Colleen Morton Busch discusses "Fire Monks" at Diesel Bookstore

Diesel, A Bookstore in Oakland welcomes acclaimed local author Colleen Morton Busch to the store to celebrate the paperback release of Fire Monks on Tuesday, June 26th at 7pm.

In June 2008 more than two thousand wildfires, all started by a single lightning storm, blazed across the state of California. As one of these fires approached Tassajara, the oldest Zen Buddhist monastery in the United States, firefighters made the flash decision to completely evacuate the monastery. As the firefighters and remaining residents caravanned out the long road to Tassajara, five monks turned back, risking their lives to save the monastery. Fire Monks is their story. "Fire Monks sets itself three difficult tasks - to reconstruct exactly what happened at Tassajara Zen Monastery during the great fire of 2008, how zen prepared the monks to meet the fire, and to make us passionately absorbed in this story of burning and calmness - and succeeds in all three splendidly." -Rebecca Solnit

Colleen Morton Busch's nonfiction, poetry, and fiction have appeared in a wide range of publications, from literary magazines to the San Francisco Chronicle, Tricycle, and Yoga Journal, where she was a senior editor. A Zen student since 2000, she lives in the East Bay with her husband and two cats.