Alternative Publishing Conference

Saturday, March 8th – 9:00 am-5:00 pm
$195 – ($95 for Path to Publishing program participants [Membership $150]. If you are a LCW member you get 10% off on either rate for the Conference)
The price includes lunch and a post-conference reception

Join Linda Watanabe McFerrin, Phil Cousineau, and the other Book Passage Mentors for a jam-packed day of panels with agents, marketing and publicity experts, small publishers, book designers, and experienced authors to learn about today’s alternative publishing opportunities.

Book Passage has provided acclaimed writers’ conferences for more than twenty years, as well as hundreds of classes on the craft of writing and on marketing your work. In this Alternative Publishing Conference Book Passage brings you a sampling of publishing alternatives, including traditional publishing, co-publishing and self-publishing. We’ll explain the new Path to Publishing and Mentors programs to guide writers through the alternative publishing options.

Topics to be covered will include:

  • Basic choices for a writing career
  • Traditional publishing
  • Co-publishing and self-publishing
  • Editing
  • Book design
  • Printing options
  • Book distribution
  • Marketing and promotion


Students are invited to join the faculty for lunch and a post-conference reception.

For more details about the Conference, contact Sam Barry at sbarry@bookpassage.com or call (415) 927-0960, ext. 256

 

 

Read More

Workshop: Building Character with Linda Watanabe McFerrin

Linda Watanabe McFerrin/Sleuth

Character-driven—it’s one way to ensure that your writing is compelling. But how do you create characters that captivate a reader? Digging up all you’ll need to know to create characters that jump from the page can be as complicated as a covert operation. So let’s put on our best sleuthing attire and gather the info on our protagonists, antagonists, confidantes, love interests and assorted supporting characters. This workshop includes plenty of in-class exercises and amusing tips on craft.

A careful investigation will also reveal that you can receive Dominican College credit for this workshop.

The workshop will be held on Saturday, February 22, from 10am-4pm at Book Passage, 51 Tamal Vista Blvd, Corte Madera, CA, 94925.  Sign up here.

(more…)

Read More

Left Coast Writers® Live: Mark Shaw on Lilycat on Stuff

Melinda Adams, aka Lilycat

On Sunday, February 16th from 12-2pmjoin Left Coast Writers®  Live on FCCFREE RADIO’s popular show, Lilycat on Stuff. Find out the truth about who killed John F. Kennedy and why when Left Coast Writer and attorney, Mark Shaw, talks about his controversial book: The Poison Patriarch: How the Betrayals of Joseph P. Kennedy Caused the Assassination of JFKVanity Fair called the book “Daring.” Kirkus Reviews said “TPP is a clearly written polemic … on the corruption of power built around an intriguing theory.”

Shaw, the author of 20+ books and counting, and a former legal analyst for ABCESPN, and CNN, focuses for the first time on why Robert Kennedy was not killed in 1963. Doing so shines the spotlight on the Jack Ruby Trial (he (more…)

Read More

Book Launch: Buyer's Remorse by Roy Mash

LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK LAUNCH:  Buyer’s Remorse by Roy Mash

Roy Mash

Saturday, March 8th, 2014 || 7pm
Book Passage-Corte Madera|| 51 Tamal Vista Dr. Corte Madera ||
www.bookpassage.com

Buyer’s Remorse is a celebration of the small, the overlooked, the underrated. Doggedly anti-lofty, reveling in the This-Worldly, the poems caper around the themes of the body, of mathematics and rationality, adolescence and middle-age, love and fear and death. The tone ranges from the irreverent to the wistful – the spritz of seltzer in the face of the Creature from the Black Lagoon to the lover standing in one sock.
Drawing on sources from The Three Stooges to Archimedes, Lavoisier to Tweety Bird, Mash is a latter day Anti-Oracle, a nail in the tire of post-modernity, an incorrigible wag who’s smuggled his pea (more…)

Read More

Literary Salon: Brenda Knight

LEFT COAST WRITERS LITERARY SALON:  Brenda Knight, Publisher for Viva Editions, Cleis Press and Author of Women of the Beat Generation

Brenda Knight

Monday, March 3rd, 2014 || 7pm
Book Passage-Corte Madera|| 51 Tamal Vista Dr. Corte Madera ||
www.bookpassage.com

Our March salon speaker is Brenda Knight. Brenda is is a twenty-two-year publishing veteran, starting at HarperCollins, where she fell in love with publishing and had the thrill of working with major authors like Huston Smith, Paolo Coehlo, and Melody Beatti, whose Co-Dependent No More sold so well that she was able to talk her way into a job at HarperCollins.

From there, Knight went to Conari Press and helped build the Random Acts of Kindness phenomenon and added editing and acquisition to her skill set. She acquired books from Congresswoman Jacky Speier and Phil Cousineau. One of the highlights of the Conari experience for Knight was helping (more…)

Read More

Ferry Plaza Book Party: Undercover Love: Lust, Literature, and Lingerie

LEFT COAST WRITERS FERRY PLAZA BOOK PARTY:  Undercover Love: Lust, Literature, and Lingerie

Fashion by Blackbird Underpinnings

Monday, February 10th, 2014 || 6pm
Book Passage || San Francisco
1 Ferry Building, San Francisco ||www.bookpassage.com

Join us again and bring your loved ones for more fun with wine, chocolate, readings, discussion and a look—up close and personal—at gorgeous undercover fashion from Blackbird Underpinnings on Monday, February 10th from 6 to 7:30 p.m. at Book Passage at the San Francisco Ferry Plaza.

Editors Linda Watanabe McFerrin and Laurie McAndish King and various Hot Flashes: sexy little stories and poems contributors and other Left Coast Writers® will share their work and celebrate Undercover Love: Lust, Literature, and Lingerie. (more…)

Read More

Book Launch: Susanna Solomon

LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK LAUNCH:  Point Reyes Sherrif’s Calls by Susanna Solomon

Susanna Soloman

Saturday, February 8th, 2014 || 7pm
Book Passage-Corte Madera|| 51 Tamal Vista Dr. Corte Madera ||
www.bookpassage.com

Susanna Solomon has been at this writing business a long time, but it was only when Mildred Rhinehart, 82, shoved her way into Susanna’s heart and mind that she realized it was time to sit down and listen. Mildred’s long-suffering husband Fred was next. Then awkward Alice, Mildred’s granddaughter, came for tea and was soon followed by the new cop on the block, as well as a sixteen-year-old kid in love with driving and girls. Susanna had found her sweet spot, and her characters found a home.

A year and a half later, she has a short story collection from Harper Davis Publishers, called (more…)

Read More

Literary Salon: Don George

LEFT COAST WRITERS LITERARY SALON:  Don George, author of Lonely Planet’s Guide to Travel Writing, editor of
Better than Fiction: True Travel Tales from Great Fiction Writers, and more!

Don George

Monday, February 3rd, 2014 || 7pm
Book Passage-Corte Madera|| 51 Tamal Vista Dr. Corte Madera ||
www.bookpassage.com

This month our speaker is noted travel writer and editor Don George, who recently released the latest edition of his highly acclaimed Lonely Planet’s Guide to Travel Writing. He has also edited several Lonely Planet anthologies.

Don has made his living as a travel writer and editor virtually since college. His first real job was as a travel writer for the San Francisco Examiner. From there he moved on to a short stint as an editor at the Examiner’s Sunday magazine, then he became the travel editor for the Examiner & Chronicle for nine years.

When the allures of cyberspace became irresistible, Don joined Salon.com and founded their (more…)

Read More

Left Coast Writers® Broadcasting Live

Melinda Adams, aka Lilycat

LEFT COAST WRITERS® ON THE AIR

These Bay Area writers are pushing the edge from the page to Internet radio in a new monthly series on FCCFREERADIO, San Francisco’s Alternative Radio

On Sunday, January 19, 2014 Left Coast Writers® take to the air with a monthly spot on FCCFREERADIO – San Francisco’s Alternative Radio Studio 1-A from 12-2PM with popular radio talk show host, Melinda Adams, aka Ms. Kitty, aka Lilycat.

The monthly two-hour call-in spot on FCCREERADIO’s long-running weekly talk show, Lilycat on Stuff, will feature stories and chat on topics that have these writers climbing out of their garrets and closets and congregating in a SOMA studio to hold forth on topics that move them to ire and ecstasy.

On Sunday, January 19, find out more about Undercover Love: Lust, Literature and Lingerie as Left Coast Writers and Hot Flashes: sexy little (more…)

Read More

Reading at Book Passage for The Poison Patriarch by Mark Shaw

BOOK LAUNCH:  The Poison Patriarch: How the Betrayals of Joseph P. Kennedy Caused the Assassination of JFK by Mark Shaw

Mark Shaw

Tuesday, January 21st, 2014 || 7pm
Book Passage-Corte Madera|| 51 Tamal Vista Dr. Corte Madera ||
www.bookpassage.com

Focusing for the first time on why attorney general Robert F. Kennedy wasn’t killed in 1963 instead of on why President John F. Kennedy was, Mark Shaw offers a stunning and provocative assassination theory in his latest book The Poison Patriarch that leads directly to the family patriarch, Joseph P. Kennedy. Mining fresh information and more than forty new interviews, Shaw weaves a spellbinding narrative involving Mafia don Carlos Marcello; Jack Ruby (Lee Harvey Oswald’s killer); Ruby’s attorney, Melvin Belli; and, ultimately, the Kennedy brothers and their father.

Shaw addresses these tantalizing questions: Why, shortly after his brother’s death, did a grief-stricken RFK tell a colleague, “I thought they would get one of us . . . I thought it would be me”? Why was Belli, an attorney with almost no defense experience (but proven ties to the Mafia), chosen as Jack Ruby’s attorney? How does Belli’s Mafia connection call into question his legal strategy, which ultimately led to the Ruby’s first-degree murder conviction and death sentence? What was Joseph Kennedy’s relationship to organized crime? And how was his insistence that JFK appoint RFK as attorney general tantamount to signing the president’s death warrant? (more…)

Read More