Books, Writing & Presentations
Kaci Cronkhite started writing as soon as she could hold a sketch pencil. In first grade, a teacher gave her pictures from magazines and told her to write stories, for extra credit. That option motivated her through fourth grade when her English teacher suggested she give up the extra credit and enter writing competitions instead. For the rest of her public school career she entered contests, then used the skills to get a scholarship to college and then job, after job, after job.
Now, using her writing and presentation skills and life experience to connect women adventurers worldwide is more than a job for Kaci Cronkhite. It's a life's work. Inspired by her childhood experience with wind and horizons in Oklahoma, Alaska, Hawaii and around the world... and eight years living on the Ocean, she's anchored down. Back on land, she works to promote women sailing programs, presents talks to adventure and sailing groups and is working on a book. As a sailor, a writer and an advocate of women worldwide, Kaci welcomes links, stories and project collaborations through the International Women Sailing Network, her boat Pax and in her role with the internationally reknowned Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival.
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Book in Progress: When a Cowgirl Goes to Sea
Woman of the Wind: When a Cowgirl Goes to Sea
This is the story of how Kaci Cronkhite, an Oklahoma cowgirl, four generations from the ocean, found her way to sea, then sailed around the world. More than just a trip about one sailing circumnavigation, this book tells the story of how life on a windy cattle ranch in middle America spurred a young woman from decades on horses to decades on boats.
At times poetic and humorous, often salty and detailed, When A Cowgirl Goes to Sea illustrates the paradoxical connections of rural life and a life at sea. In the wind, you'll recognize the raw smell of fear while facing pirates or the death of a parent. You'll feel the nightmare pounding of your guts during a Tasman storm or on a runaway tractor. You'll wake to hear a tornado or the scream of winds at a Cape or the sound of electricity arcing and your mother's ankles popping. You'll laugh when your boat becomes a "birdie bed & breakfast" and cry when the smoke that causes it, chokes you and forces you to a terrifying all-night dodge in the busiest shipping lane in the world.
When a Cowgirl Goes to Sea is a work in progress, with target publishing date at the end of 2008. Check back often, and help me finish it!
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Book in progress: Finding Pax
Pax is latin for peace. Finding Pax is the story of how finding a boat, a boat called Pax, redefined peace in the life of a forty-something woman in a small, rural, end-of-the road-view-to-the-ocean American town.
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Published & Unpublished Writing
A chapter in a book, ads, articles and unpublished poems. Random writing from 4 and more decades of life.