Book Party: Living Love, the Yoga of Yama & Niyama by Megan Nolan 🗓

LEFT COAST WRITERS FERRY PLAZA BOOK PARTY: Living Love, the Yoga of Yama & Niyama: Timeless Teachings for Transformation and Awakening by Megan Nolan

Megan Nolan

Monday, August 14th, 2017 || 6pm Book Passage || San Francisco 1 Ferry Building, San Francisco ||www.bookpassage.com

Living Love explores the ancient teachings of yoga that assist with living in the world and facing life’s difficulties. This book leads you through processes that can help you shift negative beliefs and thought patterns, transform your relationship with yourself and others and ultimately your life. A unique blend of the ancient teachings of yoga, the Yama and Niyama of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, and modern psychology. It offers teachings for happiness, compassion, self-love, and self-realization.

It gives simple practices that can resolve, solve, clarify, heal, purify, fend off confusion, dispel error and light your way into developing a deeper connection with your true divine nature. Living Love is a practical guide to living a deep and fulfilling life that will move you towards awakening to the deepest love within you.

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Book Party: Mother Earth: Three Couples by Tommie Whitener 🗓

LEFT COAST WRITERS FERRY PLAZA BOOK PARTY: Mother Earth: Three Couples by Tommie Whitener

Tommie Whitener

Monday, July 10th, 2017 || 6pm Book Passage || San Francisco 1 Ferry Building, San Francisco ||www.bookpassage.com

When Alex, Roberta and Marie signed up for a series of personal development retreats in the redwoods of Northern California they had no idea how much “development” they were going to experience. Neither they nor their unsuspecting spouses were fully prepared for the ensuing personal and marital reassessment, stock-taking and value adjustment. The three of them and their marriages were dramatically, sometimes with much stress and drama, transformed. Not every marriage survived.

Tommie W. Whitener has practiced Family Law in Marin County and the Bay Area for more than forty-five years and is now putting some of the knowledge of people and relationships gained during that time to work in his new career as a writer. In addition to his just published debut novel  he is at work on a collection of short stories and memoirs to be published later this year and a volume of historical fiction concerning two generations of his Arkansas farmer ancestors. He lives in Novato with his wife Svetlana, who is a life coach, although he is often found in Seattle with new grandchildren and in his beloved Los Angeles, where he grew up.

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Book Party: More Point Reyes Sheriff’s Calls by Susanna Solomon 🗓

LEFT COAST WRITERS FERRY PLAZA BOOK PARTY: More Point Reyes Sheriff’s Calls by Susanna Solomon

Susanna Solomon

Monday, June 12th, 2017 || 6pm Book Passage || San Francisco 1 Ferry Building, San Francisco ||www.bookpassage.com

When Susanna Solomon read her first short story about the day nothing happened in West Marin, called “Sheriff’s Calls”, to a packed house at Pints ‘N Prose in Fairfax, California, the house exploded with laughter. Now, onto something, she used the sheriff’s calls entries in the “Point Reyes Light” as inspiration for more. Susanna asks, “How can I run out of material with the intriguing people of West Marin, California as my inspiration?” Her collection of short stories, entitled “Point Reyes Sheriff’s Calls”, has been published December 2013 by HD Media Press.

Her success with short story writing came as a complete surprise after over twenty-five years of struggling with (more…)

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Book Party: Hardpan by Marilyn Skinner Lanier 🗓

LEFT COAST WRITERS FERRY PLAZA BOOK PARTY:  Hardpan by Marilyn Skinner Lanier

Marilyn Skinner Lanier

Monday, May 8th, 2017 || 6pm Book Passage || San Francisco 1 Ferry Building, San Francisco ||www.bookpassage.com

Set in the mid-1950s in rural Wyoming, Hardpan tells the journey of a young ranch family grappling with the fierce forces of nature and the changing American West after World War II.

The author grew up on her grandparents’ ranch in Jordan Valley, Oregon, serious cattle country and home to Basque sheepherders, until spring 1954 when her family moved to an even bigger cattle ranch in Clark, Wyoming. Therein lies the setting and stimulus for Lanier’s first novel, Hardpan.

Returning from the war to manage the family ranch in eastern Oregon, Kurt Glover confronts familial challenges to his new role. Yet, Kurt’s decision to relocate his family to a remote cattle ranch in Wyoming introduces risks to his young family that he never imagined.

It is a tale of external forces tearing at the ranching roots of a family, recounted from the points-of-view of the father, Kurt, and his older daughter, Linda. With the disintegration of the life they have known together, while (more…)

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Book Party: Exposed by Carol Sheldon 🗓

LEFT COAST WRITERS FERRY PLAZA BOOK PARTY: Exposed by Carol Sheldon

Carol Sheldon

Monday, April 10th, 2017 || 6pm Book Passage || San Francisco 1 Ferry Building, San Francisco ||www.bookpassage.com

Exposed, as the title implies, is an open, honest and revealing account of my feelings, experiences and musings in the form of poetry. Containing themes of relationships, love, nature, loss and aging, it is my hope that readers will be able to identify with many pieces in this collection.

Carol Sheldon has published two books of poetry before her newest Exposed; She teaches Poetry, the Novel, and Memoir in her home, her church, Osher’s Lifelong Learning Institute and for the Marin Writers’ Center. Her poems are in Robert Bly’s Great Mother Conference Anthology, Hot Flashes and Marin (more…)

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Book Party: The Rangity Tango Kids by Lorraine Rominger 🗓

LEFT COAST WRITERS FERRY PLAZA BOOK PARTY:  The Rangity Tango Kids with Author Lorraine Rominger

Lorraine Rominger

Monday, March 13th, 2017 || 6pm Book Passage || San Francisco 1 Ferry Building, San Francisco ||www.bookpassage.com

You’ll enjoy spending an evening with Lorraine Rominger, so don’t miss the event for her new book.

The Rangity Tango Kids is the story of a fifth-generation, German Catholic farm family in 1950s and 1960s California, narrated by the eldest of 17 grandchildren. Born into a loving, hard-working, highly competitive family, and united by a strong faith, every day was an adventure growing up on a bucolic American farm, a way of life that is rapidly disappearing. The land provided her, her siblings and cousins with a sense of place, an upbringing steeped in rituals and traditions that was in stark contrast with the values and preoccupations of the outside world. When the Rangity Tango Kids’ coming-of-age rebellion ran wild, they were often tangled up in the family’s strict morals and values. Regardless of the situation or conflict, the kids were surrounded by a swarm of loving relatives who put their arms around them and stuck together, no matter what.

Lorraine Rominger was born and raised on a fifth-generation family farm in rural California, where she worked every summer in the fields until leaving home to attend college. At Winters High School she lettered in four sports, ran AAU track, and at California State University, Sacramento, was a starter on the women’s basketball and field hockey teams as a freshman. She married her college sweetheart, who sadly passed away at a very young age. Lorraine lived in Sacramento, where she worked at a modeling agency as an instructor and runway model, before becoming director of John Casablanca Elite Modeling School in San Francisco.

After leaving Elite, Lorraine became an associate producer for Lombardo & Associates, a San Francisco based company that produced and syndicated statewide and nationally televised live specials, including the Miss California and Miss Texas pageants. Moving to the south of France with a girlfriend for a year, she was hired by Cavallo, Ruffalo & Fargnoli, an entertainment management company based in Los Angeles, who managed Prince and other artists, to work as a production coordinator on the film, “Under the Cherry Moon,” filmed on location on the French Rivera. When the film wrapped, Lorraine moved to Los Angeles and worked for CRF for five years before taking a position with Guber-Peters Entertainment at Sony Pictures. Interested in being closer to her family in northern California, Lorraine moved back to San Francisco and went to work for Sports Channel, where she produced a variety of specials, including “The San Francisco Forty Niner Highlight Show.” (more…)

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Book Party: On the Luck of an Irish Sailor by Mike Mirabella 🗓

LEFT COAST WRITERS FERRY PLAZA BOOK PARTY:  On the Luck of an Irish Sailor, with Author Mike Mirabella

Mike Mirabella

Monday, February 13th, 2017 || 6pm Book Passage || San Francisco 1 Ferry Building, San Francisco ||www.bookpassage.com

On the Luck of an Irish Sailor is a story-song and sea tale in an illustrated book for children (4-9 years old) — and adults who enjoy Irish lore and sea chanteys. Written by singer, composer and musician, Mike Mirabella, the story fanciful, full-page illustrations by Amy O’Hanlon. The book tells of a young Irish sailor who is cast adrift in the sea, but is saved from drowning with the help of a mermaid princess and his Irish luck.

The book was inspired by the stories the author heard as a little boy during large family dinners in San Francisco. His grandfather and uncles would tell tales of fishing the waters off the coast of California. One in particular told of a scary time for a young cabin boy who was captured by pirates while working on the tall ships. The book blends in another favored story and a never-ending argument about a strange (more…)

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Book Party: My Life on the Ragged Paths of Pan by Thanasis Maskaleris 🗓

LEFT COAST WRITERS FERRY PLAZA BOOK PARTY:  My Life on the Ragged Paths of Pan: Selected Poems and Translations with Author Thanasis Maskaleris

Thanasis Maskaleris

Monday, January 9th, 2017 || 6pm Book Passage || San Francisco 1 Ferry Building, San Francisco ||www.bookpassage.com

Could it be poetic pandemonium or something more restrained? My Life on the Ragged Paths of Pan: Selected Poems and Translations is a unique book. It contains 40 original poems written by the author, divided into the early and late periods of his long career as a poet. The book also contains 25 poems, translated by Maskaleris, from 11 of Greece’s greatest poets: Elytis, Embirikos, Engonopoulos, Gatsos, Karelli, Kavafis, Kazantzakis, Ritsos, Sikelianos, Varnalis, and Vrettakos.

In the book’s Preface, Thanasis writes: “I always strove, as a poet, to capture/express a feeling alive in me; or an idea/social concern. Landscapes that filled me with their beauty, and human beings that touched my heart are often at the center of my poems. My poetry sought to capture and revivify essential moments of my life—moments of beauty and humanity …”

Like the journey home to Ithaka, this is a book to be enjoyed slowly, savoring its freshness, beauty, and wisdom.

Thanasis Maskaleris was born in Arkadia, Greece and immigrated to the U.S. at the age of 17. He studied Philosophy and English at the University of Oklahoma, and Comparative Literature at Indiana University and the University of California-Berkeley. He has written original poetry in Greek and in English, and has translated contemporary Greek poetry extensively. Professor Maskaleris has taught Comparative Literature, Classics and (more…)

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Book Party: Wandering in Andalusia 🗓

LEFT COAST WRITERS FERRY PLAZA BOOK PARTY:  Wanderland Writers present Wandering in Andalusia

wanderinginandalusiacover_sMonday, December 12th, 2016 || 6pm Book Passage || San Francisco 1 Ferry Building, San Francisco ||www.bookpassage.com

Join us for an evening in fabulosa España! We are celebrating the publication of Wandering in Andalusia, the fifth anthology in the award-winning Wandering series.

In many ways, Andalusia, situated as it is, at the southern boundary of the Iberian Peninsula, is a crossroads, a caravansary where settlers from northern Europe, Africa, the Mediterranean and the Middle East have left their mark. Our writers went from Córdoba to Málaga, from Granada and its Alhambra to Cadíz to bring back stories of cities, rivers, coasts, plains, food, spirit and passion. All embarked upon new roads of discovery, and all were well rewarded in their investigations. These, after all, are the landscapes that inspired Cervantes, Lorca, Machado, Navarro, Unamuno, Hemingway, Conrad and Menocal. (more…)

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Book Party: Denise Pinhey, Author of An Inch in Time 🗓

LEFT COAST WRITERS FERRY PLAZA BOOK PARTY:  Denise Pinhey, Author of An Inch In Time: The Story of Justin Jollie Oliver Inch.

Denise Pinhey
Denise Pinhey

Monday, November 14th, 2016 || 6pm Book Passage || San Francisco 1 Ferry Building, San Francisco ||www.bookpassage.com

Fans of A Confederacy of Dunces will love An Inch in Time, a strange and surreal romp through time and space that follows the life—and afterlife—of a young man named Justin Oliver Inch.

Inch spends his life mistakenly believing he’s a gifted writer after misunderstanding his third-grade teacher’s intentions. As he struggles to find his way in the world of adults, he decides to live up to his third-grade potential and enroll in Professor Jud Roy Lebowitz’s creative writing class.

There, Inch meets an incredible cast of characters, including beautiful Peppy Zipline, dowdy intellectual Leslie Tomatiny, and self-proclaimed “goddess” Dino Quiet-Room. Each woman, along with Professor Lebowitz, impacts (more…)

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