The Peace Letters
Dear Peace
It’s been a while, and I miss you.
I thought you might like to know that we’re trying to pull together a book of letters to you. It’ll be called The Peace Letters, because, you know, that’s what the book will be filled with… hopefully.
The thinking so far is for the content to be hopeful and reflective/heartfelt: to reflect the creative, caring, thinking, humane, funny, empathic and resilient side of humanity–everything that the recent attacks in Paris and Beirut are not.
The end product will be a book filled with letters, and hopefully some illustrations, from across the globe. My hope is for the book to contain a mix of letters from better known people (writers, visual artists,philosophers, parents, children, scientists, athletes, leaders etc) and those not so well known. Letters may be just a few lines, or up to 500 words.Letters may also be in graphic/illustrated format.
Tiny Owl will cover the cost of printing and distribution, while others have offered editing skills, design and layout expertise–for which I’m incredibly grateful.
While it would be a fantastic feat to have such a publication out before Christmas, February may be a better release date target. Contributions would need to be submitted to Tiny Owl (via email to tinyowl [at] thepeaceletters [dot] com) by the end of the first week in December to make that happen.
As you’ve probably guessed, all contributions will be donated to the project. As always, copyright will remain with the author/illustrator and I’ll have a one page agreement drawn up to ensure contributors are clear and informed.
All proceeds from sales will go to the UNHCR, but I haven’t contacted them yet to confirm their interest.I’m hoping they’ll be cool with that.
It’s been too long since we’ve talked, but that’s probably enough for now. I’m hoping you’ll get a lot of letters pretty soon though.
Love always
Tiny Owl
Tiny Owl Workshop 
5 Responses to “The Peace Letters”
YES! I AM IN ON THIS– what a beautiful idea.
Dear Peace,
I miss you terribly. I think of you often at night when I walk the streets of NYC, streetlights sparkling, lonely people huddled indoors, faces lit blue by social media. I glimpse you in the eyes of children sometimes as they put their innocence to work, solving a math problem, tinkering with a science problem, immersing themselves in creativity and emerging glorious. I see a glimmer of your legacy in the stillness of monuments–art heavy with regret and loss and survivors’ guilt, thick with hope, placed like a lid to counter and contain all the rage/fear/war/horror your absence has released. Come back. Stay. We need you. How I miss you, here in the city where time and money are in a race for my soul, for every soul, where we block out horrors by investing in our own climb to the top. Here we look up and not out, because without you, looking out is devastating. Can’t you come? Can’t you stay?
A mushroom grows in the forest after a rainfall like a sudden mystery–can’t you appear that swiftly, that profoundly, right here, in the middle of the busy city? Raise your soft peachfuzz head at rush hour when we least expect you–ask for a kiss, who can deny you? We will smile if you appear. Have you seen a city person’s smile? It is a beautiful thing, full of relief, full of the unexpected joy of happy endings come true.
with endless longing,
M. M. De Voe
writer, founder of Pen Parentis, Ltd. NYC
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Hello Tiny Owl, If you ever need it, we will help to translate, publish and promote The Peace Letters as ebook and print book in both Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese for free. Kindly contact @eBookDynasty or contact@ebookdynasty.net
Thanks. Best Wishes, Christine Sun, eBook Dynasty, Australia.
What a wonderful idea.
I’m a book art designer. If you need free cover design just ask :)
Dear Peace
I’ve been thinking a lot about how bruised you must feel. Such violations and for so many centuries, it must hurt terribly.
What must you think of us? Standing by while you are ripped to shreds only to patched up again, days later. If I knew where you were I could bring you gifts of hope. But I don’t.
There has been lots of speculation. Some think you’ve joined God on an extended cruise. Other’s mutter about ‘burn out’ and ‘personal crisis’.
I don’t care, Peace, I really don’t. You deserve a break, a retreat to refresh and re-charge. No one begrudges you.
We just miss you.
I miss you.
Come back soon.
We can’t do it without you.
x