art, and images that tell their stories, with the intention that a curated collection in a published anthology would appear in 2017 with a website to follow. At the same time, artists Robin Modlin and Anne Cook, through a Calaveras County Arts Council grant, created a mosaic project called Pieces, readying burned and broken relics such as pottery bits, pieces of tools, household implements, and other objects, to use as texture for the memorial wall in Mountain Ranch. The artists contacted Manzanita Writers Press (MWP) asking whether affiliated authors would write original stories based on their arrangements of artifacts salvaged from blasted homes and properties. The resulting poetry and prose were published by MWP in the "Pieces Vignettes" chapbook, accompanying photos by Will Mosgrove. The Out of the Fire blog, housed on the Manzanita Writers Press website, continues to accept submissions from community members in order to document an ongoing record of the impact of the fire on the Calaveras Community. Narrowly escaping the Butte Fire that singed our family property, after enduring many other threats from fires over the last twenty-five years within a three-mile radius of our home, I was once again reminded of the fragility of our living space and the beauty of the region, achingly lost for many people whose houses and the natural landscape of their property and vistas burned. The healing mission of the Butte Fire anthology was born within a month of the destructive conflagration. We set to work the end of September 2015, planning healing writing sessions, art therapy, and creating a record of the event through the power of story and poetry and art. Out of destruction can come despair, but then the green shoot of hope works its way into the mix. That must be what happened with us. We felt an overwhelming desire to create an artistic home for artists, writers, musicians, historians, and the equally creative public appreciation for such a place spurred the editors of Manzanita Writers Press to house their artistic endeavors in Angels Camp. Manzanita Arts Emporium came into existence to create a safe, friendly, and beautiful haven for visitors to our region and locals and residents alike. Our mission is to provide a positive literary, artistic, educational, historical, and cultural environment for the community, and this anthology continues our long tradition as a respected and supportive regional publisher.