Even in the past. Seeing where it ends up … Even in the past. Seeing where it ends up … Even in the past. Seeing where it ends up … Even in the past. Seeing where it ends up … Even in the past. Seeing where it ends up … Even in the past. Seeing where it ends up … Even in the past. Seeing where it ends up … Even in the past. Seeing where it ends up … Even in the past. Seeing where it ends up … Even in the past. Seeing where it ends up … Even in the past. Seeing where it ends up … Even in the past. Seeing where it ends up … Even in the past. Seeing where it ends up … Even in the past. Seeing where it ends up … Even in the past. Seeing where it ends up … Even in the past. Seeing where it ends up … Even in the past. Seeing where it ends up … Even in the past. Seeing where it ends up … Even in the past. Seeing where it ends up … Even in the past. Seeing where it ends up … Even in the past. Seeing where it ends up … Even in the past. Seeing where it ends up … Even in the past. Seeing where it ends up …
MONDAY May 8, 2006
Left Coast WritersTM Reading and Networking, 6pm
Book Passage, Ferry Plaza, San Francisco, CA
For info: leftcoastwriters@aol.com
With articles ranging from experiencing the culture shock of Japan and chronicling the lives of survivors of Hiroshima, to choosing the world’s worst airport, finding solitude in Tahoe’s Emerald Bay, and packing puffins, geysers and the Blue Lagoon in to a 72-hour stopover in cool, hot Iceland, John Flinn is not only well-known for being a world traveler and writer, he has the insider tips on writing, submitting, and getting YOUR work published in the San Francisco Chronicle and other newspapers. John Flinn is the Travel Editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, and he is one of the key faculty members for this year’s Book Passage Travel Writers & Photographers Conference.
Kevin Smokler is one of the nation’s leading thinkers on the future of contemporary
literature, publishing and the arts at large. He is the founder of The Virtual Book Tour
and editor of Bookmark Now: Writing in Unreaderly Times (Basic Books, June 2005),
an anthology that features this generation’s most intriguing young authors writing on the
state and future of literature in our media-saturated 21st century. Smokler’s essays and critiques have appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, the Baltimore Sun, The Believer, Ready Made and on National Public Radio. Smokler also lectures nationwide (at Book Expo America, The Commonwealth Club, among other venues) on the future of reading and publishing, the literary life and the role of technology in the arts. His publishing consultancy serves such clients as Time Warner Book Group, Harper Collins, Mental Floss magazine and the Idea Festival.
Jennifer L. Leo is a Chinese-American who was born with a gift
for gab and a hunger for an everlasting craps game (which
probably explains her recent move to Las Vegas). Editor of
Travelers Tales (San Francisco) titles, “Whose Panties Are
These?,” “More Misadventures from Funny Women on the Road” and
the best-selling “Sand in My Bra and Other Misadventures: Funny
Women Write from the Road,” Jen is also the co-editor of “A
Woman’s Path.”
Firoozeh Dumas moved with her family from Abadan, Iran, to Whittier, California, at the age of seven. With great humor and a sense of adventure, Dumas chronicles the American journey of her wonderfully engaging family in Funny In Farsi: A Memoir Of Growing Up Iranian In America, which was selected as a finalist for the PEN award in the Creative Nonfiction category. In a series of deftly Drawn scenes, we watch the family grapple with American culture in a story of Identity, discovery and family love. You may have heard Firoozeh’s commentaries on NPR. Dumas graduated from the University of California at Berkeley. She lives with her husband and children in Northern California.
Georgia I. Hesse was founding travel editor of the San Francisco Examiner and held that position on the S.F. Examiner-Chronicle for 20 years. She has contributed to several anthologies, is a co-author of travel guides to France and California published by Fisher and by Berlitz, and teaches travel writing and related courses at Book Passage in Corte Madera. Georgia holds the Chevalier/Ordre de la République from Tunisia and the Ordre du Mérite from France. She is a graduate of Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota, and attended the University of Strasbourg, France, on a Fulbright scholarship. She claims to have been born on Crazy Woman Creek near Buffalo, Wyoming.
For more information, visit www.whereintheworld-scribe.com.
Sheldon Siegel graduated from the Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California at Berkeley in 1983. He has been in private practice in San Francisco for over twenty years and specializes in corporate and securities law with the firm of Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton LLP. His four novels, Special Circumstances, Incriminating Evidence, Criminal Intent and Final Verdict, have all been national best sellers. His fifth novel, The Confession, will be released August 2004. His books have sold millions of copies worldwide and have been translated into seven languages.
He lives in Marin County with his wife, Linda, and twin sons, Alan and Stephen. He is at work on his next Mike Daley story.
Larry Habegger, executive editor of Travelers’ Tales, has been writing about travel since 1980. He has visited almost fifty countries and six of the seven continents, traveling from the frozen Arctic to equatorial rain forest, from the high Himalayas to the Dead Sea. In the early 1980s he co-authored mystery serials for the San Francisco Examiner with James O’Reilly, and since 1985 their syndicated column, “World Travel Watch,” has appeared in newspapers in five countries and on WorldTravelWatch.com. As series editors of Travelers’ Tales, they have worked on some seventy titles, winning many awards for excellence. Larry regularly teaches the craft of travel writing at workshops and writers conferences, and he lives with his family on San Francisco’s Telegraph Hill.
Visit www.larryhabegger.com for more information.
Oscar Villalon has been the Book Editor for the San Francisco Chronicle since 2001. He has been with the paper since 1996, and has been Deputy Book Editor and a copy editor for “Datebook.”Oscar is currently a member of the jury for the annual California Book Award and serves as a member of the National Book Critics Circle. Prior to working at The Chronicle, Oscar was a news editor at the Glendale News Press in Los Angeles, California.
WEDNESDAY April 19, 2006
Left Coast Writers™ Book Launch Series, 5:30pm
Susan Reynolds
Monticello Inn, 121 Ellis Street, San Francisco, CA
For info: leftcoastwriters@aol.com
Journalist Constance Hale grew up in Hawaii but left the islands to get a bachelors degree from Princeton and a masters from the Graduate School of Journalism at UC-Berkeley. Hale worked as a reporter and editor at the Oakland Tribune, the San Francisco Examiner, Wired, and Health and her freelance journalism has appeared in those publications, as well as in Honolulu, HotWired, and the Atlantic Monthly. Her travel essays have been published in several anthologies, Via, the Miami Herald, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Los Angeles Times. Hale is the author of two popular books on language, Sin and Syntax and Wired Style. Once dubbed, “Marion the Librarian on a Harley,” Hale speaks extensively about the craft of writing, sin and syntax, and the intersections of language and technology. She is on the faculty of UC-Berkeley Extension, Book Passage, and the Writing Salon.
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
Left Coast WritersTM Book Launch, 5:30-6:30pm
TBD
Monticello Inn, 121 Ellis Street, San Francisco, CA
For info: leftcoastwriters@aol.com
An evening with Wes “Scoop” Nisker is a guaranteed good time, full of his trademark zaniness and wacky wisdom! Nisker will wax eloquent on cosmic conundrums, and talk about and read from his latest book, The Big Bang, the Buddha and the Baby Boom: The Spiritual Experiments of My Generation.
Wes “Scoop” Nisker is author of the enduring classic Crazy Wisdom and the widely acclaimed Buddha’s Nature, and is Editor-in-Chief of the Buddhist journal Inquiring Mind. For the past twenty-five years he has been both a popular San Francisco Bay Area radio personality and a nationally known Buddhist meditation teacher.
Fran Gage owned Fran Gage Pâtisserie Française in San Francisco for ten years. The bakery consistently won critical acclaim locally and nationally for its pastry, bread, and chocolates. She closed the bakery following a fire in 1995 and now writes about food. Her first book, Bread and Chocolate, My Food Life In & Around San Francisco , (Sasquatch Books, 1999) is a collection of stories about food with recipes to match. A Sweet Quartet, Sugar, Almonds, Eggs, and Butter , (North Point Press, 2002) is a book celebrating the building blocks of pastry making, including recipes. Excerpts from both books were chosen for Best Food Writing . Her most recent book is Williams-Sonoma Cake . Fran is a charter member of the Baker’s Dozen and a co-author of The Baker’s Dozen Cookbook . She also writes frequently for Saveur , and Fine Cooking and has contributed to The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America and Gastronomica.
For over 20 Years Michael Johnson has been training people to do good in public radio. But baby, that’s not all. Michael’s produced music shows for 13 years on KALW and KPFA in San Francisco. He was the associate producer for the Peabody Award Winning NPR series Lost and Found Sound, editor and digital mix engineer for Spirits of the Present: The Legacy from Native America for Radio Smithsonian (PRI) carried on over 500 stations across the US and Canada (APR), and associate producer for the documentary series Legacies: Tales From America.
Mark Routhier is the Literary Manager at the Magic Theatre. Founder and Artistic Director of San Francisco’s Mettle Theatre, 1989-1999, Routhier produced, wrote, directed, designed, and/or acted in 25 productions nationwide. His plays Scrap, Jam, Drunken Grownups, They Shall Inherit (formerly A Curious Christmas), and Someguy were produced by Mettle Theatre. His Bay Area directing credits include Ionesco’s Exit The King with American Citizens’ Theatre, Someguy, Drunken Grownups, and Ellen McLaughlin’s Iphigenia and Other Daughters with Mettle Theatre, Sam Shepard’s Cowboy Mouth with Mostly Grounded Theatre Co., readings of Alice Tuan’s Last of the Suns, and Talila Baron’s Corpus Delicti for the Magic Theatre. Routhier has directed for the Young California Writers Project, and will be directing a one-man show called The Bone Man of Benares by Terry Tarnoff with Encore Theatre in September, 2004. Routhier, who holds an MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU, is working on a new play, and currently teaching a popular course, “From Page to Stage,” at Marin-based Book Passage.
Poet, travel writer, novelist and workshop leader Linda Watanabe McFerrin is a contributor to numerous journals, newspapers, magazines, anthologies and online publications including the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle Magazine, Modern Bride, Travelers’ Tales, and Salon.com. She is the author of two poetry collections and the editor of the 4th edition of Best Places Northern California.
