LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK PARTY:  Christi Phillips, Author of The Devlin Diary

Christi Phillips

Monday, August 9, 2010 || 6pm
Book Passage || Ferry Plaza
San Francisco || www.bookpassage.com

Join us for a little wine and a magical evening with popular Bay Area author Christi Phillips. Christi’s latest book, The Devlin Diary, now out in paperback, is a dazzling novel of intrigue, passion, and royal secrets that shifts tantalizingly between Restoration-era London and present-day Cambridge. A suspenseful and richly satisfying tale brimming with sharply observed historical detail, The Devlin Diary brings past and present to vivid life. With wit and grace, Christi Phillips holds readers spellbound

LEFT COAST WRITERS LITERARY SALON:  Michael Krasny, Author of Off Mike: A Memoir of Talk Radio and Literary Life and Spiritual Envy: An Agnostic’s Quest

Michael Krasny

Monday, August 2, 2010 || 7pm
Book Passage || Corte Madera
51 Tamal Vista Drive, Corte Madera || www.bookpassage.com

Everyone knows Michael Krasny, the award-winning host of NPR/KQED’s Forum with Michael Krasny, a news and public affairs program covering politics, culture, the arts, health, business and technology since 1993 and veteran interviewer for NPR’s nationally broadcast City Arts and Lectures series. He’s also an English professor at San Francisco State University, and a widely published scholar, critic and fiction writer. We are so pleased to have him as a Left Coast Writers Literary Salon Presenter in August.

LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK LAUNCH: Connie A. Walker, Author of The Spire of Skylet and David R. Christensen, Author of The Mystery of the Ugly Bottle

Bring the kiddies. Please join us for a delightful night of wine and juice and great readers as Left Coast Writer’s Simplie Indie publisher, Bill Walker, takes the stage with two of his authors.

by Terry Sue Harms

Now that my novel, Pearls My Mother Wore, is on the market, I’m satisfied that self-publishing was the right path for me to take. Four years ago, though, when I started writing the book, I felt certain that I’d go the traditional route. 

LEFT COAST WRITERS LITERARY SALON:  Ransom Stephens, Author of The God Patent

Ransom Stephens

Monday, July 5, 2010 || 7pm
Book Passage || Corte Madera
51 Tamal Vista Drive, Corte Madera || www.bookpassage.com

LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK LAUNCH:  Welcome ASP: James J. Patterson, Author of Bermuda Shorts and Joanna Biggar, Author of That Paris Year

James J. Patterson

Joanna Biggar

Monday, July 12, 2010 || 6pm
Book Passage || Ferry Plaza
San Francisco || www.bookpassage.com

Join us for an evening that will take you from the good old USA to Paris, France, as ASP writer and publisher, James J. Patterson, and noted writer and teacher, Joanna Biggar, team up for an evening of all-American chatter and fine French bonhomie. North Beach dive? French cafe? Try the wine and fancy cheese, and you tell us.

LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK LAUNCH:  Judith Horstman, Author of The Scientific American Brave New Brain

Judith Horstman

Monday, June 14, 2010 || 6pm
Book Passage || Ferry Plaza
San Francisco || www.bookpassage.com

Microchips in your brain. Thought-controlled technology. Cures for Alzheimer’s, depression, and mental retardation.  Treatments to erase memories, pills to make you smarter, and bionic spare parts to restore lost neural functions.

LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK LAUNCH: Rebecca Foust, Author of All That Gorgeous, Pitiless Song and Kirsten Jones Neff, Author of When the House is Quiet

Rebecca Foust

Kirsten Neff

Saturday, June 12, 2010 || 7pm
Book Passage-Corte Madera || 51 Tamal Vista Dr.
Corte Madera || www.bookpassage.com

Please join us at a book party for two of our favorite poets: Rebecca Foust and Kirsten Jones Neff. You’ll be treated to beautiful poetry, the sparkling ambiance of our favorite Bay Area bookstore, a celebratory champagne toast for the authors, cookies, and excellent company.

LEFT COAST WRITERS LITERARY SALON:  Penny Warner, Author of How to Host a Killer Party

Monday, June 7, 2010 || 7pm
Book Passage || Corte Madera
51 Tamal Vista Drive, Corte Madera || www.bookpassage.com

We have a “killer evening” in store for everyone at the next Left Coast Writers Literary Salon!

Mixing fun and fundraising for charities seemed like the perfect job for Presley Parker when she’s suddenly downsized from her position teaching abnormal psychological at the university. Pres is psyched about her first big gig—hosting a “surprise” wedding for the San Francisco Mayor at notorious Alcatraz prison.

© 2010 Greg Jones

I’m headed to Tres Bocas on the Rio Sarmiento in Argentina’s Parana River Delta. It’s a voyage of discovery. I don’t pretend to understand this country or its people but perhaps I can aim a penlight, which is all I happen to have at the moment, in order to shed a thin shaft of illumination on their wonderful flaws and terrible virtues.

LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK LAUNCH: Maria Finn, Author of A Little Piece of Earth, How to Grow Your Own Food in Small Spaces

Maria Finn

Monday, May 17, 2010 || 6pm
Book Passage || Ferry Plaza
San Francisco || www.bookpassage.com

A Little Piece of Earth is all about starting small, with more than fifty self-contained, doable projects. Whether you have a yard, a terrace, a rooftop, or just a windowsill, there are plenty of ideas and inspirations to choose from. Harvest your own precious vanilla pods from a pot indoors. Grow savory shiitakes on a small log in your kitchen. Build a miniature vineyard trellis on your deck or build a raised bed on your patio. Recipes for using your homegrown bounty are sprinkled throughout. Charming illustrations guide you through step-by-step, and there’s a complete resources section. This is about making dirt work for you, taking some control over your food supply, and, most important, enriching your life with the quiet, simple pleasures of produce raised organically with your own hands.

LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK LAUNCH: Jessica Shepherd, Author of A Love Alchemist’s Notebook

Jessica Shepherd

Saturday, May 8, 2010 || 7pm
Book Passage-Corte Madera || 51 Tamal Vista Dr.
Corte Madera || www.bookpassage.com

Would you like to know the secrets to attracting your soul mate and feeling profound love every day? With this hip and fun guide, you’ll learn to use the rules of attraction, magic, astrology, and your intuition to attract the partner of your dreams and experience true, soulful love.

Monday, May 3, 2010 || 7pm ||

Tim Cahill, Author of Hold the Enlightenment and Lost in my own Backyard: a Walk in Yellowstone National Park

Book Passage – Corte Madera
51 Tamal Vista Dr., Corte Madera

We have a real treat in store for you at our May 3rd Left Coast Writers Literary Salon. Travel writer Tim Cahill is in town and will be speaking that night. Tim, who has authored many, many books including Jaguars Ripped My Flesh, A Wolverine Is Eating My Leg, Pass The Butterworms, Pecked To Death By Ducks, Hold The Enlightenment, and Lost in my own Backyard: a Walk in Yellowstone National Park, was a founding editor of Outside magazine and has been known to make readers laugh and cry in the space of a few minutes. He is also an expert on what makes a story work and the creator of Tim’s choo-choo, which is a dynamite way to quickly put an article together.

Jeff Kingman

We want to congratulate Left Coast Writer Jeff Kingman. His short story, “Marriage,” will be published in the Skuylkill Valley Journal on May 2 (in print and online at http://www.svjlit.com) and his novel, Moto Girl, reached the semifinalist level in the 2009 Dana Awards.

POINT & SHOOT YOUR WAY TO PERFECT PHOTOS

with MARSHA BLACK,  Author of The Accidental Photographer

(1 workshop) (2 weeks)

Don’t know how you got that fantastic shot that everyone it raving about? Learn simple, easy-to-remember techniques so that you can use your camera more effec­tively. Topics include how to: define your subject to tell your story; manage the available light so that it is perfect in the final photograph; use the three basic photographic composition techniques – color, pattern, and action. Bring camera; there will be an easy photo assignment. Fee includes a copy of The Accidental Photographer.

NEW HOST FOR LEFT COAST WRITERS FERRY PLAZA EVENTS

Many of you know Elaine Miller Bond, author illustrator of Affimals: Affirmations + Animals. Left Coast Writers is pleased to announce that Elaine will be hosting the Left Coast Writers Ferry Plaza Book Party and Reading series at Book Passage in San Francisco beginning in April. Many thanks to Colette Obrien, our terrific prior emcee. We hope she’ll return to host future events from time to time.

Elaine will be emceeing the April Book Party featuring poet Dave Seter, author of Night Duty.

Mary Lou Peters Schram

For the self-published writers: We just want to share Mary Lou Schram’s encouraging review of Pursuing Happiness from the Writers Digest Self-Published Book Awards:   In part:

“I was immediately impressed with the conciseness, fluency, energy, and intelligence of the prose.  Great dialogue too, dialogue that has the ring of ‘real’ speech.  Focused on characters the reader can really care about, this novel does what all the best novels do: it meshes comedy and pathos, like life.  The ending is about as good as an ending can get.  Simply a wonderful novel – sensitive, intelligent, funny, sad and true.”

As the writers head off to Charleston, for another literary adventure with the Southern Sampler Artists Colony, novelist and travel writer Linda Watanabe McFerrin reflects on Southern vistas.

Southern Exposure: On the Palmetto Trail

©2010 by Linda Watanabe McFerrin

The size of the snake had grown, in the telling, from the length and breadth of my friend Martha’s arm, to the far more dramatic dimensions of her muscular cousin, Dickie’s. I was at a gathering of the Dabbs clan at one of the old family properties by the Crossroads just east of Black River Swamp in the county of Sumter, South Carolina. Martha and I had been hiking along on the High Hills of Santee Passage of the Palmetto Trail when the large green-brown serpent slithered across our paths and disappeared into the waters of Old Levi Mill Lake. Martha was disturbed; I was ecstatic. I let out a gleeful shriek.

The South is intriguing territory. Home of the blues, gumbos, gators, haunts, hollers, swamps and all their quirky inhabitants, it’s also been the stomping grounds of some of my favorite writers—William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, Harper Lee, Erskine Caldwell, Alice Walker, even Edgar Allen Poe—sensual, steamy and sometimes scary as hell.

LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK LAUNCH: Dave Seter, author of Night Duty

Monday, April 12, 2010 || 6pm
Book Passage || Ferry Plaza
San Francisco || www.bookpassage.com

National Poetry Month gives us an opportunity to celebrate another new poet!

Monday, April 5, 2010 || 7pm ||

Neeli Cherkovski, Author of From the Canyon Outward

Book Passage – Corte Madera
51 Tamal Vista Dr., Corte Madera

©2010 by Cheryl McLaughlin

Moguls skier Alex Bilodeau won the first Gold medal for Canada at the Vancouver Olympic Games and credited his older brother who has cerebral palsy.

At the last Olympics, American skater Evan Lysacek had a disastrous short program performance that took him out of any contention for a medal. This time he won the Gold medal beating reigning Olympic Champion, Yevgeny Pleshenko.

19-year old figure skater Kim Yu-Na from South Korea carried the hopes of a nation and the heavy expectations of gold as she took the ice and turned in two of the most spectacular performances in the history of Olympic Women’s Figure Skating.

So, what does this have to do with writing?

LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK LAUNCH: Jacqueline Luckett, author of Searching for Tina Turner

Saturday, March 13, 2010 || 7pm
Book Passage-Corte Madera || 51 Tamal Vista Dr.
Corte Madera || www.bookpassage.com

As a teenager, Jacqueline enjoyed telling stories to her younger cousins. To this day, they describe her as a master storyteller. So, it wasn’t a surprise to her family when she began writing a novel. She kept diaries, wrote poetry and had stories published in a local newspaper. But Jacqueline put writing aside while attending college. After graduating from California State University, Hayward in sociology, she worked in sales for a major corporation. She married, raised a family and in 1999 took a creative writing class on a dare, from herself, and happily found her love of writing re-ignited.

LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK LAUNCH: André Le Gallo, author of The Caliphate

André Le Gallo

Monday, March 8, 2009 || 6pm
Book Passage || Ferry Plaza
San Francisco || www.bookpassage.com

“A tale of intrigue too frightening to believe—and too believable to ignore. But you better believe it, because Le Gallo is the real thing.” —Porter Goss, former Director of the CIA

Monday, March 1, 2010 || 7pm ||

Ying Chang Compestine, Author of A Banquet for Hungry Ghosts

Book Passage – Corte Madera
51 Tamal Vista Dr., Corte Madera

Ying Chang Compestine

According to Chinese tradition, those who die hungry or unjustly come back to haunt the living. Some are appeased with food. But not all ghosts are successfully mollified. In this chilling collection of stories, Ying takes readers on a journey through time and across different parts of China. From the building of the Great Wall in 200 BCE to the modern day of iPods, hungry ghosts continue to torment those who wronged them.

Nancy Bruning of Nancercize

Join the conversation on blogtalk radio Thursday, January 28th at 9a.m. PST with Nancy Bruning, creator of Nancercize, and author and LCW founder, Linda Watanabe McFerrin. They’ll be talking about Great Getaways.

Monday, February 8,  2010 || 5:30pm ||

Left Coast Writers at the Ferry Plaza

Book Passage – Ferry Plaza, San Francisco

Colette Obrien hosts: Sexy Stories & Poems

Editors Linda Watanabe McFerrin and Laurie McAndish King introduce the Hot Flashes Sexy Little Stories & Poems writers in this literary love fest in honor of Valentine’s Day and Amour!

LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK LAUNCH: Paul McHugh, author of Deadlines

Saturday, February 13, 2009 || 7pm
Book Passage-Corte Madera || 51 Tamal Vista Dr.
Corte Madera || www.bookpassage.com

It’s a party!! Join us for major festivities as veteran journalist Paul McHugh celebrates the publication of his new novel, DEADLINES (Lost Coast Press), a tale of murder, conspiracy, and the media. McHugh, a Northern California writer, has worked in journalism for 30 years, eight as a freelancer and 22 at the San Francisco Chronicle where he was an outdoor features writer and editor, focused on sport, environment and state resource issues. Over his career, he wrote for all sections of the paper, including Metro, where he conducted several major investigative series. Adventure has been a way of life for McHugh. He ran his first marathon in 2003, at the age of 53; he celebrated his 50^th birthday by kayaking down 270 miles of the Grand Canyon; he was on the first U.S. Kayak Surfing Team when it won a world championship in Ireland in 1988; he arrived in California after wandering across the U.S. on a motorcycle in the summer of 1973. McHugh undertook many outdoor adventures for the Chronicle. The most striking was a 40-day, 400-mile sea kayak voyage from the Oregon Border to San Francisco Bay, resulting in the popular North Coast Series. Over the course of that  voyage, McHugh filed 36 print and online stories, four podcasts and five videos. This epic series can be found posted at: www.sfgate.com/northcoast/

Monday, February 1, 2010 || 7pm ||

Alan Rinzler, Consulting Editor

Book Passage – Corte Madera
51 Tamal Vista Dr., Corte Madera

Alan Rinzler

Alan Rinzler began as a book editor in 1962 at Simon and Schuster and has since worked as Senior Editor at the Macmillan Company, Senior Editor at Holt, Director of Trade Book Publishing at Bantam Books, Associate Publisher and Vice President of Rolling Stone Magazine, and President of the Rolling Stone Book Division Straight Arrow Books. He was also West Coast Editor for the Grove Press, Editor of the Berkeley Monthly, and for the past 17 years has been Senior Editor and then Executive Editor of Jossey-Bass, an imprint of John Wiley & Sons.

Alan has edited and published such authors as Toni Morrison, Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Robbins, Claude Brown, Oscar Acosta, Shirley MacLaine, Robert Ludlum, Irv Yalom, Jerzy Kosinski, Andy Warhol, Bob Dylan, Clive Cussler, and others.

Whitefish Review

Left Coast Writer® Ethel Mays has a poem in Whitefish Review, the twice yearly non-profit literary journal “created to publish the distinctive literature, art, and photography of mountain culture.” 2009 has been a good and busy year for Ethel, witnessing the publication of a short story and several poems in ten journals, reviews, and anthologies, and over 40 featured and open readings in fourteen cities in seven California counties.

If you’d like to read an online version of the poem, you can do so on the Whitefish Review site.

Left Coast Writer® Jeff Kingman is a finalist for Cutthroat Magazine’s 2009 Rick DeMarinis Short Story Award.  First prize in each genre is $1250 and publication in Cutthroat. Second prize in each genre is $250 and publication in Cutthroat. All finalists are acknowledged in CUTTHROAT and considered for publication.  Winners are announced in Poets and Writers, Winning Writers and the AWP Chronicle.

©2010 by Patricia Bracewell

On a sunny July day in Fecamp, Normandy, I stood in front of the stony corpse of an 11th century ducal palace, studying the ruin before me with the eyes of an Independent Scholar. That’s an impressive way of saying that I was a history student without the benefit of credentials, university affiliation, or professors.

Susan West

On the day after the night before, we are sharing, as promised, Susan West’s 10 Tips for Launching (most anything). It was an outstanding evening with a large turnout for the first salon of the year and a great many newcomers. It was a special treat to see noted photographer Bob Holmes in the audience and to have a chance to give Stan Goldberg a big hand for his recent award (see the prior post). We’d also like to thank those—like Jasmine Darznik, whose book “The Good Daughter” comes out later this year and Rebecca Evans, who’ll be reading at Book Passage at the Ferry Plaza on Monday, January 11th—who were visiting from their new east coast residences. Finally we want t congratulate the many, many members

Stan Goldberg

In 2009 The London Book Festival gave awards for outstanding books in 20 different categories. From the 20 categories a Grand Prize winner was chosen. It was Stan Goldberg’s Lessons for the Living: Stories of Forgiveness, Gratitude,and Courage at the End of Life. The

Make a New Year’s Resolution to write for Roadwork in 2010. Left Coast Writers on-line column is published bi-monthly, and editor Pat Bracewell is looking for 1000-word essays about writing, travel and any combination thereof from LCW members. Contact Pat at Roadwork@LeftCoastWriters.com.

LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK LAUNCH: Marsha Black, author of The Accidental Photographer for the Camera Bag

Saturday, January 9, 2009 || 7pm
Book Passage-Corte Madera || 51 Tamal Vista Dr.
Corte Madera || www.bookpassage.com

Marsha Black has always had a textbook in one hand and a camera in the other. She has been photographing the world around her since childhood.  Decades later, when her niece asked her what she would do if she didn’t have her camera, her answer was simple:  She would never be without it.

Says Marsha, “I think just about anyone who takes a camera on a trip wants to travel with it unencumbered and come home with good photos that can be shared with friends and family. My book, The Accidental Photographer for the Camera Bag, illustrates how to use the camera effortlessly and take good pictures that reflect the passion for travel. The book is aimed at the casual photographer and the techniques described are basic and can be mastered with little practice and used with any camera.”

Colette Obrien

Monday, January 11, 2010 || 5:30pm ||

Left Coast Writers at the Ferry Plaza

Book Passage – Ferry Plaza, San Francisco

Colette Obrien hosts: NEVER AGAIN!

Join us at Book Passage in the Ferry Plaza in San Francisco when some of our favorite writers make their resolutions! We definitely think there are some things that do not need to be repeated. Come to listen in and find out just what they are.

Monday, January 4, 2010 || 7pm ||

Susan West, Founding Editor in Chief of Afar and Editorial Consultant

Book Passage – Corte Madera
51 Tamal Vista Dr., Corte Madera

Failure to launch? It’ll never happen with Guest Presenter Susan West.

Susan West is a long-time editorial consultant for magazines and websites. Most recently she was the founding Editor in Chief of Afar, a new magazine whose mission is to inspire and  guide those who travel the world seeking to connect with its people, experience their culture, and understand  their perspectives. Afar, which launched in August 2009, was named one of the 15 best launches of the year by “Mr. Magazine,” Samir Husni. Susan was also Executive  Editor of  Smithsonian and a

A series of workshops set in the South …

April 13-19, 2010

Writing and Photography Workshop with Linda Watanabe McFerrin and featured local photographers …

Charleston and the South Carolina Low Country beckons! Join the organizers of the Southern Sampler Artists Colony on a journey into a place like no other—a place brushed with spirit, dipped in belonging, and brought to life in Gospel, Jazz, Blues, soul food, cooling ocean breezes, wraparound porches, and warm welcomes that begin with y’all. Relax! Let your heart open, soul sing, and spirit soar.