Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Upcoming events and classes

There are many worthwhile upcoming events and classes for writers and for members of Redwood Writers. Please mark these on your calendar. These are listed in order of their occurrence.

Speakeasy: A Quarterly Literary Saloon

@ Aqus Cafe, Petaluma CA.

Gather for a drink, a bite & a feast of words with hosts
Susan Bono & Ransom Stephens.

Spring Edition: April 7, 2010 7-9 p.m. @ Aqus Café, 2nd and H Petaluma

Admission: $5 (sliding scale) to benefit The Phoenix Theatre After School Tutoring Program

Featuring
Gwynn O'Gara, Sonoma County Poet Laureate
Patricia Volonakis Davis, author of Harlot's Sauce & founder of Harlots' Sauce Radio
Dan Coshnear, author of Jobs and Other Preoccupations, editor of 95% Naked
Ransom Stephens, introduces his new novel The God Patent, starring Petaluma
Susan Bono, editor-in-chief of Tiny Lights: A Journal of Personal Narrative

ATTN: WRITERS! Bring a short piece of writing and enter the drawing for the 2 open mic slots (7 min. each)!

Mark your calendar now for the Summer edition, July 22, 2010!

About the writers:

Gwynn O’Gara is the author of Snake Woman Poems, Fixer-Upper and Winter at Green Haven. She has taught with California Poets in the Schools for twenty years, and was recently selected as Sonoma County Poet Laureate for 2010-2011. Her poems appear in the current issues of Calyx. Beatitude Golden Anniversary issue, Sage Woman, and What the World Hears, the CPITS 2009 Anthology.

Patricia V. Davis is the author of Harlot's Sauce: A Memoir of Food, Family, Love, Loss, and Greece, which was called "delicious" by Marin Independent Journal, and a "compulsively readable, cross-cultural memoir that is both hilarious and heartbreaking”, by Wendy Nelson Tokunaga, author of Love in Translation and Midori by Moonlight.

Daniel Coshnear - dan@coshnear.org - works nights at a sixty day shelter for the homeless in Santa Rosa. He teaches fiction writing at a variety of SF bay area university extension programs. He is author of Jobs & Other Preoccupations (Helicon Nine 2001). Recent publications are in Juked and The Third Coast and in the anthology, 95% Naked: Fictions and Nonfictions, which he edited.

Wine country writing teacher, freelance editor, and publisher, Susan Bono has become a literary icon the old fashioned way: by writing, sharing her work and opening channels for others to share theirs. Susan is the gentle mistress of personal essay; bask in her affection for the written word at www.tiny-lights.com.

Ransom Stephens is a professor of particle physics turned writer and speaker. His new novel, The God Patent (www.TheGodPatent.com), is set right here in Petaluma; the SF Chronicle called it “…a narrative that sings of the heart and the scientific method as two parts of the same song.”

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Message from Redwood Writer member Tom Mariani:

Our recent Newsletter gave a great plug for the Redwood Writers' participation in the National Endowment for the Arts annual BIG READ.

We will meet at the Glaser Center 547 Mendocino Ave. Sign-in starts at 6 pm The program will begin at 6:30. A parking lot is directly behind the center.

Bring a non-member friend and be prepared to discuss your favorite parts of Mark Twain's THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER. We will also have an opportunity to make some adventures of our own. Try your luck at a game of marbles or a bow-and-arrow contest. Pirating, Robin Hooding and cave exploration will also be included. I will also need a volunteer with an armspan of six feet, if you can "fathom" what that is about.

Snacks are pot luck. As gracious as the manager of The Glaser Center, David Templeton, was to allow us to use their boardroom for our meeting, he would not allow me to bring in firewood for a campfire. Therefore, Starbucks will provide hot coffee.

Admission is free, but bring some cash. For a dollar a ticket, or ten for half a sawbuck, you'll be in a drawing for a blank Mark Twain journal so you can start to write about your own adventures.

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SPRING CREATIVE WRITING
A SEA OF PROMPTS
with Stefanie Freele

Spring is coming and oh what a wonderful time for new fresh writing! In a relaxed and supportive atmosphere students will create new prose and poetry based on prompts, exercises, assignments and suggestions.

Requirements: Beginners and experienced writers welcome. Participants should be prepared to be creative and occasionally silly.

Stefanie Freele is the author of the short story collection, Feeding Strays, published by Lost Horse Press (2009). She is also the 2010-2011 Healdsburg Literary Laureate. Her recent and forthcoming work can be found in Glimmer Train, American Literary Review, and The Pedestal Magazine. Stefanie has an MFA from the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts and is the Fiction Editor for the Los Angeles Review.

3 Weeks: 10-12am Fridays – April 9, 16, 23 - $50 Plaza Arts Center – Healdsburg

Contact: Stefanie@stefaniefreele.com or 707-889-0473

"Exercises teach you how to hear the outside world as a sea of prompts, a sea of exercises for potential stories." Pamela Painter

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This message is from Juanita J. Martin:

Hello RW members:
This message is to inform those members that come to the Barking Dog, that the program will be next Sat, April 10th at 5:30 pm.
This month I will feature Gwynn O'Gara, Sonoma County Poet laureate 2010-2011. There will be a booksigning, an open mike session, and light refreshments. This is honor of National Poetry Month.

Next month in May on the 1st, the readers from 95% Naked anthology will read. There will a flyer at the next general meeting.
Some of those readers include our own President (LInda), Harry Reid, Elaine Maikovska, and others.

Please come and support your fellow writers.

Juanita J. Martin, Host of UniverSoul Open Mike Series
RW Historian

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This comes from Jordan Rosenfeld, a longtime friend of Redwood Writers.


Revise for Publication April 16 to May 14, 2010. $159 regular. $129 early registration discount before April 10, 2010.
You can register at the following link:
www.jordanrosenfeld.net/events-classes.html .

20 FOR $20.
Looking for an editor, but not sure you want to commit to a full manuscript up front? Try my 20 pages for $20 sample edit!

www.jordanrosenfeld.net/editing.html.

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What: Authors' Luncheon

Where: Cloverdale Senior Center

When: Saturday, April 17

1-3 p.m.

Why: Our own Mary Lynn Archibald will be one of the honored authors participating.

There will be a book signing after.

311 N. Main St. Cloverdale

894-4826

You can reserve table for 4-6 people, or reserve individually.

http://www.cloverdaleseniorcenter.com/?p=466

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Classes with Patricia Volonakis Davis

A Writer's 'Platform' and Blog: What? Why?

Tuesday, April 20, 2010 at 1:00 - 3:00 pm and Thursday, April 22, 2010 at 1:00- 3:00pm Redwood High School, Larkspur, CA

In this seminar for both aspiring and experienced writers (and other professionals looking to gain customers through social networking) we will discuss exactly what a 'platform' is, what a 'blog' is, and why blogs are so valuable to anyone who is either seeking to gain or widen their audience.

Participants will learn WHERE the best spots to blog are, WHEN a writer should blog, and most importantly, HOW each individual writer's blog should vary in topic, length, frequency, etc. Participants will leave this workshop with a working online blog in place, and concrete knowledge of how, in as little as two hours per week, we can build our readership to help our sales.

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Wednesday, April 21, 2010
12 noon – 1 pm
In Honor of April ~ Poetry Month
Albert Flynn DeSilver, First Poet Laureate of Marin
“Creativity & the Art of Leadership”
Center for Student Leadership, Bertolini Student Center, Rm 4643

Leaders create reality. They are the master artists of their lives. With
the clarity of their intention and attention they create lives of
harmony, beauty, and abundance for themselves and for their community.
What is true creativity, and how do we tap into that powerful stream?
How do we become such leaders of inspiration and invention? First, by
simply deciding to.

And also by committing to a new vision for our selves and for humanity
at large. By being willing to believe in and actively participate
within, a new paradigm of empowered responsibility and infinite possibility.

Albert Flynn DeSilver
http://www.theowlpress.com/afd_photos.html
http://www.redroom.com/video/marin-poetry-chair

He is an internationally published poet, writer, artist, teacher, and
entrepreneur. He is the current Poet Laureate of Marin County California
and the CEO of Visiting Angels, Santa Rosa, a Homecare agency that
provides caregiving services to Seniors throughout the North Bay.

Contact: Sahara Chaldean, Student Center Coordinator, Student Affairs
schaldean@santarosa.edu (707)527-4460

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Lynn Henriksen and Kate Farrell will be offering a

Wisdom Has a Voice Workshop: Daughters Remember Mothers

Close to Mother's Day, this memoir workshop is an opportunity to honor and record a special memory about mother.

And we have exciting news about our upcoming Wisdom anthology and a call for submissions!

April 24th, Saturday, at the Sitting Room in Cotati

3-hour workshop is from 9:00am - Noon

Limited to 12 participants (women only)

Cost: $35

To sign up, you can visit our website, http://www.wisdomhasavoice.com/workshops/

Or

Email: Lynn@wisdomhasavoice.com

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We won't make you do sit-ups at the next Self-Publishing Boot Camp Workshop: Ten Steps to Self-Publishing Success on May 1st! SBW members get a $15 discount for this all-day workshop with Lisa Alpine and Carla King.

Held at the historic Mechanics' Institute in the San Francisco Financial District.

Saturday, May 1

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0VQJYHeSG79NROkyDR4XGQ8zJx5Ocuu1NN4_appC55-FuZQpWp6QDAJUTJA2Gh6Q40H4QcWn-8_dkcHkILsc4A64QDCsAxVxpZNecZOpAPr9aSUNeRHDuCNZFW0ZSQxZdMvAVHZoVU7c/s1600/Self+publishing+bootcamp2+2010.jpg9:30 - 4:30 pm

$155 (CWC members $140)
The fee includes the 87-page Self-Publishing Boot Camp Workbook (a $29.95 value)

To register, go to http://www.selfpubbootcamp.com/pages/workshops/ and use this discount code: SBWWS

Dave LaRoche of the South Bay branch gave this testimonial:

We, at SBW, have benefited from a workshop very similar to that being produced here and I heartily endorse this duo, their interest and knowledge related to book publishing in its many current forms. Their presentation is crammed packed with the current publishing opportunities, advanced in an organized way, entertaining, and well worth the fee.


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Another friend of Redwood Writers is Becca Lawton.

Becca's Environmental Poetry Series
One Wednesday and Three Thursdays in May: Th May 6, Weds May 12, Th May 20, and Th May 27, 4 to 6 p.m. $100 + $20 donation until closed. Sign up by email: becca@beccalawton.com. Partial scholarships available! by contacting J.J. Wilson, boxcar@sonic.net.

Becca's Publication Action Plans.
Becca is working with writers on developing their own Publication Action Plans! She offers personalized guidance in writing a schema for fleshing out your work and getting it into print. Flat fee: conference and feedback on work samples included. For more detail, email becca@beccalawton.com.