Learn the Skills and Make the Connections to Write, Illustrate & Publish Books for Children & Young Adults!

Join us for the 7th Annual Book Passage Children’s Writers & Illustrators Conference. The Conference will cover all aspects of writing and illustrating for children—from developing ideas to honing skills to finding a publisher. Participants will work closely with other writers and illustrators, as well as with agents, editors, and publishers. The conference is designed to meet the differing needs of those who create for different age groups. Participants will choose an area of emphasis for the morning sessions, such as writing for Keep reading …

Hey guys! There’s a new writing contest presented by Book Passage! The graphic below will describe the contest in full:

Keep reading …

Studio Art Chair John Hull, Historic Preservation and Community Planning Director Robert Russell and Left Coast Writer Greg Fuller

In April some of our writers return to the South again for a week-long workshop at the Southern Sampler Artists Colony on Sullivan’s Island, led by Left Coast Writers® Founder, Linda Watanabe McFerrin.
It’s been an annual pilgrimage for years, one that always includes integration with the arts and literary community of Charleston, South Carolina.
It’s fun to look back. Greg Fuller and SSAC Founders Mary Brent Cantarutti and Martha Greenway mix and mingle, along with our other writers, with College of Charleston professors and administrators at this arts celebration. Our Founder’s favorite: the painting in the last photo. Check it out here.

Sharing the Creative Journey …

SSAC is proud to offer a Writing and Creative Retreat with award-winning author Linda Watanabe McFerrin

Sample the language of the South, weave collective stories to be embellished in time, discover the layers, textures and hues of historical Charleston, wander in enchanting gardens, swing low to a sweet jazz beat, picnic under a canopy of live oaks, break bread with local writers, artists and musicians.

One-on-one direction on your literary and creative projects: renew your spirit—stir the creative juices — walk the beaches — daily prompts designed to foster life-enhancing experiences.

How It All Started . . . Keep reading …

Notable News: Daniel Riviera has a new class at Book Passage in Corte Madera that we recommend for all writers. He will cover many of the business and legal issues that writers face. Topics include source materials and potential liability; collaboration agreements; protecting and submitting your work; agency and management agreements; option/purchase agreements; crowd-funding; self-publication; electronic rights. Q & A session to follow presentation. Keep reading …

LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK LAUNCH:  Wandering in Bali: A Tropical Paradise Discovered with Linda Watanabe McFerrin and Joanna Biggar

Saturday, June 9th, 2012 || 7pm Book Passage-Corte Madera|| 51 Tamal Vista Dr. Corte Madera ||www.bookpassage.com

Come to Bali in Corte Madera!

Wine, music, stories and other treats …

The word Bali conjures images of lush tropical beaches and coastlines, mysterious temples, gracious people, their transporting music and rice fields of impossible green.

But this paradisiacal Indonesian island isn’t all goddesses and frangipani. In addition to the beauty, this group of writers (www.wanderlandwriters.com) also found the humor—and the terror—of the place. Computer crashes, marauding monkeys, international paranoia, flesh-eating fish and even a few zombies also found their way into the stories collected here. Keep reading …

POTENTIAL WANDERLANDERS …

PARIS ALERT!!!!!

Chers Amis,

The rumor is true … this year’s writing adventure will be our own “September Song” in Paris.

Please join us for the week of September 9-15 in one of three spacious apartments in a charming Left Bank neighborhood.

Join us for walks among the falling leaves along the Seine, for soulful sits in famous literary cafés, for sumptuous dining, for exploring Paris’s varied and magical arrondissements by Métro, bus and on foot.

Come with us for literature, both to create it through our own writing, honed during five workshops and individual one-on-one sessions, and through connecting with great writers who have lived and worked there before us and some who live and play there today. Keep reading …

As we all know our very own Left Coast Writer Chana Wilson has recently put out an amazing new book, Riding Fury Home.  Of course it has received many glowing reviews, and we’d like to share some with all of you.  Click the titles of the publication for the full review:

“As a work of socially relevant art, this memoir is above reproach. As a historical document, it is both lamentation of a shameful past and evidence of how far we’ve come.”
-Elizabeth Kenndedy, SF Chronicle

“It quickly becomes clear from the beginning pages of this memoir that although Chana Wilson is a first-time author, she is a masterful storyteller. This book is almost impossible to put down…”
-Rachel Pepper, The Bay Area Reporter

There are also great reviews in The Advocate, SF Weekly, and Seattle’s The Stanger, among others.

You can also read more about Chana’s book on her website, Facebook page, or buy a copy on Amazon or at a bookstore near you!

LEFT COAST WRITERS LITERARY SALON: William C. Gordon, Author of King of the Bottom

William C. Gordon

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

Maybe some of you remember celebrating wildly that night at Book Passage with Willie Gordon and Isabel Allende earlier this year when The Chinese Jars came out. It was definitely a night to remember. Well, one of our heroes (he’s been a huge supporter of our Left Coast Writers) is at it again. William C. Gordon has a new book out: King of the Bottom.

Oddly, it’s been a long haul getting books out in English, even for this internationally famous author, so we’re sure he has a revealing story to tell about writing and publishing books. He also has some fascinating fiction in his arsenal. Keep reading …

LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK PARTY: Wondrous Child: The Joys and Challenges of Grandparenting, with editor Lindy Hough and contributors Joanna Biggar and Kitty Hughes

Lindy Hough

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

LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK LAUNCH:  Synchronicity: The Art of Coincidence, Choice, and Unlocking Your Mind with Kirby Surprise

Dr. Kirby Surprise

Saturday, May 12, 2012 || 7pm Book Passage-Corte Madera|| 51 Tamal Vista Dr. Corte Madera || www.bookpassage.com

Wondering how to make things happen?

Kirby Surprise has written a fascinating new book, Synchronicity: The Art of Coincidence, Choice, and Unlocking Your Mind, about the way individuals perceive reality and the science behind it.  He writes about meaningful synchronistic experiences and how an individual can actually influence their happening. The experience of meaningful coincidences is universal. They are reported by people of every culture, every belief system, and every time period. Synchronicity examines the evidence for the human influence on the meaningfulness of events, and the way the modern computational model of the mind predicts how we create meaning. Keep reading …

LEFT COAST WRITERS LITERARY SALON: Clive Matson, Author of Let the Crazy Child Write

Clive Matson

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

In April we’ll be celebrating National Poetry Month with a number of poetry focused events. National Poetry Month was created in 1996 by the Academy of American Poets to promote poetry and its importance in American culture and history.  We begin our National Poetry Month series with a salon featuring poet and writing coach Clive Matson.

Clive Matson (MFA Columbia University) has been a published poet since 1964 and has been a writing coach for many Bay Area novelists, among them Deborah Janke, Willie Gordon, Isa Maynard, Phillip Wilhite, Laura Glenn Luis, and Joe Quirk. His early teachers were the Beats in New York City, and among his published works are Mainline to the Heart(1966), Equal in Desire (1983), Chalcedony’s First Ten Songs (2007), and Chalcedony’s Second Ten Songs (2009). Over the years he has become more and more immersed in the stream of passionate intensity that runs through us all. That intensity is one standard for fine writing, according to his 1998 text Let the Crazy Child Write!, which he uses as a model for his writing classes. Clive enjoys playing basketball, table tennis, and collecting minerals in the field. He lives in Oakland, California, where he helps bring up his young teenage son, Ezra, and facilitates WOW (Writing Occupy Workshop). Visit Clive at www.matsonpoet.com

We’ll look forward to seeing you all there!

LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK LAUNCH: Riding Fury Home: A Memoir with Chana Wilson

Chana Wilson

Saturday, April 14 , 2012 || 7pm Book Passage-Corte Madera || 51 Tamal Vista Dr. Corte Madera || www.bookpassage.com

We’re delighted to host the debut of Chana Wilson‘s new memoir, Riding Fury Home: A Memoir.  Riding Fury Home is Chana’s new book about her tenuous relationship with her mother. Chana’s mom was sent to a mental institution when Chana was a young girl and treated for her lesbianism, which they attempted to “cure.”  Her dramatic new memoir traces her life from her youth to the women’s movement in 1970s and beyond.

Riding Fury Home received a starred review from Publishers Weekly:

“From the horrors of her childhood in 1950s New Jersey to the liberating discovering of her sexual identity decades later, psychotherapist Wilson’s memoir is as heartbreaking as it is uplifting. During Keep reading …

Third Monday of the Month for 12 months – 6:30-8:30 pm
For the whole year: Only $200 / $150 for Left Coast Writers® members
$40 Drop-in fee

Finally, the writing group everyone has been asking for … and it’s only around $10 a month for Left Coast Writers® members! Get in on the latest Left Coast Writers® literary adventure: The Left Coast Writers® Monthly Writers Group.

Bring your work and your imagination as well as humor, honesty, and attention to an evening of sharing recent writings, discussion on craft, and fabulous literary prompts. Either author/instructors Linda Watanabe McFerrin or Joanna Biggar will be on hand to contribute editorial direction and orchestrate sessions. This is a chance to get feedback on your work and hone your skills in a stimulating, supportive, and highly professional environment.

This workshop is designed to help writers across genres get their creative juices flowing and to hone and polish their craft. Each workshop will focus on a particular writing skill, for example: vivid writing through evoking the senses, structuring a piece from opening to close, the all-important nutgraph, finding a voice, “making it sing.”

Each class will include using a prompt, followed by in-class writing time, followed by a discussion of the participants’ work. These sessions will be tailored to the aims and goals of the students once we know better what they are.

Bring paper, pens, laptop and bring your imagination.

Left Coast Writers® are well known for their books, essays, articles and blogs, so you will be in super company. The group will meet the third Monday of every month at Book Passage in Corte Madera. Don’t miss out. Call them up (415 927 0960) and sign up before the doors close on this one!

Upcoming Workshops:
Mon., Mar. 19 – 6:30-8:30 pm
Mon., Apr. 16 – 6:30-8:30 pm

LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK LAUNCH:  Leaning Into Sharp Points: Practical Guidance and Nurturing Support for Caregivers with Stan Goldberg, Ph.D.

Saturday, March 10, 2012 || 7pm Book Passage-Corte Madera || 51 Tamal Vista Dr.Corte Madera || www.bookpassage.com

We’d like to invite all those who live in the San Francisco Bay Area to join us in celebrating the release of Stan Goldberg’s new book Leaning Into Sharp Points: Practical Guidance and Nurturing Support for Caregivers. The party, sponsored by Left Coast Writers®, will be at one of  the Bay Area’s premier bookstores, Book Passages in Corte Madera on March 10th at 7:00pm.

There will be a conversation about caregiving with generous amounts of champagne and wine, very appealing home-made appetizers, and if he practices enough, some Native American flute and Shakahachi (Japanese bamboo flute) interludes entwined within caregiving stories. And of course, a little bit of reading from the book and some conversation with Stan.

Anybody who is a caregiver now will greatly benefit from attending, and those who are not will learn what to do should they become one.

Stan is a cancer survivor, hospice volunteer Pathways Home Care and Hospice, husband, father, Professor Emeritus at San Francisco State University, and devotee of the shakuhachi (Japanese bamboo flute) and Native American Flute. In 2009 he was named by the Hospice Volunteer Association “Volunteer of the Year.”

For more than 25 years Stan taught, provided therapy, researched, and published in the areas of learning, change, loss, and end of life issues. He has published seven books, written numerous articles and delivered more than 100 lectures and workshops throughout the United States, Latin America, Canada, and Asia. His last book Lessons for the Living: Stories of Forgiveness, Gratitude, and Courage at the End of Life, received six national and international awards.
His books have been translated into Chinese, Indonesian, and Portuguese. Currently, He writes, consults on issues of change, and offers training to hospices and caregiver groups.

“Statistics show that at least once in almost everyone’s life, they will become a caregiver. Though an estimated 35 million currently provide care for someone terminally or chronically ill, those who accept this responsibility often feel as alone as if they were in a frightening foreign land. Whether visiting occasionally or caregiving 24/7, they are brushing up against life’s sharpest point.”

—Stan Goldberg, Leaning Into Sharp Points: Practical Guidance and Nurturing Support for Caregivers

Stan has received glowing endorsements for his new book Leaning Into Sharp Points: Practical Guidance and Nurturing Support for Caregivers from Diane Gray of the Elisabeth Kubler-Ross Foundation, Andy Miller of Livestrong, The Lance Armstrong Foundation, and Gloria C. Horsley of the Open To Hope Foundation.

Also on February 11th Judith Horstman will be reading from her newest book, The Scientific American Book of Love, Sex, and the Brain: The Neuroscience of How, When, Why and Who We Love. She will be at Book Passage at the same time as the Left Coast Writers Pre-Valentine’s Day Lovefest, and we hope she will stop by for a toast.

In her third enthralling book about the brain, Judith Horstman takes us on a lively tour of our most important sex and love organ and the whole smorgasbord of our many kinds of love-from the bonding of parent and child to the passion of erotic love, the affectionate love of companionship, the role of animals in our lives, and the love of God.

“This wonderful and accessible book will definitely make you rethink what you thought you knew about love. It does an outstanding job making a tremendous amount of data about such an important topic easy and fun to understand.”
—Andrew Newberg, MD, director of research, Myrna Brind Center for Integrative Medicine, Thomas Jefferson University Hospital; coauthor, How God Changes Your Brain

Judith Horstman is an award-winning journalist who writes about health and medicine for doctors as well as the general public. She has been a Washington correspondent, a journalism professor, a Fulbright scholar, and has written and edited in just about any medium including newspapers, newsletters, special health publications, radio, video, the Internet, annual reports and books.

LEFT COAST WRITERS PRE-VALENTINE’S DAY EVENT: Party for the day of the heart, with a few heart-felt readings as well!

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

Join us for the ultimate pre-Valentine’s Day party. Hot Flashes editors Linda Watanabe McFerrin and Laurie McAndish King and a host of past contributors (Claire Savage, Kunal Mukherjee, Saul Isler, Marianne Betterly, and more) will serve up wine, chocolate, romance-inducing gifts and some super-sultry works of literature just in time for the special day. Single or paired or in a big group, we want you to come and enjoy the love-ly vibe!

About Hot Flashes:
We confess, we’re on a mission. We think that the pleasures of being human and “in the flesh” get short shrift in our daily lives. Too often, in our culture, a natural captivation with the senses and their allure is suppressed, closeted, twisted, and this isn’t healthy at all. So, we want to present an unadulterated and avidly expressed lust for the sensual and all its permutations. This collection isn’t about anger and rebellion. It’s about love-about a good old erotic hankering for everything hot and steamy, warm and juicy, tasty, fragrant, visually exciting and vibration-filled. It’s about quickies: flash fiction, non-fiction and poetry guaranteed to raise a reader’s temperature in a way that is positively hormonal. These sexy short stories and poems demonstrate how simple it is to find pleasure almost anywhere when we are willing to slow down and attend to our feelings, our memories, and our senses.

Linda Watanabe McFerrin has been traveling since she was two and writing about it since she was six. She is a contributor to numerous literary journals, newspapers, magazines, anthologies, and online publications including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Francisco Chronicle Magazine, Modern Bride, San Francisco Bride, Bay Nature, various Travelers’ Tales anthologies, and Salon.com. A popular speaker and panelist and an award-winning writer, she has authored two poetry collections, a novel and a short story collection, and has edited four books, including a northern California guidebook and a travel anthology. Linda has served as an NEA panelist and past judge for the San Francisco Literary Awards, the Josephine Miles Award for Literary Excellence and the Kiriyama Prize, and is founder and President of Left Coast Writers®, LLC.

Laurie McAndish King is a travel writer whose essays have been published in anthologies such as 30 Days in Italy, The Thong Also Rises, and the award-winning The Kindness of Strangers. Her work has also been published in the San Francisco Chronicle Magazine and aired on KUSF radio. Laurie’s adventurous spirit has led her to chase lemurs through the mountains of Madagascar, study medicinal plants in the jungles of Brazil, track lions on foot-without a gun-in Botswana, study with an urban shaman in San Francisco, and trap and band raptors in the Marin Headlands. Laurie earned her master’s degree in Internet-based education and publishes an online newsletter for travel writers. She is an officer and board member of Bay Area Travel Writers, and indulges her passions for travel and natural history as often as she possibly can.

Garagiste Healdsburg, 439 Healdsburg Avenue,  Healdsburg, CA 95448, is a lovely winery and venue in Healdsburg that has asked if any Left Coast Writers would like to come and read during one of their Friday “Artist Evenings”.  You can read for a crowd and sell books at the venue afterwards any friday night from 6:00-7:30!  Conteact them here.

Independent publicist and consultant, Alice Acheson, has negotiated literary contracts and edited numerous works. She is the former publicity director for Simon & Schuster and has more than 30 years’ experience promoting books.  Alice will be teaching a few workshops that are going to be at the Corte Madera Book Passage location in March. We recommend these to all of our members!

The Greatest Marketing Tool on March 2nd

Publishing Choices: Print-on-Demand, Self-Publishing, Traditional Publisher also on March 2nd

and What’s Next on March 3rd

Alice’s workshops are a must! She’s like a fairy godmother for writers. Follow her advice and your literary wishes WILL come true.

—Linda Watanabe McFerrin, author of Dead Love

LEFT COAST WRITERS LITERARY SALON: An Evening with Lonely Planet: Alison Bing

Monday, January 2, 2012 || 7pm
Book Passage || Corte Madera
51 Tamal Vista Drive, Corte Madera ||www.bookpassage.com

If you have a thirst for literary adventure, don’t miss our first salon of 2012.

The New Year takes off with a look at the world as we spend an evening with Lonely Planet, the largest travel guide book and digital media publisher in the world.

The company, now owned exclusively by BBC Worldwide, was founded by Maureen and Tony Wheeler in 1973 when they published Across Asia on the Cheap.Originally called Lonely Planet Publications, the company changed its name to Lonely Planet in July 2009 to reflect its broad travel industry offering and the emphasis on digital products. As of 2010, it publishes about 500 titles in 8 languages, as well as TV programs, a magazine, mobile phone applications and websites.

Lonely Planet author, Alison Bing, will be our guide as we explore the globe, travel writing, and the literary landscape … Lonely Planet style.

LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK LAUNCH:  Thanasis Maskaleris, Translator and Editor of The Terrestrial Gospel of Nikos Kazantzakis:  Will the Humans Be Saviors of the Earth?

Thanasis Maskaleris

Saturday, December 10, 2011 || 7pm
Book Passage-Corte Madera || 51 Tamal Vista Dr.
Corte Madera || www.bookpassage.com

So come and celebrate with our earth loving, tree hugging tribe and share in this moving ode to our planet.

“This ‘terrestrial gospel’ is just the kind of bracing slap the world needs, a reminder from a great writer about what’s real and vital.”
—Bill McKibben Founder, 350.org, Author of Earth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet

“Kazantzakis’s stentorian message needs to be hear far and wide,
as we persist in our sometimes mindless assaults on our fragile plane.”
—Dr. Leonidas Perakis, Scientist, Writer

LEFT COAST WRITERS LITERARY SALON: Peter Lang, Social Media Strategist and CEO of Uhuru Network

Peter Lang

Monday, December 5, 2011 || 7pm
Book Passage || Corte Madera
51 Tamal Vista Drive, Corte Madera ||www.bookpassage.com

Wondering about websites, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and so on and how they can possibly help you get the word out about your work? We’ve asked Social Media Strategist and CEO of Uhuru Network, Peter Lang, to come to the Bay Area for the second time this year (he was also at the Book Passage Travel Food and Photography Conference) to share his knowledge and demystify the social media and online worlds for you.

Peter is co-founder, CEO and lead strategist of Uhuru Network. He is also a co-creator and English author at Tricksfacebook.com, a multilingual tech blog focused on Facebook; co-creator and photographer for Stylishlyme.com, a personal fashion / travel blog; and co-creator of the LingoYou educational project, which uses blogging in high schools to connect and create a global conversation between two schools with different languages.

He built his first computer at the age of 10. By the time he graduated with a Degree in International Business and a Certificate in Finance, this dynamic young business consultant and new media strategist had already created a marketing department for one of the largest logistic brokers in the U.S., worked with the World Trade Organization as a lobbyist for a major growers’ association, and served as Operations Director for an up-and-coming educational and environmental non-profit. He served as President of his college fraternity and studied strategic marketing, international logistics, and international management at the ESCE (Ecole Superieure du Commerce Exterieur) in Paris. As an assistant in the computer lab for his college Engineering Department, he created servers, built networks, advised on all upgrades and conversions, and trained faculty and students on the equipment for 7 labs housing hundreds of computers.

“I believe we’re in the midst of the biggest opportunity since the industrial revolution,” says Peter. “My goal is to take away the stress and fear of social media. The internet is an outstanding resource for people and information. I love removing barriers so that clients can address it professionally, responsibly, fearlessly and with curiosity and spontaneity. Networks bring people closer together. They facilitate opportunities and help us find people with similar ideas and passions. That’s power. They increase our capabilities and our reach. They remind us that we are not alone.”

Today, he brings his far-ranging travels and experience to bear in his work teaching and advising in the areas of new technology and social media strategy. Through Uhuru Network, Peter and his team are designing communication experiences and tools centered on what their partners hope to achieve with a focus on strategy, content development, graphic design, and online skill development. Peter Lang is changing lives, supplying businesses with the tools to navigate the rapidly changing netscape and teaching young and old a whole new “LANGuage.”

LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK PARTY:  Chicken Soup for the Soul Find Your Happiness: 101 Stories about Finding Your Purpose, Passion, and Joy with Anne Sigmon

Anne Sigmon

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

On Monday night we’ll be celebrating the publication of Chicken Soup for the Soul Find Your Happiness: 101 Stories about Finding Your Purpose, Passion, and Joy, a new anthology featuring Bay Area writers Anne Sigmon and Nicole Guiltinan.

• Anne Sigmon reads “Why I Still Travel to the Wild” a reflection on her determination to continue traveling to remote corners even after her health was compromised by a stroke and autoimmune disease.

• Nicole Guiltinan reads “Happiness Through Forgiveness” a story that looks back to her mother’s death when Nicole was twelve years old.

In Chicken Soup for the Soul: Find Your Happiness, Anne, Nicole and the other contributors share stories that will inspire readers to find their own purpose, pursue their passions, and let joy into their lives, no matter what their circumstances.

Anne Sigmon is a Bay Area freelance writer who writes about stroke and autoimmune disease (AnneSigmon.com) as well as adventure travel for people with health concerns (JunglesPants.com).  She is currently finishing a memoir bout surviving stroke and resuming travel to wild locations from Burma to Uzbekistan.  Anne’s stories have appeared in national publications such as Good Housekeeping and Stroke Connection magazines and the 2010 travel anthology Wandering in Costa Rica.

Nicole Guiltinan is a first-year college student in Northern California who is planning a career in social work.  She enjoys reading, art, and writing poetry.

Come and enjoy wine & hors d’oeuvres plus a drawing for prizes. Books will be available for purchase at the reading.

LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK LAUNCH:  Robbi Sommers Bryant, Author of The Beautiful Evil

Robbi Sommers Bryant

Saturday, November 12, 2011 || 7pm
Book Passage-Corte Madera || 51 Tamal Vista Dr.
Corte Madera || www.bookpassage.com

Do you believe in fairy tales? Well, the little devils wreak havoc in Robbi Sommers Bryant’s thriller, The Beautiful Evil

Constance Sartone Jaconson never recovered from the sudden death of her father when she was only five. Devastated by her husband’s death and the scandal that ensues, Constance’s mother, Madeline, does little to comfort her scared and lonely daughter. With nowhere to turn, Constance protects herself by closing by off her emotions. Through vivid dreams and daytime visions, Constance’s father calls to her from a horse-drawn stage coach. These visions help Constance cope with her humdrum life and failing marriage. But things are about to change.

On a business with her husband, she purchases an antique Greek vase. Upon opening it, a stream of purple light hisses from the vase, and a tribe of wasp-like creatures pour out. One of the creatures shape-shifts into a ravishing fairy and offers Constance a way out. Desperate to feel anything, Constance listens to the fairy’s advise. But as her confidence grows, she begins to make all the wrong decisions, catapulting her into a web of lies and deceit. As her life spins future and further out of control, Constance soon finds herself staring into the abyss, forced to make one final heart-wrenching decision.

A rollercoaster ride into the chaos of a personal hell, The Beautiful Evil, is a captivating, psychological thriller that will keep you questioning reality until the final ultimate act.

Sex. Crime. Deceit. Murder.

… And wine.  So do come, and bring your pals.

LEFT COAST WRITERS LITERARY SALON: Jasmin Darznik, Author of The Good Daughter: A Memoir of My Mother’s Hidden Life

Jasmin Darznik

Monday, November 7, 2011 || 7pm
Book Passage || Corte Madera
51 Tamal Vista Drive, Corte Madera ||www.bookpassage.com

Please join us for an evening with one of our favorite writers: New York Times best selling author, Jasmin Darznik, who got her start right here at Book Passage in Corte Madera.

Jasmin’s first book, The Good Daughter : A Memoir of My Mother’s Hidden Life, was published in January 2011 by Grand Central. It was a New York Times Bestseller and will be published in thirteen countries. The book has just been released in paperback.

Jasmin is an award-winning essayist and short story writer whose writing has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and other publications.

She was born in Tehran, Iran, grew up in Marin County, and received her Ph.D. in English from Princeton University. She is a professor of English and creative writing at Washington and Lee University and has also taught Iranian literature at the University of Virginia. As a 2011-2012 fellow at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, she’s now at work on a novel set in 1960s Iran.

The Good Daughter was first conceived in a Book Passage workshop led by Linda Watanabe McFerrin. She counts the aforementioned Linda Watanabe McFerrin as her best teacher, ever.

For more about Jasmin and her book you can visit www.jasmindarznik.com

Here’s what reviewers are saying about The Good Daughter.

“An eye-opening account that disturbs with its depiction of the place
of women in Iranian society, but warms the heart in its portrayal of
their gritty endurance.”—Kirkus

“Riveting.” —Vogue

“Superb … riveting … a moving tribute.” —The Cleveland Plain Dealer

LEFT COAST WRITERS AT THE FERRY PLAZA:  Colette Obrien, Author of The Nobility of the Robe, emcees an evening filled with spooky tales!

Colette Obrien Hosts

Monday, October 10, 6pm
Book Passage || Ferry Plaza
San Francisco || www.bookpassage.com

Join author and emcee Colette Obrien, Unity Barry, Debbie Goelz and Patricia Ljutic on Monday evening as Left Coast Writers share spooky tales. This event is open to the public, so share the news and bring your family and friends for a special treat.  That’s the Halloween spirit!

LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK LAUNCH:  Tina Vierra and Contributors to Cyberfeasts & Foodstocks

Tina Vierra

Saturday, October 8, 2011 || 7pm
Book Passage-Corte Madera || 51 Tamal Vista Dr.
Corte Madera || www.bookpassage.com

This is an extra yummy event!

Editor Tina Vierra presents Cyberfeasts & Foodstocks. Vierra will talk about the process of creating this cookbook, which features more than 270 recipes, tips, quips, and useful cooking instruction from the experienced chefs, caterers, food shop owners, and cooks in The International Foodwine Discussion Group. Recipes from the book will be served!

LEFT COAST WRITERS LITERARY SALON: Laurie McLean, Agent

Laurie McLean

Monday, October 3, 2011 || 7pm

Book Passage || Corte Madera
51 Tamal Vista Drive, Corte Madera ||www.bookpassage.com

Get the scoop on the latest trends in publishing and what agents are looking for these days from our October speaker, Laurie McLean.

Laurie McLean joined the Larsen Pomada Agency in 2005 following a 20-year stint as the CEO of a successful Silicon Valley public relations agency. Laurie was able to switch gears in 2002 to immerse herself in writing. She penned three manuscripts, and if that wasn’t enough, decided that the life of a literary agent would be the perfect complement to her duties as a writer of fantasy and romance.

Laurie has been writing professionally since high school—first as a journalist, then as a public relations agent. She earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism from the State University of New York and a Master’s Degree at Syracuse University’s prestigious Newhouse School of Journalism.

Laurie specializes in adult genre fiction (romance, fantasy, science fiction, mystery, westerns, horror, etc.) plus middle-grade and young adult children’s books.

For more on Laurie, check out her blog at www.agentsavant.com.

LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK PARTY:  Daniel Bacon, Author of Barbary Coast Trail Official Guide and Laurie McAndish King, co-creator of the SF Waterfront App.

Daniel Bacon

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

Who isn’t in love with the San Francisco Waterfront? We have two experts on hand to explain its most exciting points: Daniel Bacon, founder of the Barbary Coast Trail and author of Barbary Coast Trail Official Guide and Laurie McAndish King, co-creator of the SF Waterfront: Bridge to Ballpark App.

The Barbary Coast Trail is a designated path that connects 20 historic sites—many of them along the S.F. Waterfront—and local history museums in San Francisco, California.

The Barbary Coast Trail was founded by historian Daniel Bacon in collaboration with the San Francisco Museum and Historical Society. The trail was inaugurated in May 1998 and originally marked with painted images. The first 150 bronze medallions to mark the trail were installed by 2000. The medallions were designed by Daniel Bacon and illustrator Jim Blair.

Laurie McAndish King

Laurie McAndish King’s S.F. Waterfront App., great for anyone exploring the area, is available from Sutro Media and can be downloaded through iTunes.

We can’t think of a more appropriate Ferry Plaza event. Visitors and locals will discover new things to enjoy!

Eat, Play, Love: Cooking and Writing from the Heart in the Lowcountry with Linda Watanabe McFerrin and the Southern Sampler Artists Colony, April 17-24, 2012

The 2012 workshop will fill up quickly, so if you if you have any interest you should let the organizers know!

Welcome home!

The rocking chairs beckon. Can you smell the salt air? Stir, fry, mix, mold, blend, stew, bake, roast, whip, sprinkle, dip, fold—embrace old and new friends, celebrate community, and create shared stories to be embellished in time.

Event Highlights:

“Marsh-to-Plate”: Cast your net with Captain Anton. Oysters, clams, crabs, redfish and flounder anyone? Dinner will feature the catch of the day. Anton will help in the preparation, and read from the book he is writing.

The Dark and Light Side of Chocolate: Discover the magic of chocolate making with renown chocolatier, David Vagasky.

Certified Organic Produce, Fresh and Local: A personal tour of the Joseph Fields Farm, located on Johns Island, wouldn’t be complete without supper on the banks of the nearby Stono River. Alluette, owner of Alluette’s Café, will be in charge. And don’t forget live jazz and poetry under a starry sky.

Lawn Party: Brush up on your croquet game, concoct a Southern drink for the occasion, and devil some eggs. Charleston friends will join in the fun.

The Spice of Life: From delicate to tangy and sweet, Sea Island Savory Herbs, located on Johns Island, has it all. A private tour will feature innovative use of heirloom herbs in the art of cooking.

Stirring the Creative Juices with Cathleen O’Brien

• Create your very own Altered Book.
• Contribute to a Collective Workshop Cookbook
• Learn how to make fish prints with artist, Sue Wallace.

Writing Workshop with Linda Watanabe McFerrin

• Workshop 1: Starters
• Workshop 2: Word Salad
• Workshop 3: Comfort Food
• Workshop 4: Toasts, Boasts, and Roasts
• Workshop 5: Lovely Desserts

Cost of Colony Experience: Cost is $1,800 ($1,950 if paid after December 15, 2011) for a private room, and $1,600 ($1,750 if paid after December 15, 2011) for a shared room. The choice of private and separate rooms depends upon availability at time of registration.

In order to assure workshop placement please send a $500 check deposit (fully refundable before October 10th) made out to Southern Sampler Artists Colony with private or shared room preference to: Mary Brent Cantarutti, 233 Santa Margarita Drive, San Rafael, CA 94901.There will be ten workshop participants; placement will be finalized in order of receipt of deposits.

The company is everything! Charleston here we come!

Mary Brent & Martha

LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK LAUNCH:  Adrienne Amundsen, Author of Cassandras Falling

Adrienne Amundsen

Saturday, September 10, 2011 || 7pm
Book Passage-Corte Madera || 51 Tamal Vista Dr.
Corte Madera || www.bookpassage.com

Please join us for a celebration and a good amount of revelation as poet Adrienne Amundsen shares her poetic observations on politics, the environment and our humanity. You’ll find a great deal to cheer in this first collection by a talented poet. Her poems are a call to action! We’ll provide Keep reading …

LEFT COAST WRITERS LITERARY SALON: Spud Hilton,  San Francisco Chronicle Travel Editor

Spud Hilton

Tuesday, September 6, 2011 || 7pm

Book Passage || Corte Madera
51 Tamal Vista Drive, Corte Madera || www.bookpassage.com

Back from those summer travels? Maybe it’s time to write about them. And what better way to find out how than during a relaxing evening with Spud Hilton.

Spud Hilton is the travel editor of The San Francisco Chronicle, where in the past 10 years he has written about, reported on and been hopelessly lost in destinations on five continents. His attempts to divine, describe and defy the expectations of places — from Havana’s back alleys to Genoa’s churches to the floor of a hippie bus in Modesto — have earned five Lowell Thomas Awards, and have appeared in more than 60 newspapers in North America, several of which are still publishing. Spud also writes the Bad Latitude travel blog at SFGate.com, and is working on a book. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, Ann, and he plays cornet in an early New Orleans traditional jazz band.

Our Tuesday night salon (Monday is Labor Day) will be a super intro to this talented writer and editor. Writers who want to spend more time with Spud can sign up for an evening with him at Book Passage in the Ferry Plaza where they will learn how to “chart their story’s course.”

Reflections from a Book Passage Travel & Food Writing & Photography Conference Newbie

©2011 by Diane Susan Petty

I used to be wealthy and successful—number one in my industry.

Now I sit on a bench contemplating a “No Barking” sign, the “P” graffitied over with a “B”. I observe the cars are indeed parked in front and the dogs are quiet. I notice a sign saying an 18-pound male cat named PhiPhi has run away and wonder if it was because the other kitties were teasing him about his name.

I recently became an unemployed, broke mortgage banker. After announcing my desire to make a major life change and become an unemployed, broke travel writer, a mutual friend introduced me to travel writing guru, Don George.

Don’s advice? “Come to the Book Passage Travel & Food Writing & Photography Conference. Meet Spud. It’ll be life changing.”

Down to our last $1000, my husband suggested we might want to use that money for groceries; why not wait and go next year? Groceries be damned; I could drop a few pounds anyway. I’m going to the conference.

One minute I’m excited and hopeful for the future; the former confident me has returned. The next I’m petrified about attending, convinced I’m grasping at straws out of pure desperation. What do I know about travel writing? Keep reading …

©2011 by Debbie Goelz

Each and every member of my writing group is the type of world traveler you might see on the cover of Adventure magazine, wrestling alligators in a blizzard atop Aconcaqua in her underwear … or jumping out of rusty, ill-maintained seaplanes into shallow rivers to commune with piranha. At the end of an exhilarating day riding lions bareback, teaching quantum physics to aboriginal children in their native tongue, and riding over Iguazu Falls in a wine barrel, she might roast her alligator (of course the gator lost the wrestling match!) over the caldera of an active volcano. Upon her Keep reading …

The absolutely amazing Book Passage Travel, Food and Photography Conference begins next week, August 11-14,  in Corte Madera.

Writers from around the world will be converging for four days of workshops, panels, consultations, and outstanding presentations. I am thoroughly thrilled to be kicking off the conference with a presentation about The Life of a Travel Writer with one of my mentors from way back:  the Grande Dame of travel writing, Georgia Hesse.

I had lunch with Georgia at San Francisco’s Café de la Presse. We talked about travel, then and now, over a salade frisée, a tarte provençale, and a couple of glasses of vin rouge. This prompted a host of questions from me, which Georgia has politely deigned to answer.

First, a few words about Georgia and her illustrious career:

Georgia I. Hesse claims to have been born on the 28 Ranch on Crazy Woman Creek at the foot of the Big Horn Mountains in Wyoming. She was graduated from Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, and studied political science and white wines as a Fulbright scholar at the University of Strasbourg in France. She is the founding travel editor of the San Francisco Examiner (the original Hearst-owned one, she hastens to say) and then of the joined (on Sundays) Examiner-Chronicle.

Georgia has taught travel writing for the 20 years of the Book Passage conference and has lectured at several writers’ gatherings and at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. For several years she had a weekly travel-music program at the once and much-missed S.F. radio station KABL. Her articles have appeared in 20 magazines and 38 newspapers and she is the author/co-author of 14 books, several of them guides to France and California.

Georgia holds the Ordre National du Mérite from the French government and the Chevalier l’Ordre de la République from Tunisia. She has visited all 50 U.S. states and at most recent tally has crossed the Atlantic 174 times and the Pacific 98 times, by airplane and ship. She believes in Paul Theroux’s dictum, “Every step out the door can be a story. Consider San Francisco’s #30 bus.”

Q. Georgia, you were the Travel Editor for the “San Francisco Examiner” and then the”Examiner-Chronicle” at a time when travel was an elegant enterprise; what was your most extravagant journey?

A. The most extravagant in traditional terms surely was a trip back to the time of Maria Theresa and the Hapsburgs, in the glorious first half of the 19th century when Vienna replaced Paris as the center of the elegant earth. Through a wrinkle in time equivalent to that in the current movie “Midnight in Paris,” I fell into the Vienna of Biedermeier design, of gold leaf, crystal, fine porcelain and pastries…into the very night of the Opera Ball in the Staatsoper. Pomp and circumstance, glitter and dazzle, medals and uniforms, sobbing violins and the corps de ballet of the Vienna State Opera, even a few diamond tiaras.  “Ah,” said an irreverent tenor, “Strauss is so much more delicious than socialism!” It was so transporting that the next year I went back and fell through that wrinkle again.

Q. On the flip side, I loved your story in “I Should Have Stayed Home.” Do you have another standout in that category? Can you tell us about it?

A. A 12-day rattle and roll across the old Soviet Union on the Trans-Siberian Express was not as dangerous as the North Pole trip but almost as uncomfortable. I had thought the forest of white birches in the David Lean movie of Boris Pasternak ‘s novel “Dr. Zhivago” seemed endless…but in reality that forest goes on for three days. Following Siberia, Finland seemed like “A Thousand and One Nights.” I was fascinated, in an international relations sense, by every day of that trek, but I’m glad I don’t have to make it again.

And then there was the long time when I didn’t know where in the world I was and it turned out to be Guadalcanal. And then… .

Q. What do you like most about travel today?

A. Most places have bathrooms and most of those are clean, unlike a tent of carpets on the Kenya-Tanzania border.

Q. What do you like least?

A. The crowds and lack of civility at airports and aboard aircraft. Add to that the endless fees and unforeseen add-on charges. I used to feel flying as a great escape. Now it’s an exercise in exhaustion, mental as well as physical.

Q. What place is currently at the top of your list of places to visit and why?

A. Libya, crazily enough; because I’ve never tramped through Leptis Magna.

Q. What advice do you have for travel writers new to the business?

A. Learn how to write and then Stop, Look, and Listen to the world as it speaks to you.

#######

Good advice from an expert and much more to come. See you at the conference! Don’t forget, there is a special discount for Left Coast Writers®, so be sure to tell them you’re one of us.

—Linda Watanabe McFerrin, travel writer and author of Dead Love, (Stone Bridge Press, 2010)

Photo courtesy of Georgia Hesse

WANDERLAND WRITERS WORKSHOP: Wandering and Writing in Bail with Linda Watanabe McFerrin and Joanna Biggar

September 26 – October 3, 2011

There is only one spot available.

Wanderland Writers Workshops generally sell out before they are even posted, but, due to a cancellation, there is a chance to participate in this one.

You can join Linda Watanabe McFerrin and Joanna Biggar for a week of writing and adventure in a tropical paradise — BALI!

Dates: September 26th – October 3, 2011

Place: Gorgeous island-style resort with airy villa accommodations, terraces, restaurant, pool, spa and more in the mountains above Ubud, Bali’s artistic capital. Accommodations: Shared rooms in private villas

Amenities:

• Swimming pool
• Spa
• Conference area
• Gardens
• Restaurant
• Wireless broadband
• Cable TV
• Outdoor exercise facility
• Maid service for laundry

Included in price:

• Transportation to and from airport
• Eight days/seven nights accommodations
• Seven breakfasts, afternoon tea daily, two lunches, four sumptuous dinners
• Five 2-hour workshops
• Private consultation with instructors
• Time and space to write
• Welcome dinner
• Temple visit
• Monkey forest visit
• Museum tour
• Balinese dance evening
• Banquet by a local chef
• Access to local attractions
• Plenty of time to explore on shared and personal adventures

Cost: $2,400

Optional Add-ons:

• Spa treatments
• Visits to craft studios and galleries in Ubud
• Balinese shadow puppet show
• Bird walks
• Ubud Writers and Readers Festival (October 5-9, 2011)
• Extra days at the resort, to be negotiated with owner

VERY limited space!!!! Reply to   jobiggar@gmail.com

LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK LAUNCH:  Mary Jo McConahay, Author of Maya Roads: One Woman’s Journey Among the People of the Rainforest

Saturday, August 20, 2011 || 7pm
Book Passage-Corte Madera || 51 Tamal Vista Dr.
Corte Madera || www.bookpassage.com

Join us for the launch of Mary Jo McConahay’s new book, Maya Roads: One Woman’s Journey Among the People of the Rainforest.

A transporting blend of history, adventure and eyewitness experience, this beautifully written book is a deep and authoritative account of the people, politics, archaeology and magic of the Central American rainforest, the cradle of Maya civilization.

“She is innocence and experience, discoverer and knowing witness.  The Maya believe we are nearing an end time.  I cannot imagine a better chronicler of this time and place than Mary Jo McConahay.”–PBS NewsHour Commentator Richard Rodriguez, Author of Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez, and Brown: The Last Discovery of America.

“From the moment she steps into the deep Mexican jungle, you will follow her anywhere.”–Laura Fraser, Author of An Italian Affair, and All Over the Map.

Journalist Mary Jo McConahay covered Central America as a war correspondent and lived in Mexico and Central America for fifteen years.  Her award-winning work has apeared in more than thirty magazines and periodicals and is collected in a half-dozen books, including True to Life Adventure Stories by Women and Best Travel Writing 2011. She coproduced the PBS documentary Discovering Dominga, awarded the Cine Golden Eagle and numerous other film honors, and is widely used in college classrooms.

LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK PARTY:  Todd Crawshaw, Author of Light-Years in the Dark

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

Todd Crawshaw shares selections from his new book of story-poems, Light-Years in the Dark.

Todd Crawshaw has been writing fiction for 39 years. He attended the University of Oregon, studying at the School of Architecture and Allied Arts, where he graduated with a bachelor of science degree in psychology. He is the author of Exploits of the Satyr, the fourth in a line of five (and now approaching six) novels he has written, along with a collection of stories and poems … and a few screenplays too.

In 1975, he established a graphic design studio, Crawshaw Design. This San Francisco venture has changed and evolved over the years, significantly with the advent of computers and their global proliferation. He provides integrated brand marketing for print and the web, having developed more than 200 corporate identity programs for major corporations and individual proprietorships. It’s an interesting business. Check it out:www.crawshawdesign.com.

LEFT COAST WRITERS LITERARY SALON: Kelly Booth, Creative Director at Weldon Owen Publishing

Kelly Booth

Monday, August 1, 2011 || 7pm

Book Passage || Corte Madera
51 Tamal Vista Drive, Corte Madera ||www.bookpassage.com

Let’s get wildly creative. Kelly Booth, Creative Director at Weldon Owen Publishing will show us how.

A life-long traveler, Kelly Booth was once told by a Cuban Santeria that her work would be translated into many languages—a prediction that came true. As an award-winning Creative Director at Weldon Owen Publishing in San Francisco, a large number of the books she helps to create are published and distributed internationally. The global phenomenon Show Me How, a visual how-to guide, has been translated into more than 25 languages and sold in over 30 different countries including China, Turkey, and Brazil.

Flip through that book, and you might spot an illustrated version of Kelly showing you how to samba dance in Rio’s Carnival, or throw knives in Pen and Teller’s Las Vegas show. Those are two examples of the experiences she collects anytime her lust for adventure lures her into another pungent, frozen, dangerous, or dazzling locale. The mountains of northern Peru turned up an especially surprising episode involving a witch doctor—Kelly’s account of that incident was anthologized in A Woman’s Path: Women’s Best Spiritual Travel Writing.

Always drawing inspiration from those far flung explorations, Kelly now leads a talented ensemble of artists and designers who collaborate closely with authors and editors to create visually compelling books and digital editions on a wide range of topics such as sex, fashion, science, and zombies—though thankfully, not usually at the same time. Some of the team’s recent bestselling titles include Parenting Magazine’s The Happiest Mom, and Field & Stream’s Total Outdoorsman Manual.

A graduate of the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design, Kelly is also an accomplished fine artist who has served as Artist-In-Residence with the US Department of the Interior at Buffalo National River, and at Kala Art Institute in Berkeley California. Her art works have been shown internationally, at venues such as SFMOMA Artist’s Gallery, Art House Co-op in Brooklyn, New York, and GRID 09 in Stockholm, Sweden.

LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK PARTY: Terry Sue Harms, Author of Pearls My Mother Wore and Tami Casias, Author of Crystal Bound

Tami Casias

Monday, July 11, 6pm
Book Passage || Ferry Plaza
San Francisco || www.bookpassage.com

Get out the crystals and the pearls. Seriously. We want you all to wear them when you come to the Ferry Plaza for our sparkling summer celebration of the work of two terrific authors, both self-published, both devoted to getting the word out on their books. That’s the spirit we love in a writer: bright and undaunted. These are our heroes.

Terry Sue Harms

Terry Sue Harms has been a practicing hairdresser since 1977 and currently owns her salon.  In 1992 she received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Mills College.  In May of 2005, she was inspired, in response to the new reality TV craze, “to write a story where the losers were the winners.”  Pearls My Mother Wore was born of that inspiration.  Terry lives in Northern California with her husband, Lutrell.

Tami Casias wrote local news for years while raising four children. Nowadays, writing fiction for young adults while sitting in coffee shops has taken the place of city council meetings. She uses her degree in Journalism to research new ideas for stories. Tami lives with her husband, teenage son, and Yorkshire terrier, Bruiser, in Sonoma, California.

LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK LAUNCH:  Patricia Volonakis Davis, Author of The Diva Doctrine

THIS EVENT IS CANCELLED!

Patricia V. Davis

Saturday, July 9, 2011 || 7pm
Book Passage-Corte Madera || 51 Tamal Vista Dr.
Corte Madera || www.bookpassage.com

Calling all Divas …

It’ll be pure fun on Saturday night, so we hope most of you will have it in you to join the colorful characters that will assemble to celebrate  The Diva Doctrine with Patricia Volonakis Davis. Patricia will be dishing up advice and discussing the 16 universal principles of Diva-hood. You’ll want to bring your friends just to make sure you are all on the same page. No Diva can do it alone.

PATRICIA V. DAVIS’ aim is to leave her spot of the world just a little bit better than it was before she got there. She focuses on that through her writing, teaching, philanthropic work, and the promoting of other people whom she believes have that same goal.

Patricia is the author of the award-winning Harlot’s Sauce: A Memoir of Food, Family, Love, Loss and Greece, and The Diva Doctrine: 16 Universal Principles Every Woman Needs to Know. She has been called a “Renaissance Woman” by The Orange County Register, and as founder and editor-in-chief of the non-partisan HS Radio e-magazine and podcast, Patricia loves encouraging new writers and interviewing other “Renaissance people”, such as Neil deGrasse Tyson, Jane Friedman, and more. She also hosts an “Expert in Failed Relationships” Advice Column there.

Patricia holds a Master’s Degree in Creative Writing and Education, and has conducted seminars extensively in various venues and schools throughout the US and overseas. She was  named one of Top 25 Mentors for Young Women and Girls 2010 and 2011, by the Hot Mommas Project. The Diva Doctrineis an extension of the guidance and support she hopes to give to women.

Roger Housden

THE ART OF SOULFUL MEMOIR: WHERE YOUR OUTER LIFE MEETS YOUR INNER WORLD

A FOUR WEEK CLASS WITH ROGER HOUSDEN
Author of the Ten Poems Series and Saved By Beauty: Adventures of an American Romantic in Iran

Soulful memoir uses the raw material of your life to reveal the deeper intelligence of your life’s journey. In this class you will weave into words as truthfully as possible the ongoing thread of your lives. Please bring work you want to develop, and whether or not you have prior material, come ready to develop some during the class.

WHEN: FOUR TUESDAYS IN JULY: JULY 5, 12, 19, 26.
WHERE: 8. Eden Lane, Larkspur
COST: $180.00. $50 DEPOSIT to Roger Housden at address above.
FURTHER INFO: CALL ROGER ON 415 924 6061.

CLASS LIMITED TO EIGHT PARTICIPANTS

COVERING THE BASES: Writers on Baseball

Thursday, May 12, 2011 || 7pm
Double Play Bar and Grill
2401 – 16th Street (@ Bryant)
San Francisco, CA 94103
(415) 621-9859

This is so cool: Five writers and a photographer will cover the bases at a special night of baseball literature at San Francisco’s iconic Double Play Bar and Grill.

The evening will feature classic sportswriting, fiction, memoir and poetry, all related to America’s pastime. The writers are: Dan Fost author of “Giants Past and Present” (MVP Books), James J. Patterson, author of “Bermuda Shorts” (Alan Squire Publishing), Steve Hermanos, author of “O Gigantic Victory! Baseball Poems: The 2010 Championship Season,” and Aaron Pribble, author of “Pitching in the Promised Land: A Story of the First and Only Season in the Israel Baseball League” (University of Nebraska Press), along with Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Deanne Fitzmaurice, who took the pictures for “Freak Season: Behind the Scenes with San Francisco Giants Pitcher Tim Lincecum from Spring Training to the World Series” (K&D Photography). Special guest Todd Lappin will tell the story of his search for the location of home plate from Seals Stadium – right across the street from the Double Play.

The writers will read from their work at San Francisco’s legendary Double Play Bar and Grill at 7 pm, Thursday, May 12. The Double Play is across from the Potrero Hill shopping center that used to be Seals Stadium, and the bar features a small-scale replica of the beloved old ballpark.

Double Play Bar & Grill

2401 – 16th Street (@ Bryant)
San Francisco, CA 94103
(415) 621-9859

See you there!

LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK PARTY: Alan Squire Publishing

Publisher Jimmy Patterson and Author Joanna Biggar share the stage

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

We hope you’ll join us as visiting publisher and author James J. Patterson (Bermuda Shorts) teams up with local favorite Joanna Biggar (That Paris Year) for a night of remembrances. The authors will chat about memoir, or in the case of Patterson … men-moir .. and tell tales about life and love in the city of light and the good old USA.

James J. Patterson grew up with a foot planted in each of two worlds — one in Washington DC, the Capital of the Empire as he calls it, and one in rural Ontario, where his Canadian mother insisted the family spend their summers. His father, one of the wizards of 20th Century newspaper publishing, introduced him to the city’s wheels of money and power, which he would later navigate as an entrepreneur, starting his first business at 20. But those Canadian summers introduced him to a different world – one where a cedar strip boat was better than any car, and where the ghosts of those who’d previously inhabited the family’s island house floated out over the water of Lovesick Lake. It is those two worlds that blend in Bermuda Shorts, a collection on what it means to be a man, an artist, an iconoclast, a patriot, and a lover, as the 20th Century rolls over into the 21st.

A life long student of history, philosophy and politics, Patterson has managed country bands, delivered newspapers, adapted Sherlock Holmes short stories for radio plays, and published a highly regarded sports magazine. As a singer-songwriter, Patterson was half of the political satire folk music duo, The Pheromones, one of the first acts to be featured on MTV and one of the last bands to play on American Bandstand. With the Pheromones, he toured the US for over fifteen years.

Joanna Biggar turned twenty in Paris, where she was a student at the Sorbonne, and went on to earn degrees in Chinese language and French literature. Since then she has chaired a school board in Ghana, traveled solo to remote regions of China, worked as a journalist in Washington, D.C., and taught inner-city school students in Oakland, California, where she lives. She is married, has five adult children and six grandchildren, who love books. A member of the Society of Woman Geographers, her special places of the heart remain France and the California coast.

LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK LAUNCH:  Aaron Pribble, Author of Pitching in the Promised Land: A Story of the First and Only Season in the Israel Baseball League

Aaron Pribble

Saturday, May 14, 2011 || 7pm
Book Passage-Corte Madera || 51 Tamal Vista Dr.
Corte Madera || www.bookpassage.com

Baseball and books? Two all-American favorites team up for a wonderful Left Coast Writers night at Book Passage in Corte Madera.

It was the first (and last) season of professional baseball in Israel. Aaron Pribble, twenty-seven, had been out of Minor League Baseball for three years while he pursued a career in education when, at his coach’s suggestion, he tried out for the newly formed Israel Baseball League (IBL). Of Jewish descent (not a requirement, but definitely a plus) and a former pro, Pribble was the ideal candidate for the upstart league, which in many ways resembled the ultimate baseball fantasy camp, with its unforgettable cast of characters: the DJ/street artist third baseman from the Bronx, the wild-man catcher from Australia, the journeymen Dominicans who were much older than they claimed to be, and, of course, seventy-one-year-old Sandy Koufax, drafted in a symbolic gesture as the last player.

After falling in love with a beautiful Yemenite Jew, enduring an alleged terrorist attack on opening day, witnessing a career-ending brain injury caused by improper field equipment, participating in a strike, and venturing into the West Bank despite being strongly advised against it, Pribble must decide whether to forego a teaching career in order to become the first player from the IBL to sign a pro contract in the United States. His is a story of coming of age spiritually and athletically in one short season in the throes of romance, Middle Eastern politics, and the dreams of America’s pastime far, far from home.

Aaron Pribble played collegiate baseball at the University of Hawaii, then professionally in the Western and Central Baseball Leagues, in France, and in the Israel Baseball League. He has a masters degree in political science and teaches at Tamalpais High School in Mill Valley, California. Aaron lives in San Francisco.

“A touching and enlightening tale of political and cultural awakening, conveyed through the vehicle of baseball. . . . [A] unique voyage of discovery, both on and off the diamond, and populated by a rich cast of characters, from Pribble’s Yemeni girlfriend to his Canadian guide in Palestine to his Australian, Dominican, and Israeli teammates.”—Robert Elias, author of The Empire Strikes Out

“Aaron Pribble has written what I call the Oy! Testament, a true, detailed accounting of his year playing ball in Israel, of all places. Chock full of color about Jewish life in the Promised Land, it delves into the politics of new settlements in this volatile region, from the perspective of a Californian with a Jewish mother and a Christian dad, all painted against the backdrop of Our National Pastime in the desert.”
—Steven Travers, author of The 1969 Miracle Mets

“Pitching in the Promised Land is a thrilling odyssey of sport, religion, love, and politics, of finding common ground on the baseball field in the most unlikely of places—Israel. In his debut memoir, Mr. Pribble has established himself as a gifted storyteller with extraordinary insight, observation, and humor.”
—Logan Miller and Noah Miller, authors of Either You’re in or You’re in the Way

LEFT COAST WRITERS LITERARY SALON: James J. Patterson, noted musician, Co-Founder of Alan Squire Publishing and Author of Bermuda Shorts

Monday, May 2, 2011 || 7pm

Book Passage || Corte Madera
51 Tamal Vista Drive, Corte Madera || www.bookpassage.com

We’re ecstatic about a VERY SPECIAL guest publisher and author visiting from Washington D.C. and hope you will join us for a lively evening of humor and celebration. In honor of James Patterson’s visit, we will be opening the salon to your special guests … just let us know (leftcoastwriters@aol.com) who you want to add to the guest list.

James J. Patterson grew up with a foot planted in each of two worlds — one in Washington DC, the Capital of the Empire as he calls it, and one in rural Ontario, where his Canadian mother insisted the family spend their summers. His father, one of the wizards of 20th Century newspaper publishing, introduced him to the city’s wheels of money and power, which he would later navigate as an entrepreneur, starting his first business at 20. But those Canadian summers introduced him to a different world – one where a cedar strip boat was better than any car, and where the ghosts of those who’d previously inhabited the family’s island house floated out over the water of Lovesick Lake. It is those two worlds that blend in Bermuda Shorts, a collection on what it means to be a man, an artist, an iconoclast, a patriot, and a lover, as the 20th Century rolls over into the 21st.

In clothing, Bermuda Shorts are casual formal wear – and in this collection of essays, Bermuda Shorts is the perfect metaphor for James J. Patterson’s fundamentally serious but playful literary style. Patterson writes like the love child of Henry Miller and Mary Karr, with all the contradictions that implies —a philosopher who thinks best over a glass of fine wine; an ex-Catholic still
haunted by the image of the Crucifixion; an irreverent political satirist whose patriotism flies the flag of another iconoclast, Thomas Paine.

A life long student of history, philosophy and politics, Patterson has managed country bands, delivered newspapers, adapted Sherlock Holmes short stories for radio plays, and published a highly regarded sports magazine. As a singer-songwriter, Patterson was half of the political satire folk music duo, The Pheromones, one of the first acts to be featured on MTV and one of the last bands to play on American Bandstand. With the Pheromones, he toured the US for over fifteen years.

Alan Squire Publishing (Patterson’s independent press) also published Oakland author Joanna Biggar (That Paris Year).

Trust us: You will NOT want to miss this evening.

Visiting Author/Publisher James J. Patterson will be speaking and reading at a number of special events while he is in the San Francisco/Bay Area. Left Coast Writers is a participating organizer of many of these events and will be providing refreshments. We are posting his entire schedule in the hope that you will be able to join us at some of these occasions.

Thursday, April 28th, 2011 @5:30pm
Towne Center Books
w/Joanna Biggar author of That Paris Year
555 Main Street, Pleasanton, CA
925 846 8826

Monday, May 2, 2011 @7pm
Book Passage w/Left Coast Writers Literary Salon
51 Tamal Vista Blvd.
Corte Madera, CA  94929
415 927 0960
Left Coast Writers and Invitation only

Wednesday, May 4, 2011 @7pm
A Great Good Place for Books
w/Joanna Biggar
6120 LaSalle Avenue
Oakland, CA  94611
510 339 8210

Friday, May 6, 2011 @7pm
Friends of Left Coast Writers Salon
Sonoma, CA
Invitation only

Saturday, May 7, 2011 @7pm
Friends of Left Coast Writers Salon
Oakland, CA
Invitation only

Monday, May 9, 2011 @6pm
Book Passage/Left Coast Writers
w/Joanna Biggar
1 Ferry Building
San Francisco, CA 94111
415 835 1200

Tuesday, May 10, 2011 @7:30pm
The Booksmith
w/Linda Watanabe McFerrin & Joanna Biggar
1644 Haight Street
San Francisco, CA  94117
415 863 8688
http://www.booksmith.com/event

Thursday, May 12, 2011 @7pm
The Double Play Sports Bar & Restaurant
w/Dan Fost, Jason Turbow, Steve Hermanos, and Aaron Pribble
2401 16th Street
“The Mission”
San Francisco, CA 94103
415 621 9859

LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK PARTY: Joanna Biggar and Wanderland Writers

Linda Watanabe McFerrin and Joanna Biggar in transit

Monday, April 11, 6pm
Book Passage || Ferry Plaza
San Francisco || www.bookpassage.com

Readers, writers, travelers—adventuresome to armchair—and lovers of Costa Rica, you won’t want to miss an evening of exciting travel tales from this delightful group of travelers. Colette Obrien fills in as host for Linda Watanabe McFerrin at Book Passage in the Ferry Plaza.

When workshop leaders Linda Watanabe McFerrin and Joanna Biggar gathered a baker’s dozen of their favorite travelers and writers, they had no idea how transformative the journey would be. Nurtured and inspired in an environment beyond compare, the assembled explored Costa Rica, gathering tales from across the country. From rainforests, volcanoes, tropical beaches, butterfly gardens, colorful towns and villages, the writers wandered the country and brought back a fine collection of poetry and stories that present Costa Rica in richly personal style.

On this night, members of the merry band will share some of these travel stories and more as they prepare in spirit for yet another adventure: This year they head for Bali in search of more marvelous tales from the road.

LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK PARTY:  Patricia Volonakis Davis, Author of Harlot’s Sauce and The Diva Doctrine: 16 Universal Principles Every Woman Needs to Know

Patricia V. Davis

Saturday, April 9, 2011 || 7pm
Book Passage-Corte Madera || 51 Tamal Vista Dr.
Corte Madera || www.bookpassage.com

Please join us for an evening with Patricia Volonakis Davis as she shares her work: the award-winning Harlot’s Sauce: A Memoir of Food, Family, Love, Loss and Greece, and The Diva Doctrine: 16 Universal Principles Every Woman Needs to Know.

Patricia’s aim is to leave her spot of the world just a little bit better than it was before she got there. She focuses on that through her writing, teaching, philanthropic work, and the promoting of other people who she believes have that same goal. She has been called a “Renaissance Woman” by Carine Nadel in The Orange County Register for her writing. As founder and editor-in-chief of the non-partisan HS Radio e-magazine and podcast, Patricia loves encouraging new writers and interviewing other “Renaissance people”, such as Neal deGrasse Tyson, James Redford, Jane Friedman, and more. She holds a Master’s Degree in Creative Writing and Education, and has taught, spoken, read, and conducted seminars extensively in various venues and schools throughout the US and overseas. Patricia was  named one of the Top 25 Mentors for Young Women and Girls 2010, by the Hot Mommas Project. Her latest work, The Diva Doctrine, is an extension of the guidance and support she hopes to give to women.

SOUTHERN SAMPLER ARTISTS COLONY PRESENTS:
A Writer’s Workshop
with Linda Watanabe McFerrin
April 5-12, 2011

ONE SPOT JUST OPENED UP!

Ready to wrap your tongue around the Gullah language and relish the dark, tangy sensations that feed the soul and lift the spirit? Want to discover a history like no other, a history bound in slavery, tempered in Lowcountry rice fields, and raised to glory in slow primal beats? Join us! Celebrate a side of Charleston that not all locals, much less tourists, know exists.

We’ll stay in a charming and rambling turn-of-the century home on Sullivan’s Island, only minutes from downtown Charleston and only a block away from one of South Carolina’s pristine white-sand beaches. Keep reading …

LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK PARTY: Diane LeBow, MJ Pramik & Kate Crawford

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

Please join our Left Coast Writers Travelers’ Tales Solas Award winners and honorees and contributors to The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2010 for an evening of wine and wonderful stories about travel. Diane LeBow will read from her Afghan story, “Tea in Kabul,” winner of the Solas Gold Award for Best Women’s Travel Writing 2010. MJ Pramik will read from her Solas Award winning tale about Running in Puglia. Kate Crawford will be reading from her Solas Award winning story, “Elephant Driving 101.”

Since the publication of A Woman’s World in 1995, Travelers’ Tales has been publishing award-winning books by and for women. They continue this tradition with The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2010, the sixth collection in our annual series guaranteed to inspire women to take their first trip—or to continue exploring the world with wit, soul, and verve, as so many adventurous women do each and every day.

This best-selling, award-winning series presents the finest accounts of women who have traveled to the ends of the earth to discover new places, peoples — and themselves. The common threads connecting the stories are a woman’s perspective and lively storytelling to make the reader laugh, cry, wish she were there, or be glad she wasn’t. From climbing a volcano in Ecuador to running a kennel for pariah dogs in India to helping prepare meals in Iran, the points of view and perspectives are global and the themes eclectic, including stories that encompass spiritual growth, hilarity and misadventure, high adventure, romance, solo journeys, stories of service to humanity, family travel, and encounters with exotic cuisine.

In The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2010:

• A search for the perfect wave in New Zealand provides a lesson in love
• Curiosity leads to an understanding of political activism and human rights in Burma
• A childless American is adopted by a six-year-old and becomes part of the family in Italy
• Cultural understanding deepens in surprising ways through language lessons in
  Vietnam
• On a fact-finding mission in Afghanistan, a retired professor learns that peace is
  everything
• A day on a nude beach in the Netherlands gives a self-described “prude” a new appreciation of body types, and comfort with her own
  …and much more.Travelers’ Tales books luxuriate in that complicated, beautiful, shadowy place where the best stories begin, and the most compelling characters roam free.”
  —ForeWord Magazine

LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK PARTY:  Joanna Biggar, Author of That Paris Year

Joanna Biggar

Saturday, March 12, 2011 || 7pm
Book Passage-Corte Madera || 51 Tamal Vista Dr.
Corte Madera || www.bookpassage.com

Spring travel is already in the air! Allow yourself to be carried away to Paris by Joanna Biggar. We’ll supply the wine and snacks.

Who has not dreamed of escaping to Paris? When wildfire ravished the landscape of Los Angeles, five young co-eds, house-mates in the rundown Maison Française, found the freedom to pursue that dream. They set sail on a rusty boat in the summer of 1962 determined to enroll in the Sorbonne. It was as if Mary McCarthy’s “Group” had landed on a mystifying Left Bank, exotic and compelling as Durrell’s Alexandria. What they lost was more than their virginity, their bad American accents, and their beloved clichés about “meaning”; what they gained, as they traded notes, clothes, dreams, loves and identities was the gift of geography — the tectonic shift that occurs upon discovering that place, native or adopted, is an integral part of who we are.

Joanna Biggar turned twenty in Paris, where she was a student at the Sorbonne, and went on to earn degrees in Chinese language and French literature. Since then she has chaired a school board in Ghana, traveled solo to remote regions of China, worked as a journalist in Washington, D.C., and taught inner-city school students in Oakland, California, where she lives. She is married, has five adult children and six grandchildren, who love books. A member of the Society of Woman Geographers, her special places of the heart remain France and the California coast.

LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK PARTY: Li Miao Lovett, Author of In the Lap of the Gods

Li Miao Lovett

Monday, January 10, 6pm
Book Passage || Ferry Plaza
San Francisco || www.bookpassage.com

Set in present day China, In the Lap of the Gods is a story about the heartbreak and challenge that families face today. When the world’s largest dam rises up, entire cities and villages go under water. The past is erased in the name of progress. Liu has lost all that is dear to him; his wife and unborn child have died, and his old town was flooded by the Three Gorges dam. In battling their own demons, Liu and Fang encounter the underbelly of China’s rampant growth. This is a story of defiance, weaving together a poor man’s struggle to survive in the modern world and a rich man’s attempt to reclaim the past.

LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK LAUNCH:  Charles Entrekin, Author of Listening: New & Selected Work

Charles Entrekin

Saturday, January 8, 2011 || 7pm
Book Passage-Corte Madera || 51 Tamal Vista Dr.
Corte Madera || www.bookpassage.com

Charles Entrekin was born in 1941 in Birmingham, Alabama,.  He took his BA in English from Birmingham Southern College, in 1964.  He left Birmingham in 1965 and lived in various states (New York , Tennessee, Alabama, and Montana) while pursuing advanced degrees in philosophy and creative writing.  Arriving in California in 1969, he fell in love with the West Coast scene and the Hotel California experience.  He now lives in Berkeley with his wife, poet, Gail Rudd Entrekin.

Charles has taught at almost every educational level.  He taught pre-school language skills to six-year-olds with he Head Start program in Birmingham, Alabama; taught introduction to set theory to disadvantaged high school graduates with the Upward Bound Program in Tuscaloosa, Alabama; taught composition, English literature, creative writing, philosophy at the college level, and was the founder of the Creative Writing Program at John F. Kennedy University’s Orinda, California campus.

For 24 years, Charles was the managing editor of The Berkeley Poets Cooperative and The Berkeley Poets Workshop & Press. The story of the Berkeley Poets Workshop & Press was written up as the cover story in the August 29, 1976 issue of the New York Times Magazine.

The Managing Editor of Hip Pocket Press (www.hippocketpress.com), Charles is also the author of In This Hour, a collection of poems, BPW&P, 1990; Casting For The Cutthroat & Other Poems, BPW&P, 1986; Casting For The Cutthroat, Thunder City Press, 1978, Birmingham, Alabama; All Pieces Of A Legacy, BPW&P, 1975, Berkeley, CA. His novel, Red Mountain, Birmingham, Alabama, 1965, was published May, 2008, by El Leon Literary Arts www.elleonliteraryarts.org .

We are celebrating his latest publication: Listening: New and Selected Work.

In “Listening: New and Selected Work,” Charles Entrekin presents us with a remarkable poetic legacy. Written between 1975 and the present, the poems in this collection are passionate and darkly lyric. Always grounded in physical reality, they transcend time and place, revealing both the great and small moments of life as seen from the perspective of eternity.
—Mary Mackey

LEFT COAST WRITERS LITERARY SALON: Laurie McAndish King and  Suzanne Rodriquez get “App Happy” at our first salon of the year!

Laurie McAndish King

Suzanne Rodriquez

Monday, January 3, 2011 || 7pm
Book Passage || Corte Madera
51 Tamal Vista Drive, Corte Madera || www.bookpassage.com

Happy New Year!

We want to share the newest and best in what’s happening in the world of words and publications with you this year.

So to begin, get “App Happy” with Suzanne Rodriguez and Laurie McAndish King at our first salon of 2011.

Smartphone apps are the latest “it” format for writers—and with good reason. With 85 million iPhones/iPads/iPod Touches, 300,000 apps, and 4 billion app downloads from Apple alone, the market is already huge … and it’s growing ever-bigger at an ever-faster pace.

App developers Laurie McAndish King and Suzie Rodriguez tell us why they’re excited about the mobile app marketplace, how they collaborated to develop San Francisco Waterfront: Bridge to Ballpark (released by Sutro Media in December), and how you, too, can get in on the mobile applications phenomenon. They’ll discuss choosing a topic, assessing your market, writing for the mobile format, sourcing images to accompany the text, and the advantages of mobile apps over traditional travel guidebooks.

Suzanne Rodriguez is the author of three non-fiction books and hundreds of articles. Suzanne’s writing covers numerous topics, including high tech … but she really loves to focus on food, wine, and travel.

Laurie McAndish King is an award-winning travel writer and photographer, as well as publisher of Travel Writers News. Laurie has also written and edited erotica, as you might guess after reading the entry for Hog Island Oysters in the San Francisco Waterfront app.

Suzie and Laurie will also discuss free and inexpensive ways to market your app and the prospects for making money with it. One or more free downloads of San Francisco Waterfront: Bridge to Ballpark will be available as a prize for the audience member(s) whose head is packed with the most trivia about the San Francisco waterfront.

Here’s a headstart question: Which San Francisco beach was the 1986 birthplace of the Burning Man festival?

Do you know?

It’ll be a lively and entertaining evening. Mobile media welcome. See you there!

LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK PARTY: Rebecca Foust, Author of God, Seed and Molly Fisk, Author of The More Difficult Beauty with guest reader Robin Ekiss

Molly Fisk

Foust and Stevens

Monday, December 13, 6pm
Book Passage || Ferry Plaza
San Francisco || www.bookpassage.com

Join us for a reading and celebration of works by Bay Area poets Molly Fisk and Rebecca Foust with a special guest appearance by Robin Ekiss. Molly will read from her new book of poems, The More Difficult Beauty (Hip Pocket Press 2010). Rebecca will read from God, Seed (Tebot Bach Press 2010), a book of environmental poetry with art by Lorna Stevens, who will attend to answer questions. Please arrive early for seating as there is sure to be quite a crowd.
Molly Fisk is also the author of Listening to Winter and a recipient of fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, California Arts Council and Marin Arts Council grants in poetry, and the Robinson Jeffers Tor House, Billee Murray Denny, and Dogwood Prizes. She teaches on-line at www.poetrybootcamp.com and www.voiceofyourown.com, and provides weekly radio commentary at community station KVMR in Nevada City.

Rebecca Foust’s previous book, All That Gorgeous Pitiless, Song, won the 2008 Many Mountains Moving Book Prize. Her chapbooks, Dark Card and Mom’s Canoe won the Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prizes in consecutive years and were published by Texas Review Press in 2008 and 2009.

Lorna Stevens received her MFA in sculpture from Columbia University. She exhibits widely in galleries and public spaces. Her work has been featured or reviewed in The Boston Globe, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Marin Independent Journal, and Artweek, and has been acquired by the Brooklyn Museum, the New York Public Library, and the di Rosa Preserve in Napa, California.

Robin Ekiss is a former Stegner Fellow at Stanford, recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Award for emerging women writers, and author of The Mansion of Happiness, winner of the 2010 Shenandoah/Glasgow Prize and a finalist for both the 2010 Northern California and California Book Awards.

LEFT COAST WRITERS LITERARY SALON: Canyon Sam, Author of Sky Train:  Tibetan Women On the Edge of History

Canyon Sam

Monday, December 6, 2010 || 7pm
Book Passage || Corte Madera
51 Tamal Vista Drive, Corte Madera || www.bookpassage.com

December is a very special time for us. Every year we close a series of absolutely marvelous salons with an inspirational Presenter, one who embodies the spirit of community that means so much to our writers and to readers everywhere.  This year, we’ve asked Canyon Sam to speak. We expect this to be festive, a bit of a party, a chance to celebrate together, to congratulate one another on a year of good endeavor and offer support and inspiration for the year ahead. So we hope you’ll join the festivities and enjoy a wonderful evening with Canyon Sam.

Canyon Sam is a PEN award winning author, nationally acclaimed performance artist and activist from San Francisco.  A third generation Chinese American, Ms. Sam spent a year in Tibet, China and India when Tibet first opened in the mid 1980s.  Upon return to the States she worked as an early  Tibet activist in the U.S. — helping found the Tibetan Nuns Project, and speaking before Congress at their Tiananmen Square hearings on human rights.

Her groundbreaking book Sky Train:  Tibetan Women On the Edge of History (University of Washington Press, 2009), with a foreword by the Dalai Lama, reveals for the first time the untold narrative of Tibetan women and their unsung role in the occupation of their country.  Blending memoir and oral history, the author travels on China’s controversial new “Sky Train” to Lhasa in 2007 and crosses the Himalayas in search of women from her earlier oral history project.  Along with the gripping stories of women’s resistance, courage and spiritual resilience, the book also offers one of the first inside accounts of the recent drastic changes in Tibet due to  China’s meteoric rise to modernization.

Sky Train, over nineteen years in the making, won the 2010 PEN American Center’s Open Book Award.

“Remarkable…visceral and deeply felt.”      Publishers Weekly, starred review.

“A miracle of a journey, a miracle of a book.”     Maxine Hong Kingston.

Don’t miss this!

The Southern Sampler Artists Colony presents: SOUTHERN SHADOW: A Writer’s Workshop with author and instructor Linda Watanabe McFerrin

April 5 – 12, 2011
Charleston, South Carolina

Ready to wrap your tongue around the Gullah language and relish the dark, tangy sensations that feed the soul and lift the spirit? Want to discover a history like no other, a history bound in slavery, tempered in lowcountry rice fields, and raised to glory in slow primal beats? Join us!  Celebrate a side of Charleston that not many locals, much less tourists, know exists.

We’ll stay in a charming and rambling turn-of-the century home on Sullivan’s Island, only minutes from downtown Charleston and just a block away from one of South Carolina’s pristine white-sand beaches.

Linda Watanabe McFerrin, an award winning poet, travel writer, and novelist will lead workshop sessions especially designed for the Black history theme and lowcountry locale. The workshop also includes two thirty-minute, private literary consultations with Linda, one at the beginning and one at the end of the week.

Other highlights are:

• Dinner at “Home” with renowned chef, David Vagasky
• Special guest Alphonso Brown, author, musician, owner of Gullah Tours, and storyteller extraordinaire
• Cocktails and dinner with Nina Liu of Nina Liu & Friends Gallery
• Performance by The Mount Zion Spiritual Singers
• Conversations with Karen Chandler of the Charleston Jazz Initiative and local legendary jazz musicians
• Charleston nightlife
• Green project with the Charleston Parks Conservancy
• Celebrations and gatherings with Michael Haga, Associate Dean, School of the Arts, College of Charleston
• Lowcountry salt marsh exploration with Captain Anton, coastal geologist and gifted tour guide

Workshop, private consultations, accommodations, catered events, customized tours, honorariums, transportation to and from Charleston, S.C. airport (two scheduled pick up times for 4/5 and two scheduled departure times for 4/12), and most meals are included.

Cost is $1,800 ($1,950 if paid after December 15, 2010) for a private room, and $1,600 ($1,750 if paid after December 15, 2010) for a shared room. The choice of private and separate rooms depends upon availability at time of registration.

Please send check to Martha Greenway, 210 Serenity Circle, Mayesville, SC, 29104

For more information and to register, contact: Mary Brent Cantarutti, 415.269.1039 or Martha Greenway, 803.495.2186

VERY LIMITED SPACE

Detailed itinerary available upon request

LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK PARTY:  Linda Watanabe McFerrin, Author of Dead Love

Linda Watanabe McFerrin

Monday, October 11, 6pm
Book Passage || Ferry Plaza
San Francisco || www.bookpassage.com

Join us for a most delightful pre-Halloween celebration with wine, snacks, books and … zombies!

Linda Watanabe McFerrin talks about her supernatural thriller Dead Love ($14.95 paperback/ $26.95 special edition hardcover). It begins when Clément, a lovesick ghoul, falls for beautiful young Erin. Unfortunately, she is marked for death by the Japanese mob (the yakuza). Using secrets learned from a Haitian witchdoctor, and taking us to Tokyo, Amsterdam, and Malaysia, Clément finds a way to rescue and possess her—but not at all in the manner he expected!

This globalized manga turned literature is Twilight with teeth. Vivid storytelling and unforgettable characters unite to delight adults and younger readers with an interest in the otherworldly, proving once and for all that that if the undead have their way, love will never die!

Read Wendy Nelson Tokunaga’s interview with McFerrin about Dead Love:  http://blog.wendytokunaga.com/2010/08/dead-love-by-linda-watanabe-mcferrin.html

Visit the Dead Love Web site at http://www.deadlovebook.com/

LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK LAUNCH:  Left Coast Authors Celebration!

Saturday, October 9, 2010 || 7pm
Book Passage-Corte Madera || 51 Tamal Vista Dr.
Corte Madera || www.bookpassage.com

We have a very special literary event planned for Saturday, October 9th for our Left Coast Authors and their friends.

We’ll be celebrating the latest books by our writers. That’s right; a large group of Left Coast Writers will have the floor at Book Passage in Corte Madera on Saturday, October 9th at 7pm. They will answer questions and discuss their varied publishing experiences.

There’ll be wine, cake, other snacks, discussion of new books, and a writing and publishing Q&A.

Open to the public. It’s free and everyone is welcome.

Please join us for a very festive literary vibe.

See you at Book Passage!

LEFT COAST WRITERS LITERARY SALON:  Peter Goodman, Stone Bridge Press, President and Publisher

Book Passage || Corte Madera
51 Tamal Vista Drive, Corte Madera || www.bookpassage.com

What’s new and exciting in the book biz? The advent of the internet, Amazon, e-books, social networking and more has certainly thrown the book industry into a state of flux. Where is it going? What do we do? No need to stagger about aimlessly. Join Stone Bridge Press president and publisher Peter Goodman as he talks about “How Not to Be a Publishing Zombie.”

Peter Goodman is a graduate of Cornell University and lived in Tokyo for ten years, where he worked as an editor for English-language publishers Charles E. Tuttle and Kodansha International before returning to the United States in 1985. He has served Keep reading …

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.

Connie A. Walker always planned on being a writer when she grew up. When she was seven years old, she won her first writing contest with a short story called “Stop, Look, and Listen.” It was about a dog who acted as a crossing-guard, which is an example of her early interest in fantasy. She attended the University of Utah and earned a Bachelor of Science degree in psychology and a Master’s degree in social work. She has been a foster care caseworker, a psychotherapist, and a clinical programs manager. Her children’s book, Timmy and the K’nick K’nocker Ring, is a fantasy about a young boy who is transported to a world where his special talents are considered magic.

The Spire of Kylet, a young adult fantasy, is the first book in The Wolkarean Inscription Trilogy. Katrine is a fifteen year old girl who thinks she has her life all planned out, but discovers fate has something different in mind for her. The second and third books in the trilogy, The Eyes of Landor and Triumph at Serpent’s Head, will be available in 2011. Connie is currently working on a second Wolkarean trilogy.

David R. Christensen first pictured himself as an author when, for a class in college, the assignment was to select ten topics from a list of about fifty and write a paragraph about each. He chose to weave more than a dozen of these topics into a short story. While pursuing a career as an engineer, he developed ideas suitable for children’s books. One of his first ideas evolved into his first book, Tivoli’s Christmas, published in 2008.

His next idea developed into, The Mystery of the Grinning Buddha, the first in a series entitled The Millerville Mysteries, which was published in 2009. This mystery series is geared to the 8 to 12 year olds. The Mystery of the Ugly Bottle was published in 2010. Shortly after a devastated hurricane hits the Gulf Coast, Jeremy’s father is reported missing. A few days later a package appears on the porch of the Miller Bungalow.  In the package is a bottle which contains notes from Father to the members of the Miller family. The contents of the notes make it apparent that the boat Father is on may sink at any time. The third book in the series, The Mystery of the Haunted Lighthouse, is in work.

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.

Political satirist, musician, songwriter, dramatist, essayist, and novelist, James J. Patterson, will read from his new collection of essays, Bermuda Shorts. In this volume Patterson meanders delightfully, ominously, frightfully, hilariously through his life and times, touching down at specific moments in the nation’s history as well as his own, as seen from the back alleys, barrooms and his hidden sanctum in what he calls The Capital of the Empire, Washington, DC. More than just a garment, Bermuda Shorts, according to Patterson, is a state of mind.

Then, allow yourself to be carried away to Paris by Joanna Biggar.

Who has not dreamed of escaping to Paris? When wildfire ravished the landscape of Los Angeles, five young co-eds, house-mates in the rundown Maison Française, found the freedom to pursue that dream. They set sail on a rusty boat in the summer of 1962 determined to enroll in the Sorbonne. It was as if Mary McCarthy’s “Group” had landed on a mystifying Left Bank, exotic and compelling as Durrell’s Alexandria. What they lost was more than their virginity, their bad American accents, and their beloved clichés about “meaning”; what they gained, as they traded notes, clothes, dreams, loves and identities was the gift of geography — the tectonic shift that occurs upon discovering that place, native or adopted, is an integral part of who we are.

Joanna Biggar turned twenty in Paris, where she was a student at the Sorbonne, and went on to earn degrees in Chinese language and French literature. Since then she has chaired a school board in Ghana, traveled solo to remote regions of China, worked as a journalist in Washington, D.C., and taught inner-city school students in Oakland, California, where she lives. She is married, has five adult children and six grandchildren, who love books. A member of the Society of Woman Geographers, her special places of the heart remain France and the California coast.

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.

Sound like science fiction? Science fiction, meet science fact. These and more startling probabilities, based on current and ongoing research in neuroscience, are engagingly explored in The Scientific American Brave New Brain (Jossey-Bass). Gleaning from the latest research and articles from Scientific American and Scientific American Mind, journalist Judith Horstman offers a comprehensive and entertaining gaze into the science—and wonders—possible in our brains’ very near future. Contrasting science fiction of the recent past and present with scientific breakthroughs that can be even more fantastic, Horstman shows what could be in store for our brains over the next few decades and the potential economic, legal and ethical fallout of this rampant change and progress.

Based on research outlined in the book, experts’ top five predictions for the future of mental power are that:

• Microchips in or on our brains will enhance memory, store data, and connect wirelessly to the internet, eliminating our cell phones and allowing us to control machines via mental Wi-Fi.
• Advances in neuroscience and bioengineering will render Alzheimer’s, brain damage, depression and perhaps even mental retardation largely preventable, curable and possibly reversible.
• Neuroenhancers – from smart pills to mechanical devices – will improve thinking, enhance creativity, relieve depression, erase traumatic memories and boost mental endurance.
• Bionic or biological spare brain parts that already restore hearing and give sight to the blind could restore movement and speech to the paralyzed—and give super powers to the healthy.
• Neuroimaging that now “reads” brains to detect disease will be able to accurately detect deception, antisocial tendencies, and dangerous inclinations––in addition to predicting behavior.

Find out how neuroscience, brain-machine interfaces, neuroimaging, psychopharmacology, epigenetics, the Internet, and our own minds are stimulating and enhancing the future of mental power.

Judith Horstman (Sacramento, CA) is an award-winning journalist and author whose work has appeared in USA Today and numerous magazines, publications by Harvard, Stanford, and Johns Hopkins universities, and on the Internet. She is the author of four other books including The Scientific American Day in the Life of Your Brain. Visit her Web site at www.JudithHorstman.com

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.

Rebecca Foust’s All That Gorgeous, Pitiless Song recently won the Many Mountains Moving Book Award. Also forthcoming in 2010 is God, Seed, a book of environmental poetry with watercolors by a local artist. Foust’s chapbooks, Mom’s Canoe and Dark Card won the Robert Phillips Poetry Prizes in 2007 and in 2008, and her poetry is or will be published in Atlanta Review, Margie, North American Review, The Hudson Review, and elsewhere.

Kirsten Jones Neff’s first chapbook, When The House is Quiet, won the 2009 Starting Gate Prize and a 2010 Pushcart nomination from Finishing Line Press.  Kirsten Jones Neff is a writer, gardening teacher and documentary filmmaker whose work has appeared in several PBS films, periodicals and anthologies, including When The Muse Calls: Poems for The Creative Life, The Believer, Englishcafe.com, Writer’s Advice, The Poetry Farmer’s Almanac, Ode, 34th Parallel and The Marin Poetry Center Anthology.

Come early. These two poets have been known to draw crowds!

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.

But the party’s over when the bride bolts faster than an escaping prisoner, and is later found dead floating in the bay, a victim of poisoned chocolates. When Presley becomes prime suspect, she looks to her quirky Treasure Island co-workers for help, but it’s the attractive, mysterious crime scene cleaner Brad Matthews who helps tidy up her tarnished reputation. If she doesn’t solve this mystery, she’ll be exchanging her party dress for prison stripes.

“Penny Warner dishes up a rare treat, sparkling with wicked and witty San Francisco characters, plus some real tips on hosting a killer party.”
~ Rhys Bowen, award-winning author of the Royal Spyness mysteries.

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. Keep reading …

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.

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.

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.

Monday, April 12, 2009 || 6pm
Book Passage || Ferry Plaza
San Francisco || www.bookpassage.com

Elaine Miller Bond is the author/illustrator of the book, Affimals: Affirmations + Animals, published in 2009. She took her graduate degree from Cambridge University, England and began her career as a science writer with the University of California Natural Reserve System. Her writing and photography have appeared on the Discovery Channel and in The American Naturalist, The Washington Post, and other popular and scientific media. Her photographs of rare Utah prairie dogs and their behaviors will be published in the upcoming books, Prairie Dogs with White Tails by Dr. John L. Hoogland and Squirrels of the World by Dr. John L. Koprowski. She currently makes her home in California’s San Francisco Bay Area.

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.”

Of course, we’re delighted because we loved the book too. Some of the best books ever written have never made it into print. For sure. Good work, Mary Lou. Thanks for sharing the news.

Self-published writers should definitely check out the Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Awards. The next entry deadline is May 3, 2010.

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. Keep reading …

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.

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 Keep reading …

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? Keep reading …

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.

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

Byron says ...

We had a full house Monday when Byron Belitsos explored the dance of publisher and author at the Literary Salon in a talk that addressed literary matches: Made in heaven? . . . Or hell?

Belitsos, founder of Origin Press, publisher of books on practical spirituality, entertained the group with wild tales about the authors who populate his dreams and nightmares. In addition to an interesting look at some of his list, past and present, he shared his evaluation of what makes a book succeed commercially. Here’s Byron’s test. It’s easy and enlightening. You might want to note that while it applies primarily to non-fiction, fiction writers might want to consider his points as well. We’re sharing it with his compliments. Keep reading …

Roger Housden

Such a simple idea – have an evening of spoken word, poetry and readings in the Bay Area, and send the money raised to those in need. A village in India can then have clean water for the first time and prevent three or four children a month dying from water borne diseases. There are thousands of villages throughout India without clean running water.

All it takes to change that is $8,000 -10,000 per village. That sum pays for a well with simple hand pump, a rainwater collection tank, and eco-sanitation toilets. The groundwork is done by a UK charity, Wherever The Need, which also has non-profit status in the US.

Poetry for Water with Anne Lamott, Roger Housden, Nina Wise Keep reading …

POETRY PUBLICATION WORKSHOP with C.B. Follett, Susan Terris, and Rebecca Foust

Rebecca Foust

Saturday, November 7, 2009 || 10am – 1pm
Book Passage-Corte Madera || 51 Tamal Vista Dr.
Corte Madera || www.bookpassage.com

Learn what to do to get your poetry published in literary journals and other publications. Two experienced poet/editors and one relative newcomer to the poetry scene will address questions related to WHEN, WHERE, HOW, and WHAT to submit, with focus on how to get your work out in the world without stress, fear of rejection, or waste of valuable writing time. When is your work ready to submit? Where should you send it? What is the most efficient way to get the work out? What goes into a submission? Sample cover letters, lists of how-to’s, and website resources will be provided, and an inventory of resource books and sample literary journals will be available for review. Keep reading …

IT’S NOVEL OR NEVER ,,,,

Tim Urlaub

The folks at National Novel Writing Month have devised a plan so simple that even a knucklehead like me has trouble messing it up.  My mistake:  not taking advantage of the opportunity to stretch out.  Me thinks I doth text too much.  Hence, the bad facial hair to conceal my identity until I get it write. Keep reading …

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.

LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK LAUNCH: Stan Goldberg, author of  Lessons for the Living, an evening of laughter, tears, music and wine

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.

Call in ...

FCCFREERADIO 107.3 FM SAN FRANCISCO’S ALTERNATIVE RADIO

Lilycat on Stuff

Sunday, October 4, 2009

12-2pm

Host Melinda Adams chats with Linda Watanabe McFerrin on things dark and delectable, including Linda’s upcoming reading at Writers with Drinks on Saturday, October 10th. Keep reading …

West Marin Review, a literary and art journal sponsored by the Tomales Bay Library Association and Point Reyes Books, is now accepting submissions of literary works and visual art for the 2010 volume. Submissions should be of previously unpublished work. Members of the Review’s steering committee and review boards may not submit works. Submissions for Volume 3 must be postmarked no later than October 7, 2009.

Submission Guidelines

1. Prose (fiction and nonfiction) or poetry: Submit written works on 8 1/2” x 11” loose (unbound, unstapled, unclipped) pages. These pages should not show your name or address. Submit prose and poetry using 12-point type, in either Times New Roman or Courier, with one-and-a-half-line spacing. (Remember, no name or address on these pages.) Please number prose pages. Note: Written submissions will not be returned.

Length:

• Longer prose pieces: up to 6,000 words
• Shorter prose pieces: up to 800 words
• Poems: up to 25 lines per poem (up to 3 poems may be submitted)

2. Visual art: Submit an individual piece or up to 4 works of art. Works must be submitted as good quality color prints on 8-1/2” x 11” hard copy. (Note: Art selected for publication will require a hi-resolution scan, 300 dpi, sized no less than 8-1/2” x 11”.) Please note: If you wish art materials returned, please provide a SASE of adequate size with sufficient postage.

3. On a SEPARATE sheet than your submission(s), include a cover page with your name, mailing address, email address, and telephone number, and the title of each work enclosed. Remember NOT to put identifying information on the work itself. The cover page will be removed and a number assigned; submissions will be reviewed anonymously by an editorial committee of West Marin writers, editors, and artists.

4. Submissions should be mailed to: West Marin Review, c/o Tomales Bay Library Association, P.O. Box  984, Point Reyes Station, CA 94956

Compensation for published material will be in the form of two copies of West Marin Review.

LCW member and how-to writer Elisa Southard loves to stir up new perspectives and take the guesswork of out risky endeavors.  In October, Elisa’s article, Make Road Kill out of Three Myths for Beginning Riders, will be published in HelmetHairMagazine.com, the online quarterly magazine serving the female motorcycle fan.

The author of the Amazon best seller, Break Through the Noise, 9 Tools to Propel Your Marketing Message,  Elisa cruised into the California DMV with her Motorcycle Safety Foundation certification just this summer, and now cruises on a Honda Rebel 250. Elisa is also working on her second book, Bring Your Inner Newbie Out for professional women launching into a new sport or pursuit.

Linda Watanabe McFerrin

What is it about mountains—super-high mountains—that is so attractive? Is it the challenge they represent? The excitement they provoke? The wonder they inspire? Even if it weren’t the highest mountain in Africa, Mount Kilimanjaro, rising 19,304 feet above the Great Rift Valley in northern Tanzania, would be awe striking. I remember seeing it from a distance on a long-ago trip to Africa when I was writing a story on the Lunatic Express for the San Francsico Examiner/Chronicle travel section. I was reading Ernest Hemingway’s classic The Snows of Kilimanjaro at the time. I’m crazy about mountains, but I never dreamed of climbing Kilimanjaro, so I was delighted to hear about the 2009 publication of Michel Moushabeck and partner Hiltrud Schulz’s book, Kilimanjaro: A Photographic Journey to the Roof of Africa (Interlink Publishing Group, Inc., 2009). If, like me, you are mesmerized by this particular mountain and have no immediate plans to scale it, you should get the book. Moushabeck’s pleasant, diaristic narrative and Schultz’s well-edited images make you feel as if you are along for the climb.

A few years back a dear friend, photographer Alison Wright, author of Learning to Breathe, decided to exercise the body she’d damaged in a major bus accident by climbing Kilimanjaro for her 40^th birthday. She called us at a Christmas party where we, her assembled friends, were celebrating many things, one of which was her big day. “Hey, I’m calling you from the top of Kilimanjaro,” she gasped over the phone. I think we were all dazed and impressed. It was hard to imagine her summit: the slow, slow (pole, pole) climb, the altitude sickness, the way your strength is sapped and every step requires tremendous exertion, the exhilaration of making it to the top. Now, thanks to Kilimanjaro: A Photographic Journey to the Roof of Africa, I get it … in great detail, in living color. The book makes “Kili” accessible. Enjoy the climb.

Other favorite books on mountain adventures:

• Coronation Everest by James (now Jan) Morris
• Into Thin Air by John Krakauer
• The Climb of My Life by Laura Evans
• A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush by Eric Newby
• A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson

Instructor Lowry McFerrin

Self-Publishing in the 21st Century

Saturday – October 10, 2009, 10 am – 4 pm

You’ve plotted, planned, revised, agonized over, edited and re-written three books just to finish one. Still, you can’t find an agent or publisher to carry your project forward. But you don’t want to self-publish, because a “real” writer… a SERIOUS writer… wouldn’t dream of resorting to that. Well, not necessarily. Did you know that many notable writers self-published:

• Edgar Rice Burroughs: Tarzan
• Benjamin Franklin: Poor Richard’s Almanack
• Beatrix Potter: The Tale of Peter Rabbit
• Henry David Thoreau: Walden
• Mark Twain: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
• James Joyce: Ulysses
• Richard N. Bolles: What Color is Your Parachute

. . .and scores of others, including many of your contemporaries (Dave Eggers, Jeff Greenwald, Louise Hay), some of whom got noticed and eventually picked up by major publishing houses because of their self-published books.

In today’s world of publishing, the advent of the Internet (not to mention the other mind-boggling computer advances) has revolutionized the options for publishing, PR, and marketing. Self-publishing is no longer a dirty word; it’s simply another way, as viable and as valuable as any other, to get your work out into the world.

So how do you go about it without making major mistakes?

During Self-Publishing in the 21st Century, we’ll discuss manuscript preparation, book layout & design, cover design, printing methods (including print-on-demand), binding choices, ISBN, marketing and distribution, fulfillment services and the associated costs. The workshop covers the role of new media marketing opportunities such as social networks, websites and other online marketing tools for self-publishing writers.

Lowry McFerrin learned to love the smell of printers’ ink as a teenager while working for his family-owned, San Francisco-based lithography company. He has served as VP of Distributor Sales for a barcode label manufacturer and today is President/CEO of ProForma Mactec Solutions, a printing and marketing services provider. In addition to supplying these services to publishers such as Lonely Planet Press, Travelers’ Tales, Hunter House Books, Birdcage Books, and Left Coast Writers, Lowry has helped numerous authors self-publish and market their books.

A successful self-publishing journey begins with a small investment in the basics.

Space is limited. To reserve a place please respond by return email to easeintoprint@pacbell.net

Directions will follow.

Comments from past workshop participants:

I…wanted to personally let you know how much I enjoyed the class and your honesty about the whole process. I can see I have a lot of work ahead of me, but it’s better than watching re-runs all night!—Dorothy C., Writer

What fun to be your student! I really learned a lot and your guidance will be invaluable as I (cautiously) make the leap from the wee chair to the brave new frontier of cyber-self-pub, or whatever of the dizzying combinations I end up choosing. It did just what I wanted it to: it gave me a good overview of the options and a sense of the pitfalls for various kinds of “do-it-yourselfing”.—Joanna B., Teacher/Writer

Very, very useful and inspiring! All my questions were answered.—TC, Author

Sheldon Siegel

Literary luminaries will join members of Homeward Bound’s creative writing groups to present a special fundraising event from 1 to 4 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 4, at The Next Key Center.

“How I Became a Writer … An Afternoon of Inspiration” will feature readings and commentary by a stellar lineup of Marin’s published talent along with residents of Homeward Bound programs who participate in focused writing groups that work on journaling, poetry, and more.

The speakers include Sheldon Siegel, writer of bestselling thrillers.

Tickets cost $50 and include refreshments by Fresh Starts Catering, a program of Homeward Bound of Marin. You may purchase tickets at the door or call 415-382-3363 x211 for advance reservations.

For more information, please contact Homeward Bound at (415) 382-3362 ex. 211 or visit www.hbofm.org.

Do What You Love and Make a Living

Learn how at the Simplie Indie writer’s workshop this weekend on September 19, 2009. Four panelists will cover the information essential to achieving your writing goals in a new, fast paced, internet based environment.

Bill Walker on new publishing

Jennifer Bourn on personal branding

Jerry Kennedy on sales

Stephanie Chandler on tricks of the trade.

Panelists include Social Networking Strategist Peter Lang.

Register Today: simplieindie.com/writer-event.html

When: September 19, 2009, 8 am to 5 pm—includes rolls and coffee and catered lunch. Where: The Clubhouse at Woodcreek Golf Club, 5880 Woodcreek Oaks Blvd, Roseville, CA Questions? Contact Roxanne Dodge at 916.531.3470 or roxanne.dodge@SimplieIndie.com

All attendees receive a goodie bag containing books, CDs, and coupons worth hundreds of dollars.