LCW Book Party: Sheldon Greene, Author of Waiting for the Messiah 🗓

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LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK LAUNCH:  Waiting for the Messiah by Sheldon Greene

Sheldon GreeneMonday, March 9, 2020 || 6pm
Book Passage-San Francisco|| San Francisco Ferry Plaza ||
www.bookpassage.com

Join us for what Kirkus Review calls “A profoundly funny meditation on how one can find strength in religion.
“In Greene’s novel, the director of a new Jewish boarding school rankles the community with his offbeat style—and there are rumors that he might be the Messiah.

Nudelman, a successful and irrepressible truck salesman proposes a novel idea to the Synagogue Board in the Jewish community in Bolton, a small town in Western Pennsylvania: to start a Jewish boarding school. Although they initially reject the proposal, Nudelman wins them over, suggesting that an old retirement home has plenty of room to house incoming students, and the endowment that sustains it is considerable enough to be partially repurposed. The board hires a Russian school director, Lev Kyol—“tall, angular man, weathered as an unpainted barn”—who admits a Palestinian boy to the school, inaugurates a celebratory Palestinian Day, and organizes a fundraiser for a Catholic hostel. Some members of the community are apoplectic—teacher Martin Schweig schemes to get Lev deported—while others think that he’s the Messiah. The author’s artful brew of farcical comedy and theological provocation may remind readers of the work of (more…)

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LCW Literary Salon: An Evening of Mystery 🗓

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Monday, March 2, 2020 || 7pm Book Passage-Corte Madera|| 51 Tamal Vista Dr. Corte Madera || www.bookpassage.com

Don’t miss this upcoming salon! It’s bound to be full of twists, turns and great reveals.

We’ll be hosting an evening full of MYSTERY for our members and friends at Book Passage at 7pm in Corte Madera on Monday, March 2, as authors Bill Petrocelli, Cara Black and Kelli Stanley preview some of the secrets of ingenious plotting and craft that will be explored at the 2020 Book Passage Mystery Writers Conference where they will all serve as guest faculty.

There will be a panel discussion about the genre, their contributions, what works for them, what doesn’t work, and how to keep readers turning pages and trying to anticipate twists and turns while perched on the edge of their seats.

The panelist/attendee Q&A should allow everyone to leave no stone unturned.

And, in keeping with the theme of the evening, we have a pleasant reveal in store for our members.

That bit is a surprise!

Our presenters:

Cara Black is the New York Times and USA Todaybestselling author of 19 books in the Private Investigator Aimée Leduc series, which is set in Paris. Cara has received multiple nominations for the Anthony and Macavity Awards, a Washington Post Book World Book of the Year citation, the Médaille de la Ville de Paris—the Paris City Medal, which is awarded in recognition of contribution to international culture—and invitations to be the Guest of Honor at conferences such as the Paris Polar Crime Festival and Left Coast Crime. With more than 400,000 books in print, the Aimée Leduc series has been translated into German, Norwegian, Japanese, French, Spanish, Italian, and Hebrew.

William Petrocelli is an author, a bookseller, and a former attorney. He spent a few years as a Deputy Attorney General for the State of California and then as a poverty lawyer in Oakland, California, before going into private practice. Co-owner and co-founder of Book Passage, his novels include Through the Bookstore Window and The Circle of Thirteen.

Kelli Stanley is an award-winning and critically acclaimed American author of mystery-thrillers. The majority of her published fiction is written in the genres of historical crime fiction and noir. Her best known work, the Miranda Corbie (more…)

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Ferry Plaza Book Party: Natalie: in the Shadow of the Swastika by Antoinette Constable 🗓

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LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK LAUNCH:  Natalie: in the Shadow of the Swastika by Antoinette Constable

Antoinette ConstableMonday, February 10, 2020 || 7pm
Book Passage|| San Francisco Ferry Plaza ||
www.bookpassage.com

If you missed our event in Corte Madera celebrating Antoinette Constable’s new novel … even if you didn’t … join us on Monday evening at Book Passage in the San Francisco Ferry Plaza!

Author Antioniette Constable, who was a young girl in WWII France, has written a compelling coming-of-age novel for young adult readers. Natalie: in the Shadow of the Swastika. Set in 1940 occupied Paris, eight-year-old Natalie and her family—a Jewish mother, gentile father, and two sisters—cope with the harsh facts of war and Hitler’s occupying army. When her ailing father suddenly disappears, Natalie’s safe surroundings are forever changed. Her struggles with the painful family separation and the dangerous threats against her Jewish mother reveal a growing maturity in the face of confusing loss. Natalie’s fierce resolve to hold onto hope and her love of family leads her from innocence to understanding and resilience, despite the violence of war.

Born and raised in France, Antoinette Constable, a career nurse holding British and American degrees, has lived in the United States for many years, where she raised her four children as a single mother. Antoinette’s work has won the PENFirst Prize for Poetry, as well as the Ann Stanford Award from the University of Southern California, and has appeared (more…)

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LCW Book Launch: Natalie: in the Shadow of the Swastika by Antoinette Constable 🗓

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LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK LAUNCH:  Natalie in the Shadow of the Swastika by Antoinette Constable

Antoinette ConstableSaturday, February 8, 2020 || 7pm
Book Passage-Corte Madera|| 51 Tamal Vista Dr. Corte Madera ||
www.bookpassage.com

Help us celebrate a landmark publication this coming Saturday! Author Antoinette Constable, who was a young girl in WWII France, has written a compelling coming-of-age novel for young adult readers. Natalie: in the Shadow of the Swastika. Set in 1940 occupied Paris, eight-year-old Natalie and her family—a Jewish mother, gentile father, and two sisters—cope with the harsh facts of war and Hitler’s occupying army. When her ailing father suddenly disappears, Natalie’s safe surroundings are forever changed. Her struggles with the painful family separation and the dangerous threats against her Jewish mother reveal a growing maturity in the face of confusing loss. Natalie’s fierce resolve to hold onto hope and her love of family leads her from innocence to understanding and resilience, despite the violence of war.

Born and raised in France, Antoinette Constable, a career nurse holding British and American degrees, has lived in the United States for many years, where she raised her four children as a single mother. Antoinette’s work has won the PENFirst Prize for Poetry, as well as the Ann Stanford Award from the University of Southern California, and has appeared (more…)

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LCW Literary Salon: Zoe Fitzgerald Carter, Songwriter and Author of Imperfect Endings 🗓

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Monday, February 3, 2020 || 7pm Book Passage-Corte Madera|| 51 Tamal Vista Dr. Corte Madera || www.bookpassage.com

We have an appropriately LOVE-ly treat planned for the February Left Coast Writers Literary Salon: Author and well-known songwriter and performer, Zoe Fitzgerald Carter will be brightening the month by sharing her take on how to turn life and love into lyrics.

As Zoe says, “In many ways my songwriting feels like it builds on everything I’ve done as a writer over my lifetime. It’s just another, more concentrated way to explore language and storytelling and, like all my first-person writing, draws on lived experience.
Zoe FitzGerald Carter will discuss how she decided to become a full-time songwriter and musician after working as a journalist and memoirist for 30 years. While the form is different, the challenge is the same: How to be a vivid—and economical—storyteller. Zoe will share her tips and we think she has some surprises in store, one of which involves a guitar.

Zoe FitzGerald Carter is an author, teacher and journalist who has published in The New York Times, Salon, Vogue and Newsweek among other places. Her 2010 memoir, Imperfect Endings, about her mother’s decision to end her life, was excerpted in O magazine and was a Barnes and Noble “Discover Great New Writers” pick. Since 2017, she has turned exclusively to music, writing and performing original songs with her band, Sugartown. Her first album, Waiting for the Earthquake, came out last year and she is about to record a full-length solo album of original songs. She teaches memoir at The San Francisco Writers Grotto and Left Margin Lit in Berkeley, where she also teaches a six-week course on songwriting. (more…)

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Ferry Plaza Book Party: Dr. Clark J. Chelsey, Author of The Radicalization of Thomas Jefferson 🗓

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LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK PARTY: Dr. Clark J. Chelsey, Author of The Radicalization of Thomas Jefferson

Dr. Clark J. Chelsey

Monday, January 13, 2020 || 6pm Book Passage || Ferry Building, San F

rancisco ||www.bookpassage.com

Jefferson lived through world-altering upheavals in his lifetime. Not only was he one of the most important founding fathers, but he also served his new nation as one of the most influential precepts of civic responsibility in a democracy. All of this came at a time of three converging revolutions in history: the democratic revolution in America and France, the Scientific Revolution, and the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. In The Radicalization of Thomas Jefferson, Dr. Clark J. Chelsey traces the living fabric of Jefferson’s ideas through these turbulent changes and how Jefferson modified, refined, and increasingly radicalized them in a coherent and systematic way. (more…)

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Left Coast Writers Book Launch: Wild Colors of the West by Elaine Miller Bond 🗓

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LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK LAUNCH:  Wild Colors of the West by Elaine Miller Bond

Elaine Miller Bond

Saturday, January 11, 2020 || 7pm
Book Passage-Corte Madera|| 51 Tamal Vista Dr. Corte Madera ||
www.bookpassage.com

Is your favorite color warm and sunny, or is it cool like water? Does it appear with the rain, or does it glow and shine in the sun? In Wild Colors of the West, the latest board book from the author of Living Wild, photographs of animals in their natural habitats show young readers the prismatic hues found in nature, from the tangerine of monarch butterflies to the fresh green of new sorrel. Each page names and locates the Western park or city where author Elaine Miller Bond photographed the featured species. (more…)

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Left Coast Writers Book Launch: Pocket in the Waistcoat by RC Marlen 🗓

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LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK LAUNCH:  Pocket in the Waistcoat: Scenes of Oregon County by RC Marlen

Saturday, December 14, 2019 || 7pm
Book Passage-Corte Madera|| 51 Tamal Vista Dr. Corte Madera ||
www.bookpassage.com

RC Marlen will share stories from and about her latest book on Saturday, December 9th, at Book Passage in Corte Madera.

When four girls from the Tillamook and Clatsop People befriended Joseph Gervais, he changed from the cantankerous French-Canadian fur trapper to become an amusing storyteller and hero. One day, he saved a Metis girl from being snatched by a stranger and earned respect from the Chinook and Clatsop Tribes as well as the love of a child who claimed she would become his wife. And she did.

It was a time of turmoil at Fort Astoria: the British and Americans vied for control of the Northwest, yet it was a time of rapport between the native people and the fur trappers. In fact, three daughters of Tyee Koboway, Chief of the Clatsop People, sought to marry white men; however, their Tillamook friend Pocket did not want to marry anyone; she strove to be a shaman and to speak English.

This story tells about the Native People living in the Northwest since time immemorial and how their lives and cultures once were harmonious with the Americans and Canadians.

RC Marlen spent her first forty years in St. Louis, Missouri and completed a degree from University of Missouri. She taught Mathematics and went on to earn a master’s from Webster University. After moving to Los Gatos, California she started a business, teaching adults how to utilize computers in the office, and fell in love with Henry Schele who took her to live in Chile and Argentina for fourteen years. In the year 2000 she finished the manuscript that would become her first three novels and three months later she became a widow. (more…)

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Ferry Plaza Book Party: Tania Romanov, Author of Never a Stranger 🗓

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LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK PARTY: Tania Romanov, Author of Never a Stranger

Tania Romanov

Monday, December 9, 2019 || 6pm Book Passage || Ferry Building, San Francisco ||www.bookpassage.com

Please join us on Monday, December 9th, for a heartwarming evening of adventure and connection with Bay Area travel writer and photographer Tania Romanov as she introduces her latest book, Never a Stranger.
From her past in Croatia and Russia, to finding a son in Bhutan, to befriending women in Africa, one woman’s stories of travel, connection, and self-discovery.
Tania Romanov hangs from the final limb of a family tree of generations of unintentional travelers—exiles, refugees, displaced people. She grew up with stories of exile—stories of adventure. Perhaps that’s why, as an adult, Tania started living her own adventures—and hasn’t stopped since.
In India, she learned that to Indians the way she mourned her husband was far less personal than their custom of dropping cremated bodies into a river; in Japan, that her ancestors could find her in the oddest of circumstances. In Bhutan, she found family, and in Namibia she learned to ease her fears of being trapped in her own past.
In Never a Stranger, Tania shares those experiences and more, unforgettable stories of travel, connection, and self-discovery.

(more…)

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LCW Literary Salon: Michael Shapiro, Author of The Creative Spark 🗓

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Literary Salon:  Michael Shapiro, Author of The Creative Spark in Conversation with Linda Watanabe McFerrin 

 

Michael ShapiroMonday, December 2, 2019 || 7pm Book Passage-Corte Madera|| 51 Tamal Vista Dr. Corte

Linda Watanabe McFerrin

Madera || www.bookpassage.com

How about this for a stellar way to end they year! We are having an end-of-the-year Celebration and a close look at creativity with well-known Bay Area journalist, Michael Shapiro and LCW Founder, Linda Watanabe McFerrin. Please join us for wine, scintillating conversation, and a book that looks at creativity in conversations with some of the best in every business.

 

Creativity: how do we access it, nurture it, and sustain it? This question propelled journalist Michael Shapiro during more than a decade of interviewing many of the foremost creators of our time. In The Creative Spark: How musicians, writers, explorers, and other artists found their inner fire and followed their dreams, his just-published collection of conversations with Amy Tan, Smokey Robinson, Barbara Kingsolver, Lucinda Williams, Francis Ford Coppola, Lyle Lovett, David Sedaris and so many others, Shapiro reveals how these luminaries fire up their creativity and sustain it throughout their lives. Prefaced by short biographies, these interviews serve as guideposts for how each one of us can kindle our own creative sparks.

Shapiro will appear in conversation with Linda Watanabe-McFerrin, author of Navigating the Divide: Selected Poetry and Prose, a career-spanning, multi-genre collection. In profoundly personal poetry and prose, Watanabe-McFerrin’s multi-faceted collection spans spiritual and physical, thought and desire, identity and others. A renowned writing instructor, Linda will speak with Michael about the life-affirming force that is creativity.

Michael Shapiro writes about the performing arts, travel, food, books, and environmental issues for U.S. newspapers and magazines including National Geographic Traveler and American Way. For four years he wrote a column for the San Francisco Chronicle’s travel section and now covers music and the arts for The Press Democrat.

Linda  Watanabe McFerrin is a poet, travel writer, novelist and contributor to numerous newspapers, magazines and anthologies.She is the author of two poetry collections and a winner of the Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction. Her novel, Namako:  Sea Cucumber, was named Best Book for the Teen-Age by the New York Public Library. In addition to authoring an award-winning short story collection, The Hand of Buddha, she has co-edited twelve anthologies. Her latest novel, Dead Love (Stone Bridge Press, 2009), was a Bram Stoker Award Finalist for Superior Achievement in a Novel.

Linda has judged the San Francisco Literary Awards, the Josephine Miles Award for Literary Excellence and the Kiriyama (more…)

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