I am pleased to share with you the latest news of our forthcoming book: Women and the Sea, Hearing the Siren’s Song. When I first started publishing La Vie Claire in 2004, I knew I wanted to celebrate women living creative lives with passion. Through this experience and through the pages of the magazine, I have become acquainted with so many women like myself who have found the sea to be their source of inspiration and joy. The sea was both the background and the foreground of my childhood, and it has become the constant muse to my creative life as an adult. Growing up on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State, I fell asleep to the plaintive cries of seagulls, heard the bellows of fog horns echoing through my dreams, and awoke to the sounds of my father quietly preparing for his early morning fishing trips. Having been enchanted by the sea, I, like all of the women featured in the book, cannot escape the spell of its untamed breezes, briny scents, and ever-receding horizons. Men have long regaled us with tales of their adventures at sea, their love of the ocean. We decided it was time to spotlight some of the many women who, too, make their living from the sea. Some are artists, some captains, some scientists, some entrepreneurs—all have answered the siren’s call, and rather than drowning, as is popularly feared, they have been taken to new depths in themselves and in their work. In the book, we revisit a few women we have profiled in past issues of La Vie Claire, sharing their stories in fresh ways. Some we went in search of just for the book, like Her Ladyship Sailing captain Jenn MacLean from Canada and world-champion sand sculptress Jenny Rossen from Australia. Others, like artist Mimi Gregoire Carpenter, who finds beauty in barnacles and broken shells, and Alexandra Hai, who broke through a thousand-year tradition to become Venice’s first female gondoliera, were perfect for this, our Summer issue, and for the book as well we realized. In this issue, we invite you to meet these wonderful women and get a glimpse of the inspiring stories and photographs captured in the pages of Women and the Sea. Subscribe to La Vie Claire Return to Claire Murray Home Page

Meet Claire   In La Vie Claire, we continue to bring stories meant to uplift you and fire your passion, stories like that of the three sisters who keep their fourth sister’s spirit alive by nurturing her plants in their gardens and that of Lisa Stamm, who takes her cues for coastal landscape designs from nature’s own approach. As our Summer issue has always been devoted to the sea, we keep to the tradition with the tale of the Essex, an historic cottage built on stilts alongside Nantucket’s fabled Old North Wharf. We also invite you to journey to South Carolina, where the Inn at Palmetto Bluff serves up southern hospitality and soul-satisfying Lowcountry cuisine on grounds steeped in the past. I know I speak for many when I thank the sea for its multitude of gifts and treasure its inspiration by acting on it. P. S. We’d love to hear your thoughts about La Vie Claire. Please send a note to Claire.