Ferry Plaza Book Party: Linda Watanabe McFerrin, Author of Navigating the Divide 🗓

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LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK PARTY: Linda Watanabe McFerrin, Author of Navigating the Divide 

Monday, October 14, 2019 || 6pm Book Passage || Ferry Building, San Francisco ||www.bookpassage.com

It’s another Octoberfest!

Please come to this San Francisco celebration for LCW Founder Linda Watanabe McFerrin’s newest book: Navigating the Divide.

Navigating the Divide is a career-spanning, multi-genre collection from the award-winning Asian-American writer and indie lit legend Linda Watanabe McFerrin. In poetry and prose that is sometimes profoundly personal, sometimes astoundingly surreal, this world traveler and devoted literary explorer breaks down walls, bridges, cultures, and genres, delighting and instructing the reader. This rich, multi-faceted collection really does “navigate the divide” between spiritual and physical, between thought and desire, between identity and others.

Linda Watanabe McFerrin is a poet, travel writer, and novelist. She is the author of two poetry collections, two novels, a collection of award-winning short stories, and a travel guidebook. Her literary honors include the Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction and various travel writing, poetry, and fiction awards. Her latest novel, Dead Love, was a Bram Stoker Award Finalist for Superior Achievement in a Novel. As the founder of Left Coast Writers, Watanabe McFerrin has taught and mentored a long list of writers and is a beloved figure in California’s rich, historic literary culture. She has led workshops around the world, and with ASP author Joanna Biggar, she co-founded the Wanderland Writers series of workshops and anthologies, which they co-edit.

Reading Linda’s work is like being mesmerized by a snake before it swallows you whole.   The words shimmer, (more…)

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Left Coast Writers Book Launch: Sleep, Pray, Heal by Donna Fado Ivery 🗓

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LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK LAUNCH:  Sleep, Pray, Heal by Donna Fado Ivery  

Saturday, October 12, 2019 || 7pm
Book Passage-Corte Madera|| 51 Tamal Vista Dr. Corte Madera ||
www.bookpassage.com

Don’t miss this chance to get spirited. This is going to be an evening of CELEBRATION!

When a 200-pound glass partition fell on Donna Fado Ivery’s head, causing brain injury and disability, her life was changed forever … but Donna did not let that stop her.

Sleep, Pray, Heal shares her struggle through medical and church prejudice, and her journey to recovery. Most of all, Sleep, Pray, Heal is a warm, surprisingly humorous, and insightful personal memoir that can enlighten the mind and lighten the heart of any reader.

Donna Fado Ivery is a United Methodist clergywoman whose pastorate was interrupted by disabling injuries sustained in a 1994 restaurant accident. While brain injury impaired her ability to speak, stand, concentrate, and remember, Donna painted her prayers. With pain too deep for words, Donna relied on the Spirit to lead her. Today Donna is a dynamic speaker whose keynote addresses and workshops have taken her across the U.S. 

Sleep, Pray, Heal is a modern sermon on faith — a beautifully articulated, joy-based sermon, full of ups and downs (more…)

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Literary Salon: Maxine Rose Schur Author of Brave with Beauty, A Story of Afghanistan 🗓

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Literary Salon:  Maxine Rose Schur Author of Brave with Beauty, A Story of Afghanistan

Maxine Rose Schur

Monday, October 7, 2019 || 7pm Book Passage-Corte Madera|| 51 Tamal Vista Dr. Corte Madera || www.bookpassage.com

Curtain Up! Using Theatre Techniques to Strengthen Your Children’s Story

Maxine Rose Schur is an award-winning children’s book author and travel writer. As a former professional actress. Maxine will share some surefire techniques from the theatre world to strengthen your story for young people. She’ll give you tips to create more believable characters, strengthen plot and enhance dialogue. You’ll gain down-to earth advice that you can easily use right away.

Maxine will also share how her extensive travels have informed her books for children and inspire you to use your own life experiences to inform your writing.

And as an added bonus, popular travel writer and LCW member, Laurie McAndish King will be our guest emcee for this exciting LCW Salon night!

Maxine Rose Schur is an award-winning author of books for children. As the recipient of the Joan G. Sugarman Award given by the Washington Independent Writer’s Legal and Educational Fund, Ms Schur was the Baker-Nord Guest Lecturer on Writing for Children to the (more…)

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Book Launch: KOBB by William Goodson 🗓

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LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK LAUNCH:  KOBB by William Goodson

William Goodson

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

It’s easy to be distracted by explosions and miss the quiet, insidious changes that will alter manhood as we know it.

Shrouded in secrecy, 6-year-old Jack and his family relocate to drought-blighted, rural Nebraska. There Jack meets his grandfather, a mysterious man who only visits at night and never stays long. As Jack grows up, his one real friend is Millie, the granddaughter of a neighbor who visits every summer. Then on his sixteenth birthday, the past catches up with the family, and Jack must make decisions that will set the course for the rest of his life.

“… a whole new way forward for the environmental debate …”

—Prof. Philippa Darbre, University of Reading

William Goodson is an expert on how environmental chemicals affect human health. He has been a Professor at the University of California, a leader in medical and community organizations, author of over 100 scientific papers, and an invited speaker at multiple international meetings.A graduate of Harvard Medical School, he is a surgeon who has dedicated his career to improving the care of women with breast cancer and the author of It’s  body…ask!, (more…)

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Ferry Plaza Book Party: David Hathwell, Author of The Power of Telling  🗓

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LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK EVENT: David Hathwell, Author of The Power of Telling 

David Hathwell

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

Join us Monday eve at a book event for David Hathwell, whose new poetry book The Power of Telling has received and outstanding review from Kirkus.
The review says it all:
“A collection of poetry focuses on everyday beauty and wonder.”

It continues:  “Over the course of 50 poems with straightforward titles, retired high school English teacher Hathwell (Between Dog and Wolf, 2017, etc.) explores the world around him. Nature is a touchstone of his poetry. In “Poplar,” he expertly describes the titular tree “catching a breeze, flutter sage and silver wings” while in “Sunflower,” he lingers on the “wide blank face” of the “saddest flower.” The author also showcases culture in his poems. “Fred’s Girl” is a propulsive ode to the Fred Astaire–Paulette Goddard duet in the film Second Chorus, and “Sunday at the Symphony” captures the ethereal experience of live classical music. But the poems aren’t limited to the author’s immediate surroundings. A visit to the Spanish Steps, where Keats died in 1821, is the subject of “Readiness Is Everything,” which encourages readers to “imagine the world without you.” Hathwell plays with humor in “Dust Is Winning,” about the futile fight to keep things clean, and shows his cynical side in “Red Dress,” which describes the “ruby radiance” of an ensemble depicted in advertising. The act of writing is another recurring theme in this collection. “Song” depicts a successful writing day, in which “I rise from my desk, / Majestic, and I dance,” while “Sure Thing” warns readers “that language is prepared to lie / When you ask it to.” Quiet moments are also rich material for the poet. Throughout, he matches his message to the pacing of the poem, creating an immersive experience for readers. In “Finding Myself in the Morning,” readers sink into Hathwell’s serene, solitary scene where he can finally “not wonder / who is speaking, or what comes next.” In “Ten O’Clock,” the audience can sense the descent into a “deep, forgiving sleep” … A volume of ambitious and engaging poems.”

(more…)

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Literary Salon: Preparing Your Book for Sale—Publishing Advice from the Experts 🗓

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Laurie FoxPatLiterary Salon:  Preparing Your Book for Sale—Publishing Advice from the Experts

Tuesday, September 3, 2019 || 7pm Book Passage-Corte Madera|| 51 Tamal Vista Dr. Corte Madera || www.bookpassage.com

Please join us on Tuesday—the day AFTER Labor Day—for a chat with the experts on how to get your work published.

Agent Laurie Fox and Fearless Books & Literary Founder D. Patrick Miller will join Left Coast Writers Founder Linda Watanabe McFerrin in conversation about the often arduous and convoluted path to publishing.

They’ll talk about:

How to prepare your manuscript for publication.

  • Best ways to find an agent.
  • What the alternatives are if you can’t find a traditional publisher.
  • What happens after your manuscript is published … regardless of the path you took to get there.

Of course, you can invite a friend, if you know someone who could use the advice.

Just let us know who’ll be joining you.

Laurie Fox has been an agent for 30 years with the Linda Chester Literary Agency, which has its home office in Manhattan. A published author of two novels (Simon & Schuster) and poetry (Chronicle Books), Fox acquires books in the areas of literary and quality fiction, memoir/biography, popular culture, the fine arts, history and cultural history, and science and technology.

Laurie agented two-time Oprah Book Club novelist Wally Lamb’s She’s Come Undone and I Know This Much is True. Other books of Laurie’s include Cheryl Strayed’s first novel, Torch; Lolly Winston’s New York Times bestselling Good Grief; David Corbett’s Done For a Dime, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year; Carolyn Cooke’s story collection, The Bostons (NY Times Notable Book of the Year, a Los Angeles Times “Best Book of the Year”); New York Times bestseller First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong by James R. Hansen,which was made into the recent film of the same name. Laurie’s own books include:  My Sister from the Black Lagoon (S&S) and The Lost Girls (S&S).

Fearless Books & Literary founder D. Patrick Miller has worked in books, two currently distributed by Penguin Random House and more under the Fearless Books imprint. As a collaborator, ghostwriter, or principal editor, Miller has helped other authors prepare manuscripts for such major publishers as Viking, Doubleday, Crown, Simon (more…)

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Book Launch: The Girl Who Said No by Natalie Galli 🗓

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BOOK LAUNCH: The Girl Who Said No: A Search in Sicily by Natalie Galli

Natalie Galli

Saturday, August 17th, 2019 || 7pm Book Passage-Corte Madera|| 51 Tamal Vista Dr. Corte Madera || www.bookpassage.com

Eighteen-year-old Franca Viola made history in 1966 as one of the first “#metoo” heroines of modern times, when she refused to go along with a centuries-old forcible marriage custom in Sicily. Having endured kidnap and rape, she publicly defied the expectation that she would marry the rapist to “restore her broken honor.” A social uproar occurred throughout the island—and beyond.

In Natalie Galli’s The Girl Who Said No, Viola’s remarkable story unfolds when the author arrives in Palermo to search for her, with little more than the memory of a tiny article she had spotted two decades prior. Galli wanted to know: whatever had become of this courageous girl who had overturned an ancient, entrenched tradition?

The riveting events after Franca pressed charges with the police form the core of this gripping memoir. Viola was subjected to public taunting whenever she appeared on the streets of her town; Mafia-orchestrated bullying threatened her entire family. Galli traced the dramatic tale to its conclusion, in spite of initial warnings from her own relatives not to break the Sicilian code of silence.

Throughout her search for the enigmatic Franca, Galli shares her own poignant and hilarious observations about a vibrant culture steeped in contradiction and paradox. Does she succeed in locating the elusive proto-feminist whose case forever changed Italian culture and history? Travel along on Galli’s engaging odyssey to find out.

Natalie Galli, a San Francisco native of Italian background, has penned two illustrated children’s books for Sunbath Studios: Ciao Meow and Spin the Hound Lost and Found, a Tale of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake. She edited a (more…)

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Ferry Plaza Book Event: Bevan Atkinson, Author of The Hierophant Card 🗓

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LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK EVENT: Bevan Atkinson, Author of The Hierophant Card and The Fool Card: A Tarot Mystery

Bevan Atkinson

Monday, August 12, 2019 || 6pm Book Passage || Ferry Building, San Francisco ||www.bookpassage.com

How can you determine if someone is telling the truth? Did Thalia Thalassos tried to kill her cheating husband, despite her denials? Why is nurse Bryce Gilbertson giving a false name to visitors as he roams hospital hallways with a deadly syringe in his pocket?

In this sixth Tarot Mystery, Xana Bard must use her tarot-trained intuition to unravel the truth from its nest of lies, and along the way learn more about golf tournaments and long-distance horse races than she, or anyone else, cares to know.

Bevan Atkinson has been a writer since receiving the Prose Award at Winchester-Thurston School in Pittsburgh, PA.

She wrote business documents of all kinds in corporate environments (Pacific Bell, The Bank of California, MHI Global, etc.), and was the Director of Retail Training for Apple Computer, designing and developing the training for the most successful retail launch in history.

Ms. Atkinson is a long-time tarot reader, and after venturing briefly into fiction writing with a children’s book, and then an original screenplay, she began The Tarot Mystery series in 2005 with The Fool Card.

Her aim is to complete a 22-book series based on the Major Arcana of the tarot, doing for the tarot what Sue (more…)

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Literary Salon: Travel Writers & Photographers Conference Preview: Women Travel Writer Share their Secrets! 🗓

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Literary Salon:  Travel Writers & Photographers Conference Preview: Women Travel Writers Share their Secrets!

Monday, August 5th, 2019 || 7pm Book Passage-Corte Madera|| 51 Tamal Vista Dr. Corte Madera || www.bookpassage.com

Want the inside scoop into the how and why and why not of putting place on the page and getting it published?

Join these travelers and successful travel writers in a group conversation about the art of traveling and translating those journeys and adventures for page and screen in a way that transports publisher, publication and reader.

Our panelists will discuss magazine writing, literary travel essay, long form journalism, and even fiction and alternate genres that celebrate a sense of place. They will also discuss their favorite publishers and publications and how to get your work into print and on screens.

Panelists: Linda Watanabe McFerrin (moderator), Joanna Biggar, Laurie McAndish King, Mary Jo McConahay, Jill Robinson (more…)

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Book Launch: Daddykins by Kalpana Mohan 🗓

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Kalpana Mohan

BOOK LAUNCH: Daddykins by Kalpana Mohan

Saturday, July 13th, 2019 || 7pm Book Passage-Corte Madera|| 51 Tamal Vista Dr. Corte Madera || www.bookpassage.com

When journalist Kalpana Mohan’s elderly father falls ill in Chennai, she is on the next flight over from California and the home she has shared with her husband for three decades. Caring for her sometimes cranky, sometimes playful, and always adored father at his home in Chennai, Mohan sets out to piece together an account of her father’s life, from his poverty-stricken childhood in a village in south India, to his arranged marriage, to his first job in the city, all the while coming to terms with his inevitable passing.

Mohan’s tender, moving, and sometimes hilarious memoir is an account of a changing India captured in her father’s life, from the sheer feat of surviving poverty in I920s India of his birth, to witnessing key moments in the nation’s history and changing alongside them. Above all, Daddykins is an intimate and deeply relatable account of our relationships with our parents whatever our age, and the shared experiences of love and grief that unite us all. (more…)

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