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Literary Salon: Rose Solari

LEFT COAST WRITERS LITERARY SALON: Rose Solari, poet and author of A Secret Woman

Rose Solari

Monday, November 5th, 2012 || 7pm
Book Passage || Corte Madera
51 Tamal Vista Drive, Corte Madera ||www.bookpassage.com

It’s a delight to introduce you all to Rose Solari, our next Left Coast Writers speaker. Rose is an award-winning poet, writer and educator. Her most recent work is the novel A Secret Woman, which revolves around a strong and independent woman who finds herself on an amazing journey into the heart of her mother’s mysteries.

Rose Solari is the author of two full-length collections of poetry, Orpheus in the Park and Difficult Weather. Her poetry and prose have Keep reading …

Literary Salon: Claudia Sternbach

LEFT COAST WRITERS LITERARY SALON: Claudia Sternbach, Editor in Chief of Memoir Journal and Author of Reading Lips, a Memoir of Kisses

Tuesday, September 4, 2012 || 7pm
Book Passage-Corte Madera || 51 Tamal Vista Dr.
Corte Madera || www.bookpassage.com

It’s Tuesday night in September (Labor day weekend!), not Monday night … and it’s going to be fascinating. Claudia Sternbach, Editor in Chief of Memoir Journal will be answer all your questions about capturing your personal stories on the page in long and short form. She’ll also be letting the assembled know exactly how to submit work to Memoir Journal. Patricia Bracewell, our talented Roadwork editor and author of the upcoming historical novel, The Shadow on the Crown (Viking), will be emceeing. You won’t want to miss this stellar evening. Keep reading …

Literary Salon: William C. Gordon

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 …

Literary Salon: Peter Lang

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

Peter Lang

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.”

Literary Salon: Jasmin Darznik

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

Jasmin Darznik

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

Literary Salon: Laurie McLean

LEFT COAST WRITERS LITERARY SALON: Laurie McLean, Agent

Laurie McLean

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.

Literary Salon: Spud Hilton

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

Spud Hilton

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.”

Literary Salon: Kelly Booth

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

Kelly Booth

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.

Literary Salon: Roger Housden

LEFT COAST WRITERS LITERARY SALON: Roger Housden, Author of Saved by Beauty:  Adventures of an American Romantic in Iran

Roger Housden

Roger Housden

Monday, June 6, 2011 || 7pm

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

We invite you to step out and into the “creative pause,” a chance to relax and listen in on the secrets of writing, travel, discovery, beauty and engaging the heart with one of our favorite philosopher-writers: Roger Housden.

Roger Housden is the author of some twenty books, including the best-selling Ten Poems Series. All his books, whatever the subject – poetry, art, a journey through Iran or India – share a common aim: to inspire himself and others to question the way we live, encouraging us, before we die, to live into the best that we are. One of his recent works, Seven Sins For a Life Worth Living, is an unusual reflection on the nature of pleasure, including the pleasure of doing nothing – “the creative pause” – and the pleasure of not being perfect. His book on Iran, Saved by Beauty:  Adventures of an American Romantic in Iran, has been called “a pilgrimage, a prayer, a heartfelt reminder, a poet-traveler’s window into the eternal soul of Iran …” (Jack Kornfield, best-selling author of A Path With Heart and After the Ecstasy, The Laundry).

Roger’s work has been featured many times in The Oprah Magazine, in The New York Times, and in the Los Angeles Times. He now  lives in Marin County and runs periodic classes on Spiritual Memoir in the Bay Area.

“I grew up in the cleft of a Cotswold valley on the edge of Bath, England. Living in the shadow of an ancient stone circle, I always felt us to be creatures with one foot in this world and one in another, less visible one. To weave these two realms – this gritty world of action and the world of silence, imagination, and being – into one cloth, rich with meaning, is what I feel we are here for. Poetry, art, meditation and also travel have given me a language for this experience of a life deeply felt, and also an entry directly into it.”

—Roger Housden, Author of Saved by Beauty:  Adventures of an American Romantic in Iran


If you want to bring a friend to this event, just let us know and we will be happy to add them to the guest list.

Literary Salon: James Patterson

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

James J. Patterson

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.

 

Literary Salon: Scott James

LEFT COAST WRITERS LITERARY SALON: Scott James, New York Times Columnist and Author of Soma and The Sower

Scott James/Kemble Scott

Scott James/Kemble Scott

Monday, April 4, 2011 || 7pm
Book Passage || Corte Madera
51 Tamal Vista Drive, Corte Madera || www.bookpassage.com

Laurie McAndish King fills in as host for Linda Watanabe McFerrin at the April salon when Scott James, New York Times columnist and author of SoMa and The Sower shares “Insights From the Front Lines of Publishing.”

There seem to be game-changing headlines about writing every day: ebooks, blogels, print-on-demand, pay walls, DIY. How do you sort it all out? Scott James has worked with both mainstream publishers and the latest technologies that allow writers to reach readers directly. James will share his experiences in both realms, plus offer a frank discussion about the opportunities and challenges in this time of transition in the publishing world. Keep reading …

Literary Salon: Faith Adiele

LEFT COAST WRITERS LITERARY SALON: Faith Adiele, PEN Beyond Margins Award winner and Author of Meeting Faith

Faith Adiele

Faith Adiele

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

Faith Adiele is the author of Meeting Faith (W.W. Norton), a travel memoir about becoming Thailand’s first black Buddhist nun, which received thePEN Beyond Margins Award for Best Memoir of 2004. A Publishers Weekly starred review credited it with “a comic’s timing, a novelist’s keen observations about human idiosyncrasies and an anthropologist’s sensitivity to race and culture.”

She is also lead editor of the international collection, Coming of Age Around the World: A Multicultural Anthology (The New Press, 2008), and writer/narrator/subject of the PBS documentary My Journey Home. The film documents Adiele’s experiences—similar to President Obama’s—growing up with a Nordic-American single mother and traveling to Nigeria as an adult to find her father and siblings.

Educated at Harvard University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Adiele has taught in the Creative Nonfiction MFAProgram at the University of Pittsburgh, held the Christa Corrigan McAuliffe Chair at Framingham State College, and served as Rachel B. Noel Distinguished Visiting Professor at Metropolitan State College; she is presently the DistinguishedVisiting Writer at Mills College in Oakland, California.

Adiele has published or been featured in such periodicals as O magazine, Ploughshares, Marie Claire, Creative Nonfiction, Essence, Transition, Pink magazine, Tricycle, The Root.com, and in numerous anthologies. The recipient of a UNESCO International Artists Bursary, two Best American Essays shortlists, and the Millennium Award from Creative Nonfiction, she is currently at work on Twins: Growing UpNigerian/Nordic/American, a social/cultural memoir that will complete the story begun in the PBS documentary. Her work is newly out in two great anthologies: The Word: Black Writers Talk about the Transformative Power of Reading and Writing and The Colors of Nature: Culture, Identity, and the Natural World.

Visit her at adiele.com.

Literary Salon: Suzanne Rodriguez and Laurie McAndish King

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

Laurie McAndish King

Laurie McAndish King

Suzanne Rodriquez

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!

Literary Salon: Canyon Sam

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

Canyon Sam

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!

Literary Salon: Peter Goodman

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

Peter Goodman

Peter Goodman

Monday, October 4, 2010 || 7pm

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 …

Literary Salon: Molly Dwyer

LEFT COAST WRITERS LITERARY SALON:  Molly Dwyer, Author of Requiem for the Author of Frankenstein

Molly Dwyer

Molly Dwyer

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

Frankenstein was conceived during the summer of 1816 when Mary Godwin and Percy Bysshe Shelley lived on Lake Geneva in the company of the infamous Lord Byron. Frankenstein matured into a novel during the following winter, while Mary lived mostly without Shelley in Bath, keeping her pregnant stepsister Claire hidden from wagging tongues. During that winter both Mary’s half-sister, Fanny, and Shelley’s abandoned wife, Harriet, killed themselves. On January 1, 1818, one year later, Frankenstein descended upon the world. Its author, now the married Mrs. Shelley, was twenty years old. Keep reading …

Literary Salon: Ransom Stephens

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

Ransom Stephens

Ransom Stephens

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

Ransom Stephens, Ph.D., is a professor of particle physics turned writer and speaker. He has worked on experiments at SLAC, Fermilab, CERN, and Cornell; discovered a new type of matter and was on the team that discovered the top quark. During the tech boom that ended in 2001, he directed patent development for a wireless web startup and, a few years later, became an expert on timing noise. Now he’s turning his considerable mental powers toward the world of writing and publishing, and we’re interested in what he’s learned. He’s a much praised speaker, so it should be an informative evening as Ransom shares his current explorations and his jump into a bold new way of getting the word out.

“What distinguishes this classic battle between faith and free will is its unusually deft infusion of legitimate but accessible science.…an ambitious first novel that uses Stephens’ experience as a particle physicist, director of patents, public speaker and single father in a narrative that sings of the heart and the scientific method as two parts of the same song.”

—The San Francisco Chronicle

“Ransom Stephens skillfully weaves together multiple plot lines and characters in a fast moving story.”

—Book Case, for the Petaluma Argus-Courier

The memo said they’d get bonuses for submitting patents, so why not? Money came easily during the dot-com boom. Concealed in engineering jargon, Ryan McNear submits a patent for the soul disguised as a software algorithm and his best friend Foster Reed rewrites Genesis and calls it a “power generator.” A few years later, amid the fallout of a ruptured technology bubble, his career ruined and family shredded, a desperate Ryan discovers that a company headed by his old friend Foster is developing his patent. What he thought was a joke is generating stacks of money amid claims that it will provide a source of limitless energy and prove the existence of God.Willing to try anything to rebuild his life, Ryan stakes a legal claim to the patent but soon discovers a sinister undercurrent in the venture. Racing against time and aided by a motley group of assistants that includes an attorney/conman, a beautiful and passionate physicist and a death-obsessed adolescent math prodigy, Ryan gets caught in a battle between hard science and fundamentalist religion that threatens his sanity, his freedom and his son. Before long Ryan will test the limits of faith and free will, evaluate the nature of desire, and comprehend the human soul in a way that requires a single step, rather than a great leap, of faith.

…….

Ransom lives in Petaluma, California and makes a living by writing novels, giving speeches, producing and MCing literary events, helping engineers solve problems, and teaching writing seminars. He is the author of over 200 articles on impossible subjects like quantum physics, the future of publishing and parenting teenagers. His first novel, The God Patent, is set in the battle between science and religion over the nature of the soul and the origin of the universe.

Literary Salon: Penny Warner

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

penny-nancy_sWe 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.

Penny Warner has been writing since she read her first Nancy Drew in 6th grade. Since then she’s had over 50 books published, fiction and non-fiction, for adults and children. Her books have won national awards, garnered excellent reviews, and have been printed in 14 countries, including Russia, France, Spain, Germany, Holland, Australia, Canada, Indonesia, India, Israel, Poland, Japan, and China. My best-sellers include Healthy Snacks for Kids, Kids’ Party Games and Activities, Best Party Book, Games People Play, Kids’ Holiday Fun, Learn to Sign the Fun Way, Baby Play and Learn, Kids Pick-A-Party, and Kids’ Party Cookbook.

Literary Salon: Neeli Cherkovski

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

Neeli Cherkovski, Author of From the Canyon Outward

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

Neeli Cherkovski

Neeli Cherkovski

Inaugurated by the Academy of American Poets in 1996, National Poetry Month is now held every April, when publishers, booksellers, literary organizations, libraries, schools and poets around the country band together to celebrate poetry and its vital place in American culture.
In honor of National Poetry Month, our April Left Coast Literary Salon Presenter is poet Neeli Chekovski. Keep reading …

Literary Salon: Susan West

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

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

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

Susan West

Susan West

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

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

Literary Salon: Phil Cousineau

Monday, December 7, 2009 || 7pm ||

Phil Cousineau, Author of The Meaning of Tea: A Tea Inspired Journey

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

Phil Cousineau

Phil Cousineau

A Health-filled Holiday and The Meaning of Tea

“When we drink tea with others we shorten the distance between people.”

—Feng Ming-Chung, a Bao Zhong tea grower, in The Meaning of Tea.

Join writer, filmmaker, photographer, teacher and editor Phil Cousineau for an exploration of the history, health benefits, rituals, spirituality and simple pure enjoyment of tea. The Meaning of Tea: A Tea Inspired Journey offers wisdom ideally suited for modern citizens facing the stress of economic uncertainty. San Francisco tea experts James Norwood Pratt and Imperial Tea Court Teamaster Roy Fong are featured in the book. Culled from more than 50 conversations with tea pickers and plantation owners, street sellers, traders, teapot makers and eloquent tea scholars spanning eight countries—from India to Ireland and Taiwan to Tea, South Dakota—readers learn about how tea has brought peace, calm, health, friendship and often wisdom into their lives. The Meaning of Tea (Talking Leave Press, 2009) Keep reading …

Literary Salon: Byron Belitsos

Monday, November 2, 2009 || 7pm ||

Byron Belitsos, Publisher, Origin Press, talks about the complex dance of author and publisher

Book Passage – Corte Madera

51 Tamal Vista Dr., Corte Madera

Byron Belitsos

Byron Belitsos

Marin-based small press publisher Byron Belitsos of Origin Press will share stories and wisdom drawn from his experiences of the publishing business over the last 15 years—with special focus on his perceptions of the many authors with whom he has worked. Belitsos has edited and published books on health, consciousness, spirituality, and politics, including Faith and the Placebo Effect by Lolette Kuby, Mind Science by Charles Tart, The Unfolding Self by Ralph Metzner, and Waking Up in Time by Peter Russell. He has also played the roles both of coauthor and publisher for several Keep reading …

Book Launch: Stan Goldberg

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

Stan Goldberg

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.


21st Century Publishing

Instructor Lowry McFerrin

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

Literary Salon: Mary Roach

Monday, October 5, 2009 || 7pm ||

Mary Roach, Author of Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex

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

Mary Roach

Mary Roach

Mary Roach is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, Spook:  Science Tackles the Afterlife, and Bonk:  The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex.   Stiff has been translated into 17 languages, and Spook was a New York Times Notable Book of 2005.  Bonk was chosen as a 2008 best book by the San Francisco Chronicle, the St. Louis-Post Dispatch, and the Boston Globe.  Mary has written for Outside, National Geographic, Wired, New Scientist, The New York Times Magazine, and NPR’s “All Things Considered,” among many others.  She is a contributing editor at the science magazine Discover, a frequent contributor to the New York Times Book Review, and a winner of the American Engineering Societies’ Engineering Journalism Award, in a category for which, let’s be honest, she was the sole entrant.   More info at www.maryroach.net Keep reading …

Literary Salon: Ayelet Waldman

Tuesday, September 8, 2009 || 7pm ||

Ayelet Waldman, Author of Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Clamities and Occasional Moments of Grace, Love and Other Impossible Pursuits

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

Ayelet Waldman

Ayelet Waldman

Ayelet Waldman is the author of The New York Times bestseller Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities and Occasional Moments of Grace, Love and Other Impossible Pursuits, Daughter’s Keeper and the Mommy-Track Mysteries. Her personal essays have been published in a wide variety of newspapers and magazine, including The New York Times, the Guardian, the San Francisco Chronicle, Elle Magazine, Vogue, Allure, Cookie, Child, Parenting, Real Simple, Health and Salon.com. Her radio commentaries have appeared on “All Things Considered” and “The California Report.” Ayelet’s missives also appear on Facebook and Twitter. Her books are published throughout the world, in countries as disparate as England and Thailand, the Netherlands and China, Russia and Israel.

Keep reading …

Literary Salon: Scott Rosenberg

Monday, August 3, 2009 || 7pm ||

Scott Rosenberg, author of DREAMING IN CODE and SAY EVERYTHING: How Blogging Began, What It’s Becoming, and Why It Matters

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

Scott RosenbergBlogs are everywhere. They have exposed truths and spread rumors. Made and lost fortunes. Brought couples together and torn them apart. Toppled cabinet members and sparked grassroots movements. Immediate, intimate, and influential, they have put the power of personal publishing into everyone’s hands. Regularly dismissed as trivial and ephemeral, they have proved that they are here to stay.

In Say Everything, Scott Rosenberg chronicles blogging’s unplanned rise and improbable triumph, tracing its impact on politics, business, the media, and our personal lives. He offers close-ups of innovators such as Blogger founder Evan Williams, investigative journalist Josh Marshall, exhibitionist diarist Justin Hall, software visionary Dave Winer, “mommyblogger” Heather Armstrong, and many others.

These blogging pioneers were the first to face new dilemmas that have become common in the era of Google and Facebook, and their stories offer vital insights and warnings as we navigate the future. How much of our lives should we reveal on the Web? Is anonymity a boon or a curse? Which voices can we trust? What does authenticity look like on a stage where millions are fighting for attention, yet most only write for a handful? And what happens to our culture now that everyone can say everything?

Before blogs, it was easy to believe that the Web would grow up to be a clickable TV—slick, passive, mass-market. Instead, blogging brought the Web’s native character into focus—convivial, expressive, democratic. Far from being pajama-clad loners, bloggers have become the curators of our collective experience, testing out their ideas in front of a crowd and linking people in ways that broadcasts can’t match. Blogs have created a new kind of public sphere—one in which we can think out loud together. And now that we have begun, Rosenberg writes, it is impossible to imagine us stopping.

In his first book, Dreaming in Code, Scott Rosenberg brilliantly explored the art of creating software (“the first true successor to The Soul of a New Machine,” wrote James Fallows in The Atlantic). In Say Everything, Rosenberg brings the same perceptive eye to the blogosphere, capturing as no one else has the birth of a new medium.

SCOT T ROSENBERG is a cofounder of Salon.com, where he long served as managing editor, and is the author of Dreaming in Code. He blogs at www.wordyard.com.

Literary Salon: Andy Ross

Monday, July 6, 2009 || 7pm ||

Andy Ross, Agent at Andy Ross Literary Agency

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

Andy Ross

Andy Ross

Andy Ross has worked in the book business for 36 years, all of his working life. He was owner and general manager of Cody’s Books in Berkeley, California from 1977-2006. Cody’s has been recognized as one of America’s great independent book stores.

During this period, Andy was the primary trade book buyer. This experience has given him a unique understanding of the retail book market, of publishing trends and, most importantly and uniquely, the hand selling of books to book buyers.

Andy is past president of the Northern California Booksellers Association, a board member and officer of the American Booksellers Association and a national spokesperson for issues concerning independent businesses. He has had significant profiles in the Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, Publisher’s Weekly and the San Francisco Chronicle.

Literary Salon: Christi Phillips

Monday, June 1, 2009 || 7pm ||
Christi Phillips, Author of The Devlin Diary and The Rossetti Letter

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

The Devlin Diary

The Devlin Diary

Christi Phillips will discuss the research and creation of her popular novels. She is the author of The Rossetti Letter, which has been translated into six foreign languages. Her research combines a few of her favorite things: old books, libraries, and travel. When she’s not rummaging around in an archive or exploring the historic heart of a European city, she lives with her husband in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she is at work on her next novel, set in France.

Christi’s new book, The Devlin Diary is a dazzling novel of intrigue, passion, and royal secrets that shifts tantalizingly between Restoration-era London and present-day Cambridge. A suspenseful and richly satisfying tale brimming with sharply observed historical detail, The Devlin Diary brings past and present to vivid life. With wit and grace, Christi Phillips holds readers spellbound with an extraordinary novel of secrets, obsession, and the haunting power of the past.

Literary Salon: April Eberhardt

Monday, April 6, 2009 || 7pm ||
April Eberhardt, Agent at Reece Halsey North

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

April Eberhardt

April Eberhardt

April Eberhardt joined Reece Halsey North as a Literary Agent in 2008 after five years of editorial work with Zoetrope: All-Story, a literary magazine, and another agency. Her specialty is adult literary fiction, particularly ironic family dramas and realistic midlife tales, often with a twist, preferably involving strong female characters. She is attracted to collections of interlinked stories with a common character or theme. An original voice and smart, speedy delivery are critical, as is a subtle sense of the absurd. She enjoys working with new authors to edit and streamline their manuscripts before submitting them to publishers. April does consider selected non-fiction works. She does not represent mysteries or murders, thrillers, historical fiction or fantasy, nor does she represent children’s titles.

April earned an MBA in Finance and Marketing from Boston University, a BA in Anthropology and French from Hamilton College, and a CPLF degree from the University of Paris. Her prior careers in banking and management consulting honed her strategic, marketing and presentation skills and serve her well in her literary endeavors.
In this time of great international misunderstanding, many things are “lost in translation.” Join us for an exciting and truly enlightening evening that will add a little clarity and introduce new voices with important things to share.

Literary Salon: David Poindexter

Monday, March 2, 2009 || 7pm ||
David Poindexter, MacAdam/Cage, Founder and Publisher

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

Join us in an evening with David Poindexter, MacAdam/Cage founder and publisher.

poindexter_24

After twenty years in the commercial printing industry, David Poindexter, inspired by his lifelong love of reading, decided to start an independent trade publishing house. In 1998, he founded MacAdam/Cage in order to bring new voices to the literary marketplace.

A year later, Poindexter acquired MacMurray & Beck, a Denver-based independent press, well known in the industry for launching authors such as Patricia Henley (Hummingbird House), William Gay (The Long Home), and Susan Vreeland (Girl in Hyacinth Blue).

Now, with twelve employees and offices in San Francisco and Denver, MacAdam/Cage remains committed to publishing quality books with the personal attention offered at a small company, and the marketing and distribution strengths often associated with larger houses. MacAdam/Cage currently publishes between 25 and 35 new titles each year, primarily hardcover fiction. They have found both commercial and literary success with a number of works including The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn, How To Be Lost by Amanda Eyre Ward, A Map of Glass by Jane Urquhart, Pinkerton’s Sister by Peter Rushforth, The Contortionist’s Handbook by Craig Clevenger, and Rose of No Man’s Land by Michelle Tea.

MacAdam/Cage has been recognized both for the quality of its list and for its somewhat old-fashioned approach to publishing.  Poets & Writers noted “they recreate the culture that thrived in publishing houses during the early part of the last century,” and former Harcourt Brace publisher, André Bernard, called the house a “genuine publishing success story.”

But perhaps more than anything, MacAdam/Cage is known for its dedicated publisher, David Poindexter, who is in turn known in the book world for “going to great lengths to find and serve authors,” as noted in a 2002 Publishers Weekly profile.

Literary Salon: Camille Cusumano

Monday, January 5, 2009 || 7pm ||
Camille Cusumano, Author of Tango, an Argentine Love Story

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

Please join us in a scintillating start for the New Year at the first Left Coast Writers Literary Salon of 2009! Camille Cusumano will light up the evening with a talk about her love of literature and her passion for tango. Camille has even promised a short tango demonstration. You may bring guests to this event. After all, they say it takes two …

Camille Cusumano has written on food, fitness, and travel for more than 20 years, and recently on dance and yoga. She was an editor at VIA Magazine for 17 years.

Her work has appeared in many publications, including Islands, Country Living, the San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor, the New York Times, Yoga Journal, and the Washington Post.

Her cookbook credits include The New Foods (Henry Holt), America Loves Salads (Literary Guild), Rodale’s Basic Natural Foods Cookbook (co-written with Carol Munson, Editor Charles Gerras), and Tofu, Tempeh, and Other Soy Delights (Rodale).

Her novel, The Last Cannoli (Legas, 2000) was inspired by her growing up in a large Sicilian American family. The book, wrote former San Francisco Poet Laureate Lawrence Ferlinghetti, “attests to the power of storytelling to hold life together through all its diasporas.” She has contributed essays to travel anthologies and is the editor of the anthology series: France, a Love Story, Italy, a Love Story, Mexico, a Love Story, and Greece, a Love Story, all published by Seal Press, Emeryville, Calif.

Literary Salon: Niloufar Talebi

Monday, February 2, 2009 || 7pm ||
Niloufar Talebi, award winning editor and translator of Belonging New Poetry By Iranians Around the World.

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

In this time of great international misunderstanding, many things are “lost in translation.” Join us for an exciting and truly enlightening evening that will add a little clarity and introduce new voices with important things to share.

Award-winning translator, Niloufar Talebi, was born in London to Iranian parents. She received a BA in Comparative Literature from UC Irvine, and an MFA in Writing and Literature from Bennington College. She studied theater with Jean Shelton and Cyril Clayton and has produced and performed nationally. She created The Translation Project (TTP), a literary organization and production company in 2003 to bring contemporary Iranian literature to larger audiences. Her translations have been anthologized and published in Two Lines, Poetry International, CIRCUMFERENCE, Agni on-line and Harvard Divinity Bulletin, and she is the guest editor of the Spring 2006 issue of Rattapallax. She has presented at the PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature in NYC, The Asia Society, The New School, UC Irvine, University of Iowa, The National Arts Club, St. Mark’s Poetry Project, Asia Society, the New York Public Library, LitQuake, Theater Artaud, Berkeley Repertory Theater, Actor’s Theater and Intersection for the Arts.

She created “Midnight Approaches”, a DVD of short films, as well as “ICARUS/RISE”, a multimedia theatrical piece, both based on new Iranian poetry. She is the recipient of translation prizes from the International Center for Writing and Translation (2004), the American Literary Translators Association (2005), the PEN/New York State Council on the Arts (2006) and the Willis Barnstone Translation Prize (2006). She is a member of ALTA, MESA and PEN American Center. She is the editor and translator of BELONGING: New Poetry By Iranians Around the World (North Atlantic Books, July 2008).

Literary Salon: Wendy Merrill

Monday, April 7, 2008 7pmWendy Merrill, Author of
Wendy Merrill, Author of Falling into Manholes

Book Passage || 51 Tamal Vista Dr., Corte Madera
For Info: See Book Passage or 415-927-0960

Meet Wendy Merrill, a quirky, attractive, in-recovery-from…well, you can pretty much name it…who, while seemingly on the quest for her perfect mate, keeps falling into manholes. After losing herself in an endless series of attachments, this serial mater comes to see how her relationships with men are indicative of all her relationships – with alcohol, food, drugs, family, friends, and most of all, herself.

Smart, funny and embarrassingly honest, the tales in Falling Into Manholes recount the common experience of looking for love in all the wrong places, and the not-so-common experience of finding it in yourself – and it feels like talking with your best friend. Wendy represents the bad girl/good girl paradox deep within every woman, and writes what women often think, but don’t have the nerve to say. Her favorite books growing up were Little House on the Prairie and The Happy Hooker, and even then she fantasized about a scenario in which Xaviera Hollander lived happily ever after with Laura, Ma and Pa. Wendy was the tall, scrawny late bloomer on the sidelines of the seventh-grade dance who turned into the sweet-sixteen-never-been-kissed good girl yearning to be bad. PhD’s were the norm in her family, yet she aspired to be comfortable on any barstool in the world. In college, she took a class called “Dating and Marriage” – and got an F. “I always aspired to an A+,” she says. “I just didn’t think it would end up being my bra size.”

With honesty, humor and style, Falling Into Manholes explores the contradictions and imperfections of being a woman, in a book about relationships, addiction, self-esteem (and the lack thereof), and going to any lengths to discover what matters. This menmoir gives the reader what we all need more of: a good laugh, an easy read, and hope.

Wendy owns and runs an advertising agency called WAM Marketing Group and lives above ground and beyond her means in Sausalito.

Literary Salon: Karen Templer and Doug Cruickshank

Monday, March 3, 2008

Karen Templer, Editor in Chief and Doug Cruickshank, Features Editor of Readerville online

Editor in Chief, Karen Templer, and Features Editor, Douglas Cruickshank will talk about Readerville, the content and the community.

In the nearly 8 years since Readerville first appeared online, it has taken many forms. It was first a place where readers and writers and publishing insiders could meet each day to find out what’s interesting in the world of books. In 2001 a full-fledged online bookstore was added and Readerville began publishing content. In 2002 the bookstore went away and a print magazine was launched, called The Readerville Journal. The Readerville Journal ceased publication in 2003, but the website survived and continues to be the wacky and thought-provoking community it started out as.

Literary Salon: Kemble Scott

Kemble Scott ImageMonday, May 5, 2008
Kemble Scott, Author of SoMa

Kemble Scott is the author of the bestselling novel SoMa. A longtime journalist before turning to fiction, Kemble has three Emmy awards for his work in television news. He also helps run San Francisco’s literary festival Litquake, and he’s the editor of the monthly e-zine SoMa Literary Review and the weekly email blast SF Bay Area Literary Arts Newsletter.

SoMa tells the interwoven stories of young people of the tech-driven “millennials” generation on a journey of thrills and self-discovery in San Francisco’s notorious South of Market (SoMa) neighborhood. The novel is based on the true tales of the city. Publishers Weekly describes SoMa as “a fun, frisky novel of shock horror.”

Literary Salon: Jane Juska

Monday, February 4, 2008

Jane Juska, Author of A Round Heeled Woman and Unaccompanied Women

Born in 1933, Jane Juska is an old person but a new writer. Her first book, A Round-Heeled Woman, was published in 2003, followed in 2006 by Unaccompanied Women. Before that, she taught English for forty years in high school, college, and prison. Her work has appeared in magazines and anthologies. She is working on a novel. She lives in Berkeley, California.

“Round-heeled” is an old-fashioned label for a woman who is promiscuous—someone who nowadays might be called “easy.” It’s a surprising way for an English teacher with a passion for Trollope to describe herself in the title of the memoir which followed after she placed a personal ad in the New York Review of Books: “Before I turn 67—next March—I would like to have a lot of sex with a man I like. If you want to talk first, Trollope works for me.”

The ad worked, a book came out of experience (A Round-Heeled Woman) and Juska was reborn.

Unaccompanied Women is about women Juska met on her book-tour; it is about what happened in her own life; it is about trying to find a home. Her adventures continue.

Literary Salon: Victoria Shoemaker

Monday, July 2, 2007

Left Coast Writers Literary Salon, 7pm

Victoria Shoemaker
Book Passage, 51 Tamal Vista, Corte Madera, CA

For more information: leftcoastwriters@aol.com

Victoria Shoemaker has over 30 years experience in bookselling and publishing. Her experience includes retail bookselling, book development, editing, promotion and publicity. She was co-founder of Sand Dollar Books and Bay Bridge Books in the Bay Area, and a consultant for North Point Press. She developed and ran the nationally recognized author reading series at Black Oak Books in Berkeley. She was a founding partner in Shoemaker/Handel Publicity Services. She joined The Spieler Agency in 1994 as the West Coast representative. Areas of interest include environment and natural history, popular culture, memoir, photography and film, and literary fiction.

Present and past clients include Wendell Berry, Gary Paul Nabhan, Peggy Knickerbocker, Kate Horsely and Linda Watanabe McFerrin.

Literary Salon: Jan Yanehiro

Monday, April 2, 2007 7pm
Book Passage – CORTE MADERA || 51 Tamal Vista Dr. || Corte Madera
For Info: Book Passage or leftcoastwriters@aol.com

Broadcast journalist and Emmy-winner, Jan Yanehiro has skydived with the Army’s Golden Knights and ventured up a frozen waterfall!all in the name of getting a good story! Jan pioneered the magazine format on television as co-host of Evening Magazine, a nightly program in San Francisco from 1976-90.

Now the president of her own Media and Marketing firm, Jan still hosts shows and emcees events for community causes on a regular basis. Her new book, This Is Not the Life I Ordered, 50 Ways to Keep Your Head Above Water When Life Keeps Dragging You Down , which she co-authored with State Senator Jackie Speier, Deborah Collins Stephens, and Michealeane Cristini Risley, contains the stories, lessons and wisdom these four women shared during their monthly meetings as they faced extraordinary life challenges.

A paragon of courage, Jan lost her first husband to brain cancer. She is now remarried with a beautifully blended family which includes five very accomplished children. Awarded many professional honors including the Eleanor Roosevelt Humanitarian Award from the United Nations of San Francisco, Jan is also an inductee of the Academy of Television and Radio Hall of Fame. She sits on many boards including The Bank of Marin, Kristi Yamaguchi’s Always Dream Foundation and USF’s Center For The Pacific Rim.

To learn more about Jan and Is Not the Life I Ordered, check out their blog: simplyfourwomen.blogspot.com

NEXT UP AT THE SALON
May, 2007 Salon: Gerald Sindell - publishing consultant and founder of Thought Leaders,
Intl.

June, 2007 Salon: Michele Rivers - artist, visionary and author of “Time for Tea”

Ted Weinstein

Ted is a San Francisco-based literary agent and a member of the Association of Authors’ Representatives, Ted represents a wide range of journalists, scholars and other authors of intelligent, adult nonfiction, with a particular interest in current affairs, biography, history, business, science, environment, pop culture, lifestyle, travel, health and medicine.

Ted has broad experience on both the business and editorial sides of publishing. Before opening the agency he held several senior publishing positions in licensing, marketing, PR and business development, including VP Marketing & Business Development at Nolo Press and the head of electronic publishing and licensing for Miller Freeman.

Also a widely published author, Ted has been the music critic for NPR’s All Things Considered and a commentator for the San Francisco Chronicle, the Bay Guardian, SF Weekly and Might Magazine. Ted received his B.A. cum laude in philosophy from Yale College and his Master’s degree in Public and Private Management from the Yale School of Management. You can visit Ted at www.twliterary.com.

Ayelet Waldman

Ayelet Waldman’s mystery series, the Mommy-Track Mysteries, published by Berkley Prime Crime, a division of Penguin Putnam, draws on her experience of the sunny SoCal world of mall-hopping and Mommy-and-Me, and her working familiarity with the criminal mind, with courtrooms and jail cells, with a darker Los Angeles of drug dealers and bank robbers, gangbangers and boiler-room scam artists, that she gained during her time as a criminal defense attorney.

One of six children, Ayelet was born in Israel and grew up in Northern New Jersey. She is a graduate of Wesleyan University and of the Harvard Law School and an adjunct professor at the Boalt Hall School of Law at UC Berkeley, where she teaches an upper level seminar on the legal and social implications of the war on drugs. Ayelet’s expertise in this field stems from her representation of both individuals accused of drug crimes and organizations opposed to the continuation of the war on drugs.

Ayelet is an experienced lecturer and reader and enjoys making public appearances. Her latest book is Daughter’s Keeper.

Ayelet and her husband, the novelist Michael Chabon (author of Summerland, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Wonder Boys and The Mysteries of Pittsburgh) live in Berkeley, California with their four children.

Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston

Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, the daughter of first- and second-generation Japanese-American parents, was born in 1934 in Inglewood, California. During World War II, when more than 110,000 Japanese-Americans were interned in camps set up by the U.S. government, Houston and her family spent nearly four years in one of those camps, Manzanar, located in the desert between California and Nevada. Her book, Farewell to Manzanar, co-authored with James D. Houston, is the true story of her family’s experience during and after internment. Houston has also written a novel, The Legend of Fire Horse Woman, as well as many essays and short stories first collected in Beyond Manzanar: Views of Asian American Womanhood and now widely anthologized. She is the recipient of numerous honors, including the Humanities Prize and the Christopher Award, both for the screenplay Farewell to Manzanar; an award from the National Women’s Political Caucus and the Wonder Woman award; the U.S.-Japan Cultural Exchange Fellowship; an Arts American Traveling Lectureship in Asia; and a Rockefeller Foundation residency at Bellagio, Italy. Houston lives in Santa Cruz, California, with her husband and three children.

Gail Tsukiyama

Gail Tsukiyama was born in San Francisco, California to a Chinese mother from Hong Kong and a Japanese father from Hawaii. She attended San Francisco State University where she received both her Bachelor of Arts Degree and a Master of Arts Degree in English with the emphasis in Creative Writing.  Most of her college work was focused on poetry and she was the recipient of the Academy of American Poets Award. She is also the first author to receive the Asia Pacific Leadership Award from the Center of the Pacific Rim and the Ricci Institute. A resident of the San Francisco Bay Area, she has been a part-time lecturer in Creative Writing at San Francisco State University, as well as a freelance book reviewer for the San Francisco Chronicle. During 1997 to 1999, she sat as a judge for the Kiriyama Book Prize and is currently Book Review Editor for Pacific Rim Voices.
 

In September of 2001, she was one of fifty authors chosen by the Library of Congress to participate in the first National Book Festival in Washington D.C. and has been guest speaker at the Hong Kong International Literary Festival, the Sydney Writers’ Festival, and the Vancouver International Writers’ Festival.

Charles E. Toombs

Charles E. Toombs practices in the areas of tax, business and real estate law.  He counsels clients in different areas of sophisticated tax planning for their business and investments.  He advises clients in matters regarding organizing, operating, merging and dissolving various business entities with particular emphasis on those clients involved in the construction industry.  He advises clients in matters involving intellectual property, including trademark law and acts of unfair competition.  He also advises nonprofit entities on operational issues and compliance with applicable tax requirements.  Mr. Toombs represents clients regarding issues before the State Board of Equalization, the State Franchise Board, and the Internal Revenue Service.
 

Mr. Toombs is a contributing author to Advising California Partnerships (3rd Ed) and Selecting and Forming Business Entities both published by the California Continuing Education of the Bar.  He also authored the article entitled Drafting a Basic Partnership Agreement XIV California Business Law Practitioner 89 (Fall 1999 Cal CEB) and appeared as a panelist on the program entitled “Organizing and Advising California Partnerships vs. LLC’s” sponsored by California Continuing Education of the Bar in 1997.
 

Mr. Toombs was admitted to the State Bar of California and the U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, in 1984.  He received his Masters of Law in Taxation from New York University School of Law in 1987, his J.D. from the University of San Francisco School of Law in 1984 and his B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley.

Michael Shapiro

For two years, Michael Shapiro roamed the world interviewing leading travel writers where they live. He met Jan Morris in Wales, Tim Cahill in Montana, Frances Mayes in Tuscany, and Peter Matthiessen at the east end of Long Island. He caught up with
Pico Iyer in California and met Bill Bryson in New Hampshire just before Bryson moved back to England. The result is “A Sense of Place: Great Travel Writers Talk About Their Craft, Lives and Inspiration,” a fascinating collection of conversations ranging from how travel has deepened each writer’s understanding of the world to how these authors  developed the skills and discipline to succeed as writers. Shapiro also interviewed Paul Theroux, Isabel Allende, Simon Winchester, Arthur Frommer, Redmond O’Hanlon, Jonathan Raban, Rick Steves, and others.

Michael Shapiro has biked through Cuba for the Washington Post, celebrated Holy Week in Guatemala for the Dallas Morning News, and floated down the Mekong  River on a Laotian cargo barge for an online travel magazine. His work also appears in the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle and several national magazines. He has been researching online travel since 1994, when he joined an early Net directory called Global Network Navigator. His first book on Net-travel topics appeared in 1997 — subsequent editions appeared in 2000 and 2002. Shapiro spent a year working for CNET, an online tech-news site, before embarking on a freelance career.

Shapiro won a 1998 Lowell Thomas award from the Society of American Travel Writers in the category of “Travel News / Investigative Reporting” for a story on frequent flier programs. He has appeared on national television networks, including CNN and PBS, as well as on radio shows ranging KGO’s On the Go to listener-sponsored KPFA. He lives in Sonoma County, spending  his free time cycling, river rafting, seakayaking and rooting for the Giants at  San Francisco’s beautiful ballpark by the Bay.

Tanya Shaffer

Shaffer loves to travel and turn her travels into art. She has
performed with the California Shakespeare Festival, Theatre
Works, A Traveling Jewish Theatre, and other companies as well as
touring worldwide with her solo shows, Miss America’s Daughters
and the award-winning Let My Enemy Live Long! Her most recent
play, Baby Taj, which premiered in 2005, was named one of the Top
Ten Shows of the Year by the “SF Chronicle,” the “Oakland
Tribune,” and the “San Jose Mercury News”; it was also nominated
for a National Theatre Critics Steinberg Award.
 

Tanya Shaffer is the author of “Somebody’s Heart Is Burning: A
Woman Wanderer in Africa (2003),” which “Vogue” magazine called
“the best of recent adventure books by women;” and, the “SF
Chronicle” named the book among its Best Books of the Year.
Shaffer’s stories and essays have appeared on Salon.com and in
numerous anthologies.  Check out her website at:

http://www.tanyashaffer.com

Terry Ryan

Terry Ryan, the sixth of Evelyn and Kelly Ryan’s ten children, is the author of The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio: How My Mother Raised 10 Kids on 25 Words on Less (Simon & Schuster). 

 

She is the writing half of the cartooning team of T.O. Sylvester, whose single-panel cartoons have appeared in the pages of The San Francisco Chronicle, 

Ms. Magazine, Mother Jones, Saturday Evening Post, Saturday Review, Boy’s Life, Datamation, Vegetarian Times, Bay Guardian, San Francisco Magazine, Women’s 

Glib Cartoon Calendars, and a number of textbooks and anthologies. T.O. Sylvester’s literary cartoons ran weekly in the San Francisco Chronicle for 16 years (1983-1999). 

 

With the publication of the hardback of The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio by Simon and Schuster in 2001, Terry toured the country to promote the book, 

appearing on The Today Show, CBS Sunday Morning, Rosie O’Donnell, and NPR’s Weekend Edition of All Things Considered. The paperback was published in April 

2002, and Terry again went on a cross-country tour. 

 

The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio—which has also been published in Great Britain, Australia, Korea, and China—will soon be made into a movie produced by 

DreamWorks and Revolution Studios, starring Julianne Moore. 

Terry Ryan

Terry Ryan, the sixth of Evelyn and Kelly Ryan’s ten children, is the author of The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio: How My Mother Raised 10 Kids on 25 Words on Less (Simon & Schuster). 

 

She is the writing half of the cartooning team of T.O. Sylvester, whose single-panel cartoons have appeared in the pages of The San Francisco Chronicle, 

Ms. Magazine, Mother Jones, Saturday Evening Post, Saturday Review, Boy’s Life, Datamation, Vegetarian Times, Bay Guardian, San Francisco Magazine, Women’s 

Glib Cartoon Calendars, and a number of textbooks and anthologies. T.O. Sylvester’s literary cartoons ran weekly in the San Francisco Chronicle for 16 years (1983-1999). 

 

With the publication of the hardback of The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio by Simon and Schuster in 2001, Terry toured the country to promote the book, 

appearing on The Today Show, CBS Sunday Morning, Rosie O’Donnell, and NPR’s Weekend Edition of All Things Considered. The paperback was published in April 

2002, and Terry again went on a cross-country tour. 

 

The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio—which has also been published in Great Britain, Australia, Korea, and China—will soon be made into a movie produced by 

DreamWorks and Revolution Studios, starring Julianne Moore. 

Anneli Rufus

Anneli is a UC Berkeley graduate, a journalist, a coauthor of five offbeat travel books with her husband Kristan Lawson (most recently “California Babylon” and “Weird Europe”), and an author of three books, the latest of which is Party of One: the Loners’ Manifesto. She is also a columnist for crimemagazine.com and a book reviewer for the San Francisco Chronicle. You can visit Anneli’s website at www.annelirufus.com 

Jeff Phillips

Jeff Phillips is a Senior Travel Editor at Sunset Magazine and has written for a number of national magazines. His articles on travel and the environment have been recognized with four Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Awards. 

Melba Patillo Beals

MELBA PATILLO BEALS is a dynamic keynote speaker, coach, author,
and a former news reporter for KQED and NBC-affiliate, KRON-TV
with numerous appearances on Oprah Winfrey, Fresh Air, Good
Morning America and C-Span’s Booknotes. She is the author of
“Warriors Don’t Cry” and “White is a State of Mind.”
 

In 1957, while most teenage girls were listening to Buddy Holly’s
“Peggy Sue,” watching Elvis gyrate and collecting crinoline
slips, a 15-year-old MELBA PATTILLO was escaping the hanging rope
of a lynch mob, dodging lighted sticks of dynamite, and washing
away burning acid sprayed into her eyes by segregationists
determined to prevent her from integrating Little Rock’s Central
High School. As a teenager, she was caught up in the center of a
civil rights firestorm which stunned this nation and altered the
course of history.
 

WARRIORS DON’T CRY, chronicles her experience as a civil rights
heroine. It is a snapshot of a Black family in the south living
under a system of apartheid during the 1950s. Facing the
oppression which would engulf them, they struggled, holding onto
their dignity against overwhelming odds.
 

Her latest book, WHITE IS A STATE OF MIND, is a sequel which
chronicles that part of her journey following her Central High
experience. In this book Beals flees from Little Rock’s raging
segregationist mobs into the protective arms of a white
California family. She walks the bridge into adulthood struggling
to find her place within the human family and a sense of safety
and value.
 

MELBA PATILLO BEALS earned a master’s degree in journalism from
Columbia University and worked as a news reporter for San
Francisco’s public television station, KQED, and for the NBC
affiliate, KRON-TV.
 

Melba Patillo Beals has written numerous articles for
periodicals including “People,” “Essence” and the “San Francisco
Examiner.” Her best-selling primer on public relations, “Expose
Yourself: Using the Power of Public Relations to Promote Your
Business and Yourself,” is an acknowledged industry reference.
 

In addition to many national radio shows such as Fresh Air, she
has appeared on numerous television shows, among them Oprah
Winfrey, Good Morning America, The Charlie Rose Show and C-Span’s
Booknotes. She and her daughter, Kellie, are writing the
screenplay for a feature film based on “Warriors.” Learn more
about Melba Patillo Beals at: http://www.melbabeals.com .

Suzy Parker

SUSAN (SUZY) PARKER, an award-winning freelance writer and 

outdoor enthusiast, is the author of “Tumbling After: Pedaling 

Like Crazy After Life Goes Downhill,” a memoir that tells the 

story of how her life changed in a split second when a freak 

cycling accident left her husband, Ralph, permanently paralyzed 

below the shoulders. In this memoir devoid of self-pity and told 

with candor and wry humor, Suzy chronicles the transformation of 

her household into an oddball family of caretakers. 

 

Suzy Parker reports on life with Ralph in the “San Francisco 

Chronicle,” and has been published in the “San Francisco Chronicle,” 

“Washington Post,” “Chicago Tribune,” “San Jose Mercury News,” “The Sun,” 

“Hope,” the “Chattahoochee Review,” “Salon.com,” and “ZYZZYVA.” Her 

commentaries have aired on NPR’s “Morning Edition” and KQED’s 

“Perspectives.” She is a winner of the Richard J. Margolis National 

Literary Award, the California Independent Newspapers’ Writer 

Prize and the Best of the West Award for most outstanding 

columnist in a daily newspaper west of the Mississippi. The movie 

rights to her memoir, “Tumbling After,” have been optioned by 

HBO. 

Brad Newsham

BRAD NEWSHAM has taken four global back-packing trips and turned
two of them into memoirs: “All the Right Places” (Random House,
1989) and “Take Me With You” (Travelers Tales, 2000).  From 2002
to 2005, he was the driving force behind Backpack Nation, a
non-profit organization he founded in order to “transform the
West’s roughly 3 million travelers into an army of global
ambassadors, and thereby help to save our world.”
 

For the past 21 years, Brad has worked as a San Francisco taxicab
driver (“No, I was never the Chronicle’s ‘Night Cabbie’,” he
says).  He is currently working on a book about a year behind the
wheel.
 

Newsham will discuss his writings, his world travels, and his
work in promoting global goodwill through his Backpack Nation
non-profit.

Wes Nisker

Wes “Scoop” Nisker is author of the enduring classic Crazy Wisdom 

and the widely acclaimed Buddha’s Nature, and is Editor-in-Chief 

of the Buddhist journal Inquiring Mind. For the past twenty-five 

years he has been both a popular San Francisco Bay Area radio 

personality and a nationally known Buddhist meditation teacher. 

Paul McHugh

PAUL McHUGH, is the outdoors feature writer for the “San 

Francisco Chronicle,” and the editor of “Wild Places: 20 Journeys 

into the American Outdoors” (Foghorn Press, 1996), a book about 

North American journeys. Paul is also the author of “The Search 

for Goodbye-to-Rains” (Daedalus Books, 1980). His love of the 

outdoors originally was developed in the flatlands of the 

Everglades and the Florida Keys. Ski mountaineering, as well as 

sea kayaking (he won a surf kayak world championship with Team 

USA in 1988), are among his passions. Paul will talk about his recent 

coastal kayak adventure and writing from the road. 

Malcolm Margolin

Boston born Harvard grad Malcolm Margolin founded Heyday Books in 1974. Heyday publishes books on California history, natural history, literature, travel and Native American life. A talented author–his works include numerous books, essays, and articles–Malcolm is also the recipient of many honors and awards including The Fred Cody Award for lifetime achievement from the Bay Area Book Reviewers Association and a California Council award for the Promotion of History “in recognition of efforts to preserve and advance the history of California Indians.” He is the founder of Clapperstick Institute, co-founder of The Inkslingers and Native California network and serves on the board of the California Studies Association, River of Words, the San Francisco Bay Area Book Council, the Yosemite Association, Save the Bay and the Djerassi Resident Artists Program. The books that he has written include The East Bay Out: A Personal Guide to the East Bay Regional Parks, The Earth Manual: How to Work on Wild Land Without Taming It, The Way We Lived: California Indian Reminiscences, Stories and Songs and The Ohlone Way: Indian Life in the San Francisco-Monterey Bay Area. The books that he has published are too numerous to mention. He is an extremely popular lecturer and presenter. He also publishes News from Native California and was the original publisher of Bay Nature. 

Krista Lyons-Gould

Krista Lyons-Gould is the VP of Editorial for Avalon Publishing 

Group and works in APG’s California division, in Emeryville, 

overseeing editorial and production for the travel reference 

imprint, Avalon Travel Publishing, and for the trade imprint, 

Seal Press. Most of her time is focused on Seal Press, which is 

dedicated to publishing important books by and for women for the 

last 25 years, from “Getting Free,” the first book to announce 

domestic violence as an issue, and women’s travel anthologies, 

such as “France, A Love Story: Women Write About the French 

Experience,” edited by Camille Cusumano, to “The F-Word: Feminism 

in Jeopardy” by Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner 

 

According to KLG, Seal Press is publishing books that reflect the 

issues women and girls are really dealing with and talk about 

those issues honestly and with an edge, whether that edge is 

humor or a finger pointed at the sociological or political 

environments that create and foster the issues. 

 

For the last few years, Seal has focused on issues central to 

third-wave feminists. Now, they are going back to Seal’s original 

core reader. She is a boomer, a second-waver perhaps. She is 

interested in other topics, like aging, caretaking parents, 

parenting teenagers, politics and how they impact her, and sex. 

Seal Press is also publishing for teenage girls and young women 

with a reissue of a completely revised Real Girl, Real World (Our 

Bodies Ourselves for teens. New titles to watch for: The Truth 

Behind the Mommy Wars, Invisible Girls, Job Hopper by Ayun 

Halliday, Above Us Only Sky by Marion Winik; I Wanna Be Sedated, 

writers on parenting teenagers. 

 

Prior to working at Avalon, Lyons-Gould worked for the 

independent publishing house John Muir Publications in Santa Fe, 

NM, as an editor and editorial manager, and moved west to 

California when Avalon acquired JMP in 2000. Originally from 

California, and a graduate of UC Santa Barbara (B.A.) and Humbolt 

State University (M.A.), Lyons-Gould is thankful to have found 

the work she loves making books in the Bay Area. She lives in 

Berkeley, CA, with her husband and two sons, ages 8 and 10. 

Lindy Hough

Get the INSIDE SCOOP on “What We’re Looking For” from a 

publisher’s point of view from LINDY HOUGH, Publisher and 

Editorial Director of North Atlantic Books and Frog. Ltd. North 

Atlantic Books, located in Berkeley, has consistently been rated 

as one of the 10 Fastest Growing Independent Publishers of the 

last ten years nationwide by Publishers Weekly. Hough spends much 

of her time on product acquisitions. 

 

Lindy Hough is a poet and fiction writer who founded North 

Atlantic Books in 1977 with her husband, Richard Grossinger. 

Many people are unaware that this mid-sized general trade 

independent publishing company is in our midst, on Fourth Street 

in Berkeley. Come learn what the publishing mission is of North 

Atlantic and Frog. Ltd., what’s new at North Atlantic (hint: it’s 

blue and slithers)— what new topics they are looking for, what 

NOT to submit, upcoming publishing plans. And ask your questions: 

about agents, distribution, the publishing process, who we sell 

to, etc. Learn more about Lindy Hough at 

http://www.lindyhough.com . 

Tess Uriza Holthe

Tess Uriza Holthe has a Bachelor’s in accounting.  She was born and raised in San Francisco.  When the Elephants Dance is her first novel, inspired by her family’s first hand account of World War II Philippines.  She is currently finishing a second novel.

Susan Griffin

SUSAN GRIFFIN is a well-known writer and poet, known for
combining genres in innovative and powerful forms. Her latest
work, “The Book of the Courtesans: A Catalogue of Their Virtues,”
was published in 2001. Sierra Club Books published “Woman and
Nature,” a work that is considered an environmental classic, in a
new edition in 2000. “A Chorus of Stones: The Private Life of
War,” a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National
Book Critics Award, won the prestigious BABRA award and was a New
York Times Notable Book for 1992. Her essays on gender and
society were collected in “The Eros of Everyday Life,” in 1994.

Griffin has published several volumes of poetry, including
“Unremembered Country,” which won the Commonwealth Club’s Silver
Medal for poetry in 1987.  In 1998, Copper Canyon Press published
“Bending Home: Poems Selected and New 1967-1998,” which was a
finalist for the Western States Art Federation Award.  A public
television performance of her play “Voices,” published by Samuel
French, won an Emmy Award in 1975. Her play “Thicket” was
performed by Ruth Zaporah in San Francisco and published in The
Kenyon Review. Named by Utne Reader as one of a hundred important
visionaries for the new millennium, she has been the recipient of
an NEA grant and a smaller MacArthur Grant (for Peace and
International Cooperation). Â
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Susan Griffin has recently written a musical drama, “Canto,” and
has begun the third volume of her social autobiography,
“Wrestling with the Angel of Democracy: The Autobiography of an
American Citizen,” to be published by Trumpeter Books.  Griffin
is also co-editing an anthology entitled “Transforming Terror:
Remembering the Soul of the World,” which will be published by UC
Press. She lectures widely in the United States and abroad,
teaches courses on environmental philosophy at the California
Institute of Integral Studies, and counsels and teaches both
experienced and new writers privately at her home in Berkeley.

Jeff Greenwald

Bronx-born Jeff Greenwald moved west when he was 19 and has lived in Oakland, California for the past 15 years.  Since 1979 he has traveled throughout the world, working as a writer, photographer and visual artist.
 

His first book, Mr. Raja’s Neighborhood: Letters from Nepal, was published in 1985; many consider it a “cult classic” of Asian travel literature.  Shopping for Buddhas, published in 1990, was reissued by Lonely Planet in 1996. The revised edition won the Lowell Thomas Gold Medal for Best Travel Book of the Year and has been translated into five languages.  The Size of the World: Once Around Without Leaving the Ground – a chronicle of his nine-month, 29,172-mile, around the world overland voyage – was a national bestseller in 1995, while Future Perfect, Greenwald’s quirky look at the impact of Star Trek on global culture, appeared in 1998.
 

Jeff divides his time between Oakland and Asia, contributing travel and science articles to a variety of publications including The New York Times Magazine, Yoga Journal, National Geographic Adventures, Outside, and Islands.  A pioneer of internet travel writing, his stories have often been featured on Salon.
 

Scratching the Surface: Impressions of Planet Earth from Hollywood to Shiraz, released in 2002, is Greenwald’s first anthology, containing 31 previously published short works written during the past 23 years.  The book became a national bestseller in November 2002.

Donald George

Don George has been a pioneering travel writer and editor for more than two decades. Currently the global travel editor for Lonely Planet, Don writes the award-winning “Traveler at Large” column for lonelyplanet.com and serves as Lonely Planet’s global spokesperson, working with print, radio and TV journalists, editors and producers around the world. Prior to joining Lonely Planet, Don was travel editor at the San Francisco Examiner and Chronicle and then founded and edited Salon.com’s travel site, “Wanderlust.” He has edited four anthologies, including Lonely Planet’s highly acclaimed The Kindness of Strangers and A House Somewhere: Tales of Life Abroad, and has published more than 600 articles in magazines and newspapers around the globe. Don has received dozens of awards for his writing and editing, including, most recently, the 2002 Pacific Area Travel Association’s Gold Award for Best Travel Article and the Society of American Travel Writers 2002 Lowell Thomas Award. In two and a half decades of wandering, he has visited more than 60 countries; he has also worked as a teacher in Athens, a translator in Paris and a TV talk show host in Tokyo. Don is co-founder and chairman of the annual Book Passage Travel Writers Conference and has been a Visiting Lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, Graduate School of Journalism; he frequently speaks about travel writing and travel industry issues around the world. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and two children. 

Catherine Fowler

Catherine Fowler has more than 20 years of experience in book and
Internet publishing. She has worked for such prestigious
companies as Random House, Simon & Schuster, Doubleday, Excite
and WebMD.  With the inception of Redwood Agency, Fowler is
focusing on the core of her expertise:  the development of
informative and fun products, working with talented writers and
editors, and negotiating contracts.
 

Redwood Agency’s mission is to develop and represent innovative,
high-quality nonfiction works for the general consumer market
including such categories as health, self-help, popular culture,
cooking, gardening, parenting, relationships, travel, home care
and design, general reference, humor, photography and cultural
technology.  The Redwood Agency has participated in numerous
literary events, including the Book Passage Food Writing
Conference, Corte Madera, CA (February 2005); the San Francisco
Writers Conference (2004 & 2005); the Book Passage Travel Writers
and Photographers Conference, Corte Madera, CA (August 2002, 2003
and 2004), the Maui Writers Conference (September 2004 & 2005);
and, 2005 Book Expo America.

Daniel Ellsberg

Daniel Ellsberg was born in Detroit in 1931. After graduating 

from Harvard in 1952 with a B.A. Summa cum Laude in Economics, he 

studied at Cambridge University, spent three years in the U.S. 

Marine Corps, serving as rifle platoon leader, operations 

officer, and rifle company commander, and earned his Ph.D. in 

Economics from Harvard University in 1962. 

 

Ellsberg became a strategic analyst at the RAND Corporation and 

served as a consultant to the Department of Defense and the White 

House specializing in problems of the command and control of 

nuclear weapons, nuclear war plans, and crisis decision-making. 

 

He joined the Defense Department in 1964 as Special Assistant to 

Assistant Secretary of Defense (International Security Affairs) 

John McNaughton, working on Vietnam. He transferred to the State 

Department in 1965 to serve two years at the U.S. Embassy in 

Saigon, evaluating pacification on the front lines. 

 

On return to the RAND Corporation in 1967, Ellsberg worked on the 

Top Secret McNamara study of U.S. Decision-making in Vietnam, 

1945-68, which later came to be known as the Pentagon Papers. In 

1969, he photocopied the 7,000 page study and gave it to the 

Senate Foreign Relations Committee; in 1971 he gave it to the New 

York Times, Washington Post and 17 other newspapers. His trial, 

on twelve felony counts posing a possible sentence of 115 years, 

was dismissed in 1973 on grounds of governmental misconduct 

against him, which led to the convictions of several White House 

aides and figured in the impeachment proceedings against 

President Nixon. 

 

Since the end of the Vietnam War he has been a lecturer, writer 

and activist on the dangers of the nuclear era and unlawful 

interventions. 

Janis Cooke Newman

Janis Cooke Newman is a writer whose essays and travel stories 

have appeared on Salon.com, in several Travelers’ Tales editions, 

and in various magazines and newspapers across the country. She 

is the author of the memoir, “The Russian Word for Snow” (St. 

Martin’s Press; 2001). Her historical novel, “Mary,” about the most 

confounding woman in American history, Mary Todd Lincoln, will be 

published in September 2006 by MacAdam/Cage. 

Alison Biggar

After 10 years of varied employment as a bike messenger, waitress, typesetter, Alaskan cook and bike shop manager, Alison read one of those annoying career help books, Jobs for English Majors and Other Losers, and discovered copy editing. She realized it was something she had been doing automatically for years, much to the chagrin of friends and coworkers, and decided to try to get paid for it. She got a job at the Phoenix Journal in the East Bay, then Diablo Magazine, then the Chronicle. She started as senior editor with the magazine in 1998 and was named editor the day before her second maternity leave a year and a half ago. A voracious reader, Alison’s been working ever since to make the San Francisco Chronicle Magazine into something she would spend time on a Sunday morning reading. Alison has launched many a literary career in the Bay Area. With a readership estimated at over 1,000,000, her publication has tremendous reach. Alison will share an editor’s point of view, 

Tamim Ansary

The day after the World Trade Center was destroyed, TAMIM ANSARY
sent an anguished e-mail to twenty friends discussing the attack
from his perspective as an Afghan American. The message reached
millions. Born to an Afghan father and American mother, Ansary
grew up in the intimate world of Afghan family life and emigrated
to San Francisco thinking he’s left Afghan culture behind
forever. At the height of the Iranian Revolution, however, he
took a harrowing journey through the Islamic world, and in the
years that followed, he struggled to unite his divided self and
to find a place in his imagination where his Afghan and American
identities might meet. This inner journal is chronicled in his
beautifully written memoir, “West of Kabul, East of New York.”
 

A regular columnist for Microsoft’s learning site Encarta.com,
Ansary has  written nonfiction books for children, jokes for a
mathematics program  (“edutainment” software), a literary memoir,
several novels for “reluctant readers,” a series of educational
comic books called Adventures Plus, countless letters to
friends, and one two-line play.
 

His commentary has been heard on the Bill Moyers Show, the News
Hour with Jim Lehrer, the Oprah Winfrey Show, Hardball, and
numerous National Public Radio stations. For more information,
check out Ansary’s website: http://www.mirtamimansary.com

Bruce Anderson

BRUCE ANDERSON is the editor of VIA, a travel magazine (with a 

circulation of three million readers) for AAA members in five 

western states. He has been the editor of VIA since December 

1998. Anderson, formerly a writer-reporter for Sports Illustrated 

magazine for 10 years, also served as the editor of Stanford 

magazine. During his five-year tenure at Stanford, the magazine 

twice won the Robert Sibley Magazine of the Year Award, an honor 

presented by Newsweek to the nation’s best college or university 

publication. Anderson has also written articles for Sports 

Illustrated, Time, Life, Smithsonian, Gentleman’s Quarterly and 

others. A fourth-generation Californian, Anderson graduated from 

Stanford in 1979. 

Isabel Allende

Born in Peru, Isabel Allende was the daughter of diplomats and raised in Chile. She is the author of the novels Portrait in Sepia, Daughter of Fortune, The Infinite Plan, Eva Luna, Of Love and Shadows, and The House of the Spirits. Additional works include the short story collection The Stories of Eva Luna, and the memoirs Paula, Aphrodite: A Memoir of the Senses, and My Invented Country. City of the Beasts is her first novel in a trilogy for young readers. She lives in California with her husband. 

www.isabelallende.com 

Alice Acheson

A former publicity director for Simon and Schuster, Alice comes equipped with 30 years experience in publishing. She is now an independent publicist and publishing consultant whose successes include four simultaneous New York Times bestsellers, a first-time author launch (Douglas Wood, author and illustrator of Old Turtle) that resulted in the sale of 800,000 copies and a Literary MarketPlace Outside Services Award for Advertising, Promotion and Publicity. 

James Dalessandro

JAMES DALESSANDO, was the co-founder of the Santa Cruz Poetry
Festival, the nation’s largest literary event for four years and
which brought together Ken Kesey, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Charles
Bukowski, Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Bob Kaufman and musicians
like Charles Lloyd and Anthony Braxton. He has published four
books: poetry in Canary In A Coal Mine, the highly acclaimed San
Francisco murder mystery Bohemian Heart (St. Martin’s Press),
true crime (Citizen Jane), and his new novel, 1906, an epic
recreation of the great San Francisco earthquake and fire. He is
a 20-year veteran of the Writer’s Guild of America, West, and has
written the screenplays for all three of his books, including
1906, which was sold to Warner Brothers after a heated Hollywood
bidding war. He is currently writer and co-director, with
four-time Oscar winner Ben Burtt, of The Damnedest Finest Ruins,
a feature documentary about the 1906 earthquake. He is also
co-executive producer and screenwriter of Citizen Jane for Wolper
Productions and Court TV, producer and co-writer, with Lidia
Fraser, of Draconin, a trilogy of novels and animated feature
films. He teaches the longest-running screenwriting course in San
Francisco and served as the writer for the award-winning House of
Blues Radio Hour. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

John Flinn

With articles ranging from experiencing the culture shock of Japan and chronicling the lives of survivors of Hiroshima, to choosing the world’s worst airport, finding solitude in Tahoe’s Emerald Bay, and packing puffins, geysers and the Blue Lagoon in to a 72-hour stopover in cool, hot Iceland, John Flinn is not only well-known for being a world traveler and writer, he has the insider tips on writing, submitting, and getting YOUR work published in the San Francisco Chronicle and other newspapers. John Flinn is the Travel Editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, and he is one of the key faculty members for this year’s Book Passage Travel Writers & Photographers Conference.

Kevin Smokler

Kevin Smokler is one of the nation’s leading thinkers on the future of contemporary
literature, publishing and the arts at large. He is the founder of The Virtual Book Tour
and editor of Bookmark Now: Writing in Unreaderly Times (Basic Books, June 2005),
an anthology that features this generation’s most intriguing young authors writing on the
state and future of literature in our media-saturated 21st century. Smokler’s essays and critiques have appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, the Baltimore Sun, The Believer, Ready Made and on National Public Radio. Smokler also lectures nationwide (at Book Expo America, The Commonwealth Club, among other venues) on the future of reading and publishing, the literary life and the role of technology in the arts. His publishing consultancy serves such clients as Time Warner Book Group, Harper Collins, Mental Floss magazine and the Idea Festival.

Smokler holds a BA in Writing Seminars from Johns Hopkins University and a Masters in American Studies from University of Texas, Austin. He currently resides in San Francisco.

 

 

Jennifer Leo

 

Jennifer L. Leo is a Chinese-American who was born with a gift
for gab and a hunger for an everlasting craps game (which
probably explains her recent move to Las Vegas). Editor of
Travelers Tales (San Francisco) titles, “Whose Panties Are
These?,” “More Misadventures from Funny Women on the Road” and
the best-selling “Sand in My Bra and Other Misadventures: Funny
Women Write from the Road,” Jen is also the co-editor of “A
Woman’s Path.”

Leo’s writing has appeared in numerous anthologies, including
“Hyenas Laughed at Me and Now I Know Why,” “Wild Writing Women:
Stories of World Travel,” and “Lonely Planet World Food Guides
Hong Kong.” She has also written for Time,& other books in the
Travelers Tales series, HotelChatter.com, and BootsnAll.com.

Firoozeh Dumas

Firoozeh DumasFiroozeh Dumas moved with her family from Abadan, Iran, to Whittier, California, at the age of seven. With great humor and a sense of adventure, Dumas chronicles the American journey of her wonderfully engaging family in Funny In Farsi: A Memoir Of Growing Up Iranian In America, which was selected as a finalist for the PEN award in the Creative Nonfiction category. In a series of deftly Drawn scenes, we watch the family grapple with American culture in a story of Identity, discovery and family love. You may have heard Firoozeh’s commentaries on NPR. Dumas graduated from the University of California at Berkeley. She lives with her husband and children in Northern California.

Georgia I. Hesse

Georgia HesseGeorgia I. Hesse was founding travel editor of the San Francisco Examiner and held that position on the S.F. Examiner-Chronicle for 20 years. She has contributed to several anthologies, is a co-author of travel guides to France and California published by Fisher and by Berlitz, and teaches travel writing and related courses at Book Passage in Corte Madera. Georgia holds the Chevalier/Ordre de la République from Tunisia and the Ordre du Mérite from France. She is a graduate of Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota, and attended the University of Strasbourg, France, on a Fulbright scholarship. She claims to have been born on Crazy Woman Creek near Buffalo, Wyoming.
For more information, visit www.whereintheworld-scribe.com.

 

 

Sheldon Siegel

Sheldon SiegelSheldon Siegel graduated from the Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California at Berkeley in 1983. He has been in private practice in San Francisco for over twenty years and specializes in corporate and securities law with the firm of Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton LLP. His four novels, Special Circumstances, Incriminating Evidence, Criminal Intent and Final Verdict, have all been national best sellers. His fifth novel, The Confession, will be released August 2004. His books have sold millions of copies worldwide and have been translated into seven languages.
He lives in Marin County with his wife, Linda, and twin sons, Alan and Stephen. He is at work on his next Mike Daley story.

For more information, visit www.SheldonSiegel.com

Larry Habegger

Larry HabeggerLarry Habegger, executive editor of Travelers’ Tales, has been writing about travel since 1980. He has visited almost fifty countries and six of the seven continents, traveling from the frozen Arctic to equatorial rain forest, from the high Himalayas to the Dead Sea. In the early 1980s he co-authored mystery serials for the San Francisco Examiner with James O’Reilly, and since 1985 their syndicated column, “World Travel Watch,” has appeared in newspapers in five countries and on WorldTravelWatch.com. As series editors of Travelers’ Tales, they have worked on some seventy titles, winning many awards for excellence. Larry regularly teaches the craft of travel writing at workshops and writers conferences, and he lives with his family on San Francisco’s Telegraph Hill.
Visit www.larryhabegger.com for more information.

Oscar Villalon

Oscar Villalon has been the Book Editor for the San Francisco Chronicle since 2001. He has been with the paper since 1996, and has been Deputy Book Editor and a copy editor for “Datebook.”Oscar is currently a member of the jury for the annual California Book Award and serves as a member of the National Book Critics Circle. Prior to working at The Chronicle, Oscar was a news editor at the Glendale News Press in Los Angeles, California.

Constance Hale

Constance HaleJournalist Constance Hale grew up in Hawaii but left the islands to get a bachelors degree from Princeton and a masters from the Graduate School of Journalism at UC-Berkeley. Hale worked as a reporter and editor at the Oakland Tribune, the San Francisco Examiner, Wired, and Health and her freelance journalism has appeared in those publications, as well as in Honolulu, HotWired, and the Atlantic Monthly. Her travel essays have been published in several anthologies, Via, the Miami Herald, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Los Angeles Times. Hale is the author of two popular books on language, Sin and Syntax and Wired Style. Once dubbed, “Marion the Librarian on a Harley,” Hale speaks extensively about the craft of writing, sin and syntax, and the intersections of language and technology. She is on the faculty of UC-Berkeley Extension, Book Passage, and the Writing Salon.

Fran Gage

Fran GageFran Gage owned Fran Gage Pâtisserie Française in San Francisco for ten years. The bakery consistently won critical acclaim locally and nationally for its pastry, bread, and chocolates. She closed the bakery following a fire in 1995 and now writes about food. Her first book, Bread and Chocolate, My Food Life In & Around San Francisco , (Sasquatch Books, 1999) is a collection of stories about food with recipes to match. A Sweet Quartet, Sugar, Almonds, Eggs, and Butter , (North Point Press, 2002) is a book celebrating the building blocks of pastry making, including recipes. Excerpts from both books were chosen for Best Food Writing . Her most recent book is Williams-Sonoma Cake . Fran is a charter member of the Baker’s Dozen and a co-author of The Baker’s Dozen Cookbook . She also writes frequently for Saveur , and Fine Cooking  and has contributed to The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America  and Gastronomica.

Published Works

Books:

  • Bread and Chocolate, My Food Life In & Around San Francisco, Sasquatch Books, 1999.
  • The Bakers Dozen Cookbook, William Morrow, 2001 (edited, with Carol Field and Peter Reinhart, the yeast bread chapter)
  • A Sweet Quartet, Sugar, Almonds, Eggs, and Butter, North Point Press, 2002.
  • Williams-Sonoma Cake, Simon and Schuster, 2003.

Michael Johnson

Michael JohnsonFor over 20 Years Michael Johnson has been training people to do good in public radio. But baby, that’s not all. Michael’s produced music shows for 13 years on KALW and KPFA in San Francisco. He was the associate producer for the Peabody Award Winning NPR series Lost and Found Sound, editor and digital mix engineer for Spirits of the Present: The Legacy from Native America for Radio Smithsonian (PRI) carried on over 500 stations across the US and Canada (APR), and associate producer for the documentary series Legacies: Tales From America.

He’s been a freelance producer and reporter for the BBC and has served on assignment in Managua, Nicaragua during the Contra-Sandista Civil War. Michael was also the General Manager of KALW-FM in San Francisco, a training consultant for NPR and the Director of Digital Production and Training for KQED FM in San Francisco. He is currently a freelance producer and reporter.

Mark Routhier

Mark RouthierMark Routhier is the Literary Manager at the Magic Theatre. Founder and Artistic Director of San Francisco’s Mettle Theatre, 1989-1999, Routhier produced, wrote, directed, designed, and/or acted in 25 productions nationwide. His plays Scrap, Jam, Drunken Grownups, They Shall Inherit (formerly A Curious Christmas), and Someguy were produced by Mettle Theatre. His Bay Area directing credits include Ionesco’s Exit The King with American Citizens’ Theatre, Someguy, Drunken Grownups, and Ellen McLaughlin’s Iphigenia and Other Daughters with Mettle Theatre, Sam Shepard’s Cowboy Mouth with Mostly Grounded Theatre Co., readings of Alice Tuan’s Last of the Suns, and Talila Baron’s Corpus Delicti for the Magic Theatre. Routhier has directed for the Young California Writers Project, and will be directing a one-man show called The Bone Man of Benares by Terry Tarnoff with Encore Theatre in September, 2004. Routhier, who holds an MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU, is working on a new play, and currently teaching a popular course, “From Page to Stage,” at Marin-based Book Passage.

Linda Watanabe McFerrin

Linda Watanabe McFerrinPoet, travel writer, novelist and workshop leader Linda Watanabe McFerrin is a contributor to numerous journals, newspapers, magazines, anthologies and online publications including the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle Magazine, Modern Bride, Travelers’ Tales, and Salon.com. She is the author of two poetry collections and the editor of the 4th edition of Best Places Northern California.

A winner of the Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction, her work has also appeared in Wild Places and American Fiction. Her novel, Namako: Sea Cucumber was published by Coffee House Press and named Best Book for the Teen-Age by the New York Public Library. Her collection of award-winning short stories, The Hand of Buddha, was published in 2000. She is also a contributor and original publishing partner in Wild Writing Women: Stories of World Travel. Linda has served as a past and present judge for the San Francisco Literary Awards (formerly known as the Joseph Henry Jackson, James D. Phelan and Mary Tanenbaum Awards) and as a literary arts panelist for the National Endowment of the Arts. She is currently at work on a novel set all over the globe.

You can visit Linda’s website at www.lwmcferrin.com.

Joyce Jenkins

Joyce Jenkins is a noted Bay Area poet and the editor of “Poetry Flash,” the producer/sponsor of the Northern California Book Reviewers and the Northern California Book Awards. “Poetry Flash” is a non-profit literary arts organization and an important communication forum and vehicle for generating audiences and interest in literary issues and events. They publish quality reviews, poems, interviews and essays, as well as trade, submission and award information for all creative writers of both poetry and fiction. “Poetry Flash” also carries the most comprehensive listing of literary events in the West; their Calendar is an indispensable guide to the literary scene in all of California, as well as in the Southwest and the Pacific Northwest.

Terry Ryan

Terry RyanTerry Ryan, the sixth of Evelyn and Kelly Ryan’s ten children, is the author of The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio: How My Mother Raised 10 Kids on 25 Words on Less (Simon & Schuster). She is the writing half of the cartooning team of T.O. Sylvester, whose single-panel cartoons have appeared in the pages of The San Francisco Chronicle, Ms. Magazine, Mother Jones, Saturday Evening Post, Saturday Review, Boy’s Life, Datamation, Vegetarian Times, Bay Guardian, San Francisco Magazine, Women’s Glib Cartoon Calendars, and a number of text books and anthologies. T.O. Sylvester’s literary cartoons ran weekly in the San Francisco Chronicle for 16 years (1983-1999). With the publication of the hardback of The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio by Simon and Schuster in 2001, Terry toured the country to promote the book, appearing on The Today Show, CBS Sunday Morning, Rosie O’Donnell, and NPR’s Weekend Edition of All Things Considered. The paperback was published in April 2002, and Terry again went on a cross-country tour. The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio – which has also been published in Great Britain, Australia, Korea, and China—will soon be made into a movie produced by DreamWorks and Revolution Studios, starring Julianne Moore. For more information, visit www.theprizewinner.com.