About the Curator/Writer

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My name is Sheryl Gordon and I'm curating a series of anthologies titled A Rewording Life. The anthologies feature beguiling yet bemusing words. In short, I want to disentangle words that, for one reason or another, bewilder me. Moreover, I want to honour my mom— who lost all of her words in the end. Part of the profits of these books will therefore go toword [sic] organizations that are helping to put the end in #demENDtia.

To make the journey even more wordwhile, I'm collaborating with people who make my life rewarding: authors, musicians, comedians, chefs, journalists, etc. Their mission is to bring clarity to obscure, elusive words and they have one sentence in which to accomplish this. Period. ​

These sentences showcase just how lucid these fiddly words can be. Cool Canadian contributors—thanks for shining your light on these:
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Buy the Award Winning Book!
I eschew the cashew; I'm allergic, and it makes me ah-chooo. 
Robert Hough, Author

No, he wasn't wearing a gorilla suit; he was simply very hirsute.  
Tony Dekker, Musician, Great Lake Swimmers

The comedian attempted to persuade the booking agent to hire him, by rattling off a collection of spurious credits and accomplishments, hoping the agent wouldn't follow up to verify any of them. 
Brent Butt, Actor

With each slow sip of champagne, she tilted her head back and paused to allow the bubbles to dance on her tongue as only a voluptuary would. 
Jill Barber, Musician

Piecing It Together

PictureImage Source: http://bit.ly/1XwRtEV
How do you piece together a thousand coruscant sentences into a cohesive story—a story meant to raise money for dementia? Here is my concept. To give the book some emotional fibre, I wrote eight personal essays for the book: Together, the first letter of each essay (a, d, e, i, m, n, t, e) spells a word. That word is dementia. Like the image to the right, dementia overarches the entire book. As they ought to be, Alzheimer’s and frontotemporal dementia (mentioned in the essay titled Turbid) are placed under the dementia umbrella. The sentences are scattered between the essays. If you find this concept a tad confusing, can I ask you to try and embrace it? Confusion is, after all, the nature of this disease. 

Awards

A Rewording Life won IPPY Gold in 2017 for the category Best Regional Non-Fiction, Canada East (see image below)
About IPPY
  • IPPY stands for the Independent Publisher Book Awards
  • Conceived in 1996, IPPY is a broad-based, unaffiliated awards program open to all members of the independent publishing industry
  • In 2015, IPPY attracted over 5700 entries
IPPY Family
  • To date, more than 4500 IPPYs have been awarded globally to authors and publishers. Highlighted below are two pretty prominent IPPY recipients. Recognize them?
    • Margaret Atwood won an IPPY in 2003 for Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing
    • David Eggers won a fiction gold medal for What is the What
50% of the profits--not to be confused with proceeds--of each book will go to the Alzheimer Society (​investments need to be recuperated first, of course: curating, writing, editing, designing, promoting, etc. the book).