Featured By Global Living Magazine As One Of Best Expat Books

Thanks to Shelley Antscherl for naming Expat Harem among best expat anthologies in the January/February 2014 issue of Global Living Magazine!

I'm proud the book is listed alongside the work of editors like Suzanne Kamata of "Call Me Okasaan: Adventures In Multicultural Mothering", Monica Neboli of "Drinking Camel's Milk In The Yurt: Expat Stories from Kazahkstan", Diane Dicks of "Ticking Along Too: Stories About Switzerland", and Kate Cobb of "Turning Points: 25 Inspiring Stories From Women Entrepreneurs Who Turned Their Careers and Their Lives Around".

And thanks to Summertime Publishing publisher, Expat Book Shop proprietress and fellow expat writer Jo Parfitt for the review. "A fine bit of not just good writing, but literary writing, and that is due to the fabulous work of the editors."

See what else is in the issue here. Global Living is a luxury lifestyle magazine for global citizens and sophisticated internationals who live, have lived, or may someday will live outside their country of origin.

Linda Janssen's Emotionally Resilient Expat

Thrilled with a new release from my expat publishing kin! I've had the pleasure and privilege of working with and getting to know both these formidable women in the past half decade. Author Linda Janssen just released via Jo Parfitt's Summertime Publishing the masterwork The Emotionally Resilient Expat: Engage, Adapt and Thrive Across Cultures.

The book is filled with personal stories from experienced globalists and cross-culturals  -- Third Culture Kid pioneer Ruth Van Reken, global nomad authors like Tina Quick, global mobility experts, psychologists and family therapists, expats, and me!

Its aim is to provide you with practical tools, techniques and best practices to live a healthier, more positive, emotionally engaged, culturally connected global life.

This book promises to be an enduring and proactive guide to the unique challenges of living in a wide, wide world -- experiences that often have the power to take apart and rearrange a person on an almost molecular level. I've been there. So glad TERE is now available for global operators everywhere.

Massive congratulations Linda and Jo.

Location As Identity. Skin Deep Culture. Global Critical Thinking.

• Writers abroad now have a spot to gather on Expat Saturdays for writing and publishing tips at repat Kristin Bair O'Keeffe's Writerhead, and expat publisher Jo Parfitt is hosting the Writers Abroad radio program for Women's International Network.

• Inspired by a 17th century Ottoman traveler Evliya Celebi, The Book of Travels is a virtual exhibit that aims to highlight the "sharing of ideas between Muslim and European individuals and societies."

• Brooklyn-based jewelry designer Sara Pfau's work aims to explain why "marking, separating, naming plays into a primal urge for self definition according to location." (See illustration for this post, it's Pfau's work.)

• When you're strange: author Paul Theroux muses at the New York Review of Books about how otherness is viewed as an affliction in most cultures around the world -- and throughout history. Check out this intriguing excerpt from his new book The Tao of Travel: Enlightenment from Lives on the Road.

• On a related note, we wonder, is culture only skin deep? Even if we think that culture is like clothing -- when we take off our costume we're all the same underneath, right? -- a new study reveals that cultural differences are detected deep in the brain.

• What does it mean to think globally? Educational psychologist Linda Elder stresses the need for a critical thinking revolution in order for us to survive, and sustain the planet.  "Our lives our interwoven in ways we don't even understand." It's no longer enough to be skilled at thinking about our own vested interests -- "sociocentric thinking". We need global critical thinking, to ask "what's in this for everyone relevant to the situation?"

• Luckily for people like us, having cultural intelligence is a way to increase our creativity, but also a way to innovate long term impacts.

Remix Culture: Cross-Pollinating With Our Pluralism

This month we're acknowledging that where we come from counts (see this urban psychology article on the geography of temperament, and take this quiz to pinpoint how to make life choices "congruent with your temperament") -- and by bringing what we uniquely have to offer, we're cross-pollinating the culture. And we extra-extra-extra love to hear this => Pluralism is always practical: when we draw on our own mixed identities we're more creative!

+++++ AT expat+HAREM

Meanwhile a Third Culture Kid and food activist in Colorado says no to the American predilection for huge cups of coffee consumed in the car, and yes to the communion found in ethnic dining rituals from her childhood and travels.

An American born and raised in Japan finds a way to bridge the cultural divide through the whimsical folk art of etegami.

So much good stuff coming our way, impossible to share it all....here's another way to get on the same page with us: we're now attempting to round up the zillions of resonant links that fly past us every day -- like these ones about global careers, and international politics and the hybrid souls we all possess.

+++++ AROUND THE WORLD & AROUND THE WEB

If you're in New York on the 25th, don't miss an evening about "How to Run the World & Hybrid Reality", presented by expat+HAREM's global nomad salon coproducer Janera Soerel. Global adventurer-scholar Parag Khanna and his wife Ayesha will introduce their new institute exploring human-tech co-evolution.

And for the collectors, from the filmmaker, author, producer, and musician known as DJ Spooky comes this compilation of essays examining 500 years of collaborative creation, "from the history of stop-motion photography to Muslim influences on early hip-hop."

+++++ YOUR THOUGHTS

What are you remixing in your personal culture?

Social Media As Self Actualization: How Has It Launched You?

I'll be speaking with creative entrepreneur Tara Agacayak on a panel about social media for the International Professional Women of Istanbul Network (IPWIN). The happy trends of Web 2.0 online networking, collaborating, and user-generated content seem tailor-made for pro women like us who often face a more difficult career path abroad. Whether "trailing spouses" lacking a local work permit like Jo Parfitt recounts here or in some other way being at a geographic or cultural disadvantage is a common expat woman experience.

IN AN ATTENTION ECONOMY WE'RE NO LONGER OUT OF SIGHT We're used to relying on technology to fill the gaps in our expat operations so social media has the potential to level the playing field for the most far-flung female professionals:

• Social media works best the way women work best: it's about making and tending personal connections
• Social media supports and consolidates the spread-out personal networks expats and global citizens have already initiated in their mobile lives
• Social media provides access to state-of-the-industry practices, trending thought, and leading players in our professions

So, as social networking renders overseas women like us visible and relevant, it's a powerful tool of self-actualization. Our presence online becomes an advance calling card in life and work. We're driven to fine-tune who we say we are, and how we behave, and where we appear online and who we choose to interact with, who our target audience is and how we do business. If we commit to social media, we evolve.

How has social media launched you?

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On another network an expat woman writer asked me what the benefit of social media is besides meeting other writers. She also wondered why she might need it before she has a book to sell.

Social media networking is something you can do long before you have something 'to sell' -- in fact, 3 years in advance of a product is the period I hear from the kind of people whose book goes straight to the top of bestseller lists. It takes that long to get a meaningful network in place before you really 'need' it. Building trust, credibility, presenting yourself authentically, being generous and helpful. That takes time.

I agree meeting other writers is an important component of online networking for women like us scattered around the globe, living among people who may not speak, let alone read or write, in our language. However, there are so many more people you can meet. Taking the writing professional as an example: Potential readers, agents and editors and publishers -- and with the massive upheaval in publishing right now being able to follow developments is more important than ever-- people in related fields. Living abroad, we can attend conferences virtually, or take part in live chats on women's issues, cultural concerns, literature, branding, social media, bookselling, marketing, etc. I wrote about many of these issues last April in "How This Author Uses Twitter". Becoming visible to the people in your niche -- finding out who works in your niche, that's priceless legwork.

How it helps me now: Social media has helped bring me up to speed on the trending/cutting edge thought in a variety of areas that affect what I do, as well as put me in touch with people I want to work with. It's like continuing education, cultivating a professional peer group, professional development.

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Here's a slideshow based on our presentation, including links to scores of the below resources we discussed during the event:

WHAT IS SOCIAL MEDIA?

TOP WOMEN IN SOCIAL MEDIA 2008 & 2009

TIPS & TOOLS TO GET STARTED, OPTIMIZE & IMPROVE YOUR PRACTICES

DOs AND DON’TS

BLOGS AND SITES OF PANELISTS ANASTASIA (microblog, individual blog, group blog, Facebook group, LinkedIn profile,Delicious bookmarks, Ning writers' network)

TARA (individual blog, microblog, LinkedIn profile, Facebook profile, LadiesWhoLaunch profile, artisan training site-blog-microblog-Facebook page, bazaar tourssite-blog-microblog-Facebook page, web consulting site-microblog-Facebook page,women's microcredit site)

Spot-On. Literary. Insightful. My Book Expat Harem In Telegraph UK

"This is not just another anthology by expat wives who long to get in print," writes the veteran book author and publisher Jo Parfitt in the Telegraph UK.

"This is a wonderful book; beautifully written, thought-provoking and inspiring.

"Every essay is spot on, literary and insightful. Grouped into sections, they cover everything from relationships with Turks and non-Turks to the food, the music, the humour and the passion. Be ready to book a flight to Istanbul afterwards."

Thanks, Jo!