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.

Instructor: Marsha Black … graduate, New York Institute of Photography; author of The Accidental Photographer; educator, traveler, photographer.

• Schedule #4504.901 June 19; Sat., 1:30 – 4:30 pm
• Schedule #4504.902: Aug. 14;  Sat., 1:30 – 4:30 pm
• Schedule #4504.903: July 14 – July 21; Wed., 6:30 – 8 pm

Fee: $60 / Dist. Res. $50

Community Ctr.: Upper Club Rm.

To register: use the internet, at www.pleasanthillrec.com or call 925-676-5200 or by fax 24 hours a day at 925-676-5630

PRE-REGISTRATION IS REQUIRED AT LEAST THREE DAYS PRIOR TO CLASS. PLEASE REGISTER EARLY; CLASSES WITH LOW ENROLLMENT ARE SUBJECT TO CANCELLATION.

Nancy Bruning of Nancercize

Join the conversation on blogtalk radio Thursday, December 17th at 9a.m. PST with Nancy Bruning, creator of Nancercize, and author and LCW founder, Linda Watanabe McFerrin. They’ll be talking about family travel … pain or paradise? Is it like herding cats? Is it a three-ring circus? Let’s chat about family travel — the bad and the good, better, best. Tune in as popular travel writer and novelist, Linda Watanabe McFerrin calls in from the road to share her secret to the best-ever family vacations.   Listen to Nancy Bruning’s “Nancercize Blogtalkradio Show” Thursday, December 17th at 12 noon EST, 9:00 AM PST. Go to http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Nancercize and call in your questions at 347- 324-3322.  The show will be recorded and available soon.

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.

Daily writing workshops created to enhance the Southern adventure will be led by award winning poet, travel writer, and novelist Linda Watanabe McFerrin. Linda teaches writing workshops all over the world, especially designed for the locale. There’ll also be plenty of lush photo opportunities all along the way and time for writing and quiet reflection.

How It All Started . . .

The Southern Sampler Artists Colony, founded in 2006 by two childhood friends—one who never left the South, and one who headed West but always knew her soul was Southern—is a haven for writers, dancers, artists, musicians and photographers who want to stir the creative pot, Southern style. Located at The Crossroads in South Carolina, a small community nestled in the Sand Hills and bordered by Black River Swamp, the colony offers workshop participants life enhancing opportunities to renew the creative spirit, explore fresh approaches to their work, and collaborate on individual and group projects.

Participants in the April 2010 Writers and Photographers Workshop will stay in a charming and rambling turn-of-the century home on Sullivan’s Island, only minutes from downtown Charleston and a short walk from one of South Carolina’s pristine white-sand beaches. Accommodations are dormitory style with expansive common areas, and a wraparound porch lined with Carolina rockers.

David Vagasky, a renowned chef who teaches at the Culinary Institute of Charleston, will prepare Low Country delicacies at “home” the evening of April 13th and April 19th. Breakfasts will be informal and most lunches catered and on the go. Dinners will feature acclaimed Charleston restaurants and our own home.

Workshop participants will be invited to contribute to the creation of a 2011 calendar featuring image and word written gathered during the 2010 Southern Sampler experince.

The colony (SSAC) has hosted three acclaimed workshops. The first two were at The Crossroads:  Writers: Sampling the Sensual South in April 2007, followed by Artists: Sampling Belonging, Southern Style, in April 2008. The third workshop, Writers: Sampling the Low Country, was in Charleston, April 2009.

Cost: $1,585.00 payable to Martha Greenway, 210 Serenity Circle, Mayesville, SC 29104 ($1,535.00 if paid before December 15, 2009)

For more information and to register, please contact Martha Greenway, mgreenway@ftc-i.net, 803 495-2186 or Mary Brent Cantarutti, mbrent@comcast.net, 415 269-1039.

If interested, apply early. Space is extremely limited.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you. I had such an enjoyable journey. I know my friends are going to tire of my constant chatting and raving of South Carolina—the people, the food, the art and most of all the soul. I sure do miss South Carolina. It is amazing how y’all got a bunch of foreigners yearning for your little piece of the world.

—Cathleen O’Brien, 2008 and 2009 Workshop Participant

For an evening of readings, laughter, wine and more wine, why don’t you come to Writers with Drinks after Litquake’s Off the Richter Scale reading on Saturday? OTRS ends at 6pm and we begin at 7:30! Come early for a good table. A line-up of awesome presenters. Check it out.

The long-running spoken word series Writers With Drinks has finally gone too far—in every possible direction!

Saturday, October 10, 2009, 7:30 to 9:30 PM, doors open at 6:30 PM

• Linda Watanabe McFerrin
• Anthony Swofford
• Roz Savage
• Irina Slutsky
• Doug Dorst
• Joe Loya

Where: The Make Out Room, 3225 22nd. St. between Mission and Valencia, San Francisco

How much: $3 to $5 sliding scale, all proceeds benefit the CSC.

Stan Goldberg

Saturday, October 10, 2009 || 7pm
Book Passage-Corte Madera || 51 Tamal Vista Dr.
Corte Madera || www.bookpassage.com

Lessons for the Living by Stan Goldberg is that rare self-help book that actually lives up to its title. Goldberg was living a high-stress academic life in the Bay Area when he was found to have prostate cancer. While not immediately life threatening, the cancer diagnosis and treatment threw him completely off his game physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Following various failed attempts to regain his equilibrium, Goldberg found himself volunteering for hospice where by simply being present, listening, and doing whatever needed to be done, he helped others come to terms with the lives they would soon be leaving. In so doing, he also found himself coming back to life.

Engaging and enlightening, but never pedantic, Goldberg imparts basic life lessons on the importance of giving, communicating, loving, and forgiving. It took a lethal disease and time spent as a hospice volunteer caring for persons he came to know and love for Goldberg to learn these important truths. Unfortunately, many other persons do not learn them until the end of life approaches, if at all. Readers of Lessons for the Living are fortunate that Goldberg has learned and lived these lessons and can share them so ably.

Saturday, August 8, 2009 || 7pm
Book Passage-Corte Madera || 51 Tamal Vista Dr.
Corte Madera || www.bookpassage.com
Celebrating the new work of two poets …

William Keener

William Keener has been writing and publishing poetry for the past ten years.  He is also an environmental lawyer, and the former director of the Marine Mammal Center in the Marin Headlands.  His first chapbook, titled Three Crows Yelling, was co-authored with Marin County poets Bill Noble and Michael Day in 2000.  Tonight we celebrate the launch of his first solo collection of poetry Gold Leaf on Granite, which recently won the annual Anabiosis Press contest.

The Way of Stones

Kathryn Ridall came to poetry after a long career as a psychotherapist and unviversity instructor at John F. Kennedy University in Pleasant Hill. Her poetry has been published widely in journals such as Kalliope, The Texas Observer, The Chrisysalis Reader, and Pearl.  She is the editor of the forthcoming anthology When The Muse Calls: Poems For The Creative Life. This evening she will read from The Way Of Stones, a chapbook released this summer by Finishing Line Press. She also will be reading new, unpublished work.

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

Left Coast Writer Rebecca Foust will read from her new book, Mom’s Canoe, at Book Passage on Saturday, June 13, at 7:00 pm, with champagne and Ruli’s cookies to follow during the book signing.  Mom’s Canoe, winner of the 2008 Rpbbert Phillips Chapbook Prize, collects poetry about the author’s childhood in western Pennsylvania, an area devestated by the decline of the coal mining and railroading industries of the last century. Foust’s first book, Dark Card, sold out of its first print run and was reviewed in more than 20 journals including American Book Review, Hudson Review and Rattle; the reviews are posted at www.rebeccafoust.com .

Patricia Ljutic

Saturday, July 11, 2009 || 7pm
Book Passage-Corte Madera || 51 Tamal Vista Dr.
Corte Madera || www.bookpassage.com

Patricia Ljutic is joined by four other Bay Area writers: Jennifer Gunter, Jolie Kanat, Harriet Heydemann Cellini and Laura Shumaker, who will read from A Cup of Comfort® for Parents of Children with Special Needs ($9.95). The anthology contains fifty stories by parents who have struggled with a child’s diagnosis only to embrace and celebrate the differences that make their children that much more special—and even more loved. Edited by Colleen Sell this unique story collection offers inspiration for parents of children with cerebral palsy, Down Syndrome, seizure disorder and autism.

A Cup of Comfort for Parents of Children with Special Needs