Events - Left Coast Writers

Left Coast Writers® Live: TC Currie

On Sunday, November 15th from 12-2pm, join Left Coast Writers® Live on FCCFREE RADIO’s popular show, Lilycat on Stuff. Lilycat’s guest on Sunday will be TC Currie, Author of Questions to a Butterfly: A Collection of Transformational Poetry

In Questions to a Butterfly, TC Currie uses familiar objects from everyday life and humor to connect the reader to the toil of transformation, their triumphs, and their connection to the Divine, offering comfort and hope for those in the midst of struggle. Full of universal truths, familiar problems, cookie dough, and psychic vampires, TC’s poems follow the path of those who have the courage to take an honest look at their lives, evaluate their actions, and do the hard work to move through personal transformation from darkness into energy, connection and light.

As a girl of five, TC Currie was delighted to discover that books allow her to escape into other worlds. She has been armchair traveling and writing ever since. After parlaying her degree in Asian Religions into a career as a software developer, TC gained a reputation for being able totranslate between software users and techie geeks. After years of technical writing, she found her bliss in non-technical writing. She’s won everything from the Silver Medal from the Solas Travel Awards for her personal essay “Checkers and Humanity” (more…)

Saturday, November 14th, 2015 || 10am-4pm
Book Passage-Corte Madera|| 51 Tamal Vista Dr. Corte Madera ||
www.bookpassage.com

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. Bring pages to read and work on.

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

The workshop will be held on Saturday, November 14th, from 10am-4pm at Book Passage, 51 Tamal Vista Blvd, Corte Madera, CA, 94925. Sign up here.

Poet, travel writer, novelist and Left Coast Writers® founder Linda Watanabe McFerrin (www.lwmcferrin.com) is a contributor to numerous newspapers, magazines and anthologies. She is the author of two poetry collections, past editor of a popular Northern California guidebook 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 YorkPublic Library. In addition to authoring an award-winning short story collection, The Hand of Buddha, she has co-edited several anthologies, including the Hot Flashes: sexy little stories & poems series. Her latest novel, Dead Love (Stone Bridge (more…)

Literary Salon: Vanessa Rodriguez and Peter Lang, Social Media Strategists, Co-Founders of Uhuru Network

LEFT COAST WRITERS LITERARY SALON: Vanessa Rodriguez and Peter Lang, Social Media Strategists

Monday, November 2nd, 2015 || 7pm
Book Passage-Corte Madera|| 51 Tamal Vista Dr. Corte Madera ||
www.bookpassage.com

Don’t miss this! If you have ever wondered about websites, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and so on and how they can possibly help you get the word out about your work, we have the answers. We’ve asked Digital Marketing Consultants and Uhuru Network Co-Founders, Peter Lang and Vanessa Rodriguez, to come to the Bay Area to demystify the social media and online worlds for you and show you exactly how to bump up your readership online.

Peter and Vanessa are co-founders of Uhuru Network, a Digital Marketing Agency with a recently relocated HQ in SF and Rome, Italy. The Agency expertly manages their clients’ inbound marketing efforts to drive revenue and conversions at the lowest cost. They also created two online publications: TrucchiFacebook, an Italian Tech Blog focused on Facebook, and Stylishlyme, a fashion, style, and travel blog, that reach over 1 million unique visitors a month.

(more…)

Book Launch: Wandering in Cornwall by Wanderland Writers

LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK LAUNCH: Wanderland Writers, Authors of Wandering in Cornwall: Mystery, Mirth, and Transformation in the Land of the Ancient Celts

Saturday, November 14th, 2015 || 7pm
Book Passage-Corte Madera|| 51 Tamal Vista Dr. Corte Madera ||
www.bookpassage.com

It’s another Wanderland Writers celebration. Wine, snacks, readings, and a brand new book in the Wandering series.

This time Wanderland Writers venture deep into Cornwall, exploring its castles, its contrast. They find, of course, its legacy of Camelot, the lingering shadows of Arthurian legend, tragic love, magic, and Merlin. They also find its sorrows, buried deep in its history like the now closed mines, where the windswept moors and jagged coasts made everyday events of shipwrecks, isolation, and cave-ins. Yet, as workshop leaders Joanna Biggar and Linda Watanabe McFerrin and their fellow travelers discover, that is not the whole story. They also encounter the wonderful and hospitable Cornish, with their enchanting accents, their delightful yarns, their humor, their endurance. They wander, bicycle, hike and kayak to explore hills, waterways, villages and moors in search of the spirit of artists and writers who have come before them to leave an imprint on this untamed land.

“Wandering in Cornwall is a beguiling collection of stories and poems about the extreme west of England. Everything that makes Cornwall so special is here: pasties, clotted cream artists, smugglers, the South West Coast Path and even the thieving seagulls. Readers who know Cornwall will be inspired to return and newcomers to this land of myth (more…)

Ferry Plaza Book Party: Sampling South Carolina, with Southern Sampler Authors

LEFT COAST WRITERS FERRY PLAZA BOOK PARTY: Southern Sampler Authors, Artists and Friends, A Southern Sampler, Sampling South Carolina

Monday, November 9th, 2015 || 6pm
Book Passage || San Francisco
1 Ferry Building, San Francisco ||www.bookpassage.com

It’s a celebration of all things Southern! Please join the writers and artists of the Southern Sampler Artists Colony as they evoke the dreamy, sometimes steamy world of Charleston and beyond in an exciting sampler of poetry, short fiction, non-fiction and other delights at Book Passage in San Francisco’s Ferry Plaza. You don’t have to go there to be there, but if you want to be spirited away, you’ll be able to do that (more…)

Litquake San Rafael 2015

Litquake San Rafael | Sunday, Oct. 11th
Downtown San Rafael | 10am-7:15pm

Litquake is upon us again and we have a number of Left Coast Writers shaking things up in San Rafael this year.

LCW Founder, Linda Watanabe McFerrin will be reading with Laurie McAndish King, Debbie Goelz, Mary Brent Cantarutti, and Toni Picininni to answer the question “Erotic Relationships: What Makes the Heart Grow?” amid a dazzling array of exotic, erotic lingerie at Pleasures of the Heart. (http://www.litquake.org/…/erotic-relationships-what-makes-h…).

Cyra McFadden (“The Serial”) will serve up “The Morning After: Stories of Dish and Revenge”.
Book Passage co-owner and author Bill Petrocelli will tell “Tales Worth Telling”. (more…)

On Sunday, October 18th from 12-2pm, join Left Coast Writers® Live on FCCFREE RADIO’s popular show, Lilycat on Stuff. Lilycat’s guest on Sunday will be Bill Palmini, Author of A Rookie Cop vs. the West Coast Mafia: Breaking Up the “Best in the West” Gang

He’s back and once again flipping back the tarp on local crime! We are so jazzed to be celebrating true crime writer and Bay Area ex-detective Bill Palmini’s latest book.

In this gripping, true crime exposé, Palmini, a rookie detective, hopes to take down the West Coast Mafia by gaining the confidence of notorious mob operative William Floyd Ettleman. Set against a backdrop of social turmoil, A Rookie Cop vs. The West Coast Mafia immerses readers in the subculture of free love, drugs, robbery and murder, orchestrated by organized crime in locations like the coastal enclave of Sausalito, California.

Artists, writers, musicians, actors and hippies took refuge there. The Trident Restaurant was once a drug Mecca for Hollywood, the music industry and the New York hip. It was co-owned by the Kingston Trio and their manager, Frank Werber, a self-proclaimed drug priest. Robin Williams worked as a busboy there, the Rolling Stones were regulars and Janis Joplin had her own table. Sally Stanford, the former San Francisco Madam who later became Sausalito’s mayor, was a confidant of the famous and infamous. Ettleman’s gang of safecrackers targets the Trident.

Other mobsters like San Diego’s Frank “The Bomp” Bompensiero, on whom Sopranoscharacter “Big Pussy” is thought to have been based, become involved. Palmini, utilizing (more…)

Ferry Plaza Book Party: Joel Eis

LEFT COAST WRITERS FERRY PLAZA BOOK PARTY: Joel Eis, Author of The Function of the Ekkyklema in Greek Theatre, The Sculptural Display of Murdered Victims and the Success of Greek Tragedy for the State

Monday, October 12th, 2015 || 6pm
Book Passage || San Francisco
1 Ferry Building, San Francisco ||www.bookpassage.com

Join Left Coast Writers and Joel Eis for a look at the tragic and dramatic in Greek theatre.

Joel’s talk will announce new and very interesting discoveries about Greek theatre that were hidden in plain view, which is why the book has garnered exceptional reviews from experts on the subject.

Joel will discuss the value of research for writers of non-fiction and fiction. Tricks on sleuthing source material, applying it to the work. Lots of dish about scholars who made stuff up, and famous folks who missed important stuff that was right in front of them.

The Function of the Ekkyklema in Greek Theatre, The Sculptural Display of Murdered Victims and the Success of Greek Tragedy for the State, (Edwin Mellen Press, 2014) was awarded the Adelle Mellen prize for outstanding contribution to scholarship upon its release, and received a special forward from Sir John Boardman, greatest living scholar on Greek vases and theatre, Emeritus at Oxford and former curator of the Ashmolean Museum. (more…)

Book Launch: Chronicles of Old San Francisco by Gael Chandler

LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK LAUNCH: Gael Chandler, Author of Chronicles of Old San Francisco: Exploring the Historic City by the Bay

Saturday, October 10th, 2015 || 7pm
Book Passage-Corte Madera|| 51 Tamal Vista Dr. Corte Madera ||
www.bookpassage.com

Chronicles of Old San Francisco: Exploring the Historic City by the Bay recounts the city’s colorful history with vivid illustrations in 28 dramatic true chapters, each centered on a person who transformed the city. Beginning with tales of the Yelamu—the city’s original inhabitants—Chronicles spans the life and times of those drawn to the city from the Spanish missionaries who arrived in 1776 to the dot-comers who turned up in the 1990s. The book also contains extensive, self-guided walking tours of the city illustrated with color photographs and detailed maps.

Gael Chandler moved to San Francisco in 1970 to join the women’s movement and liberate herself. Nine years later she left for Hollywood where she edited dramas, documentaries and more and received two Cable ACE nominations for cutting a comedy series. Chandler taught editing and digital editing systems and wrote three books on editing: Film Editing: Great Cuts Every Filmmaker and Movie Lover Must Know which has (more…)

Literary Salon: Jack Shoemaker

LEFT COAST WRITERS LITERARY SALON: Jack Shoemaker, Co-Founder, Editor and Publisher of Counterpoint Press

Monday, October 5th, 2015 || 7pm
Book Passage-Corte Madera|| 51 Tamal Vista Dr. Corte Madera ||
www.bookpassage.com

Writers, you won’t want to miss our next salon. You’ll have an opportunity to listen to and ask questions of legendary editor and publisher, Jack Shoemaker who, through his respected imprints, has introduced authors like Annie Lamott to the reading public and shepherded them to success. Today, Jack is the co-founder, editor and publisher of Counterpoint Press.

COUNTERPOINT LLC was created in 2007 through the acquisition of three notable independent presses: Counterpoint, Shoemaker & Hoard, and Soft Skull Press. In January 2008, the company began publishing two imprints, Counterpoint and Soft Skull Press. Shoemaker & Hoard titles are now being published under the Counterpoint imprint.

Author-driven, they devote all energy to the fresh, cutting-edge, and literary (more…)

Left Coast Writers® Live: TC Currie

Workshop: Building Character with Linda Watanabe McFerrin

Literary Salon: Vanessa Rodriguez and Peter Lang, Social Media Strategists, Co-Founders of Uhuru Network

Book Launch: Wandering in Cornwall by Wanderland Writers

Ferry Plaza Book Party: Sampling South Carolina, with Southern Sampler Authors

Litquake San Rafael 2015

Left Coast Writers® Live: Bill Palmini

Ferry Plaza Book Party: Joel Eis

Book Launch: Chronicles of Old San Francisco by Gael Chandler

Literary Salon: Jack Shoemaker

Join Us

Library

Calendar

Also on social media:

Recent Posts

Recent Comments

Archives

Categories

Meta

Contact us through social media!