by CWC Marin administrator | Feb 27, 2013 | Contests, Events
2013 SAN FRANCISCO BOOK FESTIVAL SETS DATE
SAN FRANCISCO _ The 2013 San Francisco Book Festival will return to the Sir Francis Drake Hotel on May 18 for its annual competition honoring the best books of the spring.
The 2013 San Francisco Book Festival will consider non-fiction, fiction, biography/autobiography, children’s books, compilations/anthologies, young adult, how-to, cookbooks, science fiction, business, history, wild card, gay, photography/art, poetry, unpublished, technology and spiritual/religious works. There is no date of publication deadline.
The grand prize for the 2013 San Francisco Book Festival is $1500 cash and a flight to San Francisco for our gala awards ceremony on Saturday, May 18 at the Sir Francis Drake Hotel.
Submitted works will be judged by a panel of industry experts using the following criteria:
- General excellence and the author’s passion for telling a good story.
- The potential of the work to reach a wider audience.
TO ENTER: Entry forms are available online at sanfranciscobookfestival.com or may be faxed/e-mailed to you. Please contact the San Francisco Book Festival office at 323-665-8080 for fax requests. Applications must be accompanied by a non-refundable entry fee of $50 in the form of a check, money order or PayPal online payment in U.S. dollars for each submission. Multiple submissions are permitted but each entry must be accompanied by a separate form and entry fee.
AWARDS: The San Francisco Book Festival selection committee reserves the right to determine the eligibility of any project.
by CWC Marin administrator | Feb 18, 2013 | Contests
The 2013 Truth in Words Essay Contest
This year, Notes & Words is partnering with A Band of Wives and Nothing But The Truth Publishing to bring you the Truth in Words essay contest.
The topic of this year’s essay contest is “Transitions” and we expect to see stories ranging from starting a family, recoveries, graduations, aging, career changes/promotions, marriage and divorce.
The maximum length of the essay is 1,200 words. The submission deadline is March 18, 2013, the same day tickets go on sale for Notes & Words 2013.
Up to THIRTY semi-finalists will be chosen by a Truth & Words panel, led by New York Times best-selling author Kelly Corrigan (The Middle Place and Lift). Judging will be based on criteria such as originality, creativity, use of language, and appropriateness to contest theme.
The semi-finalist essays will be published in the next Nothing But The Truth So Help Me God anthology, available in bookstores and online December 2013. Their work will appear alongside that of influential writers, artists and thought leaders such as author and motivational speaker Gabrielle Bernstein, New York Times bestselling author Kelly Corrigan, and 85 Broads founder Janet Hanson.
Excerpts from each of the thirty semi-finalists will also be posted to the Notes & Words Facebook page, where users will vote on their favorite entry. The judging panel will factor those votes into consideration when they choose one grand prize winner. The grand prize winner will have one-on-one phone consultations with:
- A senior editor at Random House/Ballantine
- A literary agent at ICM
- The Executive Editor of O Magazine
The grand prize winner will also receive two tickets to the Notes & Words performance and after-party on May 18, 2013 at The Fox Theater in Oakland, where they will have an opportunity to meet all of the performers.
Contest entries must be emailed to submissions@abandofwives.com as a Microsoft Word attachment. Please attach a 100-word biography.
One essay submission is allowed per person. Please see notesandwords.org or abandofwives.com for a complete list of rules.
To read the 2012 winning essay, click here
Click here for a list of Frequently Asked Questions
Click here for the Official Contest Rules
by CWC Marin administrator | Feb 17, 2013 | Classes and Workshops
Advanced Memoir and Nonfiction Writing
Carolyn Walker
Carolyn Walker has years of experience and is a published author. Gain valuable skills for nonfiction writing. Learn how to format your nonfiction proposal and present your work in the best possible light in the bootcamp, How to Get Your Nonfiction Book Published. The online event is presented by the acquisition team from Adams Media, Inc. Attendees should have at least a working outline of a nonfiction book or memoir, with the beginnings of a proposal and a sample chapter. Each registrant’s proposal will be critiqued. Held Feb 22-24.
by CWC Marin administrator | Feb 16, 2013 | Events
Literary Journalism
and The Enduring Power of Creative Writing
Scott Thomas Anderson
Sunday, February 24, 2013
2 to 4 pm
Book Passage in Corte Madera
Awarded the Robert Novak Journalism Fellowship in 2010, Scott Thomas Anderson spent 18 months as an embedded reporter with California law enforcement agencies, partnering with officers on night patrols, accompanying detectives on warrant searches and probation sweeps, observing SWAT operations and spending hundreds of hours with attorneys and victims’ advocates in small-town courtrooms.
During this time, he also traveled to different rural communities across the United States. 
The result was his nonfiction book, Shadow People: How Meth-driven Crime is Eating at the Heart of Rural America, an exploration of nation’s modern methamphetamine crisis.
An award-winning journalist and currently a crime reporter for The Press Tribune, serving Roseville and Granite Bay, he has written for The Sacramento News and Review and The Auburn Journal. His creative nonfiction stories have been featured in Sierra Lodestar Magazine. www.scottthomasanderson.com.
by CWC Marin administrator | Feb 16, 2013 | Events
Truth, Lies and Storytelling
Zoe FitzGerald Carter
February 20 – March 13, 2013
The Grotto, 490 2nd St, San Francisco
Number of sessions: 4
Meeting time: Wednesday nights
6:30 pm to 9:00 pm
Course fee: $260.
($100 deposit required to register; deposits are nonrefundable.)
To register, contact Zoe at: zoecarter@mac.com.
Description: This class is for writers who are grappling with how to shape and structure personal, non-fiction stories, either in the form of memoir or first-person essays. Whether your writing is largely theoretical or fully underway, this class will give you a chance to develop a practical and conceptual framework to move ahead.
Over four evenings, we will explore the essential components of memoir from the pragmatic (Do I need a disclaimer? Are pseudonyms necessary?) to the philosophical (What does “truth” in memoir really mean and when is it okay to shade that truth?) to process (How do we take emotional memories and translate them on the page?).
Along the way, we will talk about form (timelines, story arc, beginnings and endings), as well as craft (dialogue, scene, language) and will read examples from various literary memoirs and first-person essays.
Students will be asked to complete one writing exercise for each class and to bring in a short reading from home that will be critiqued with enormous respect and kindness by the class. If reading out loud makes you break out in hives, other arrangements can be made.
Zoe FitzGerald Carter is the author of the memoir, Imperfect Endings: A Daughter’s Story of Love, Loss, and Letting Go (Simon & Schuster). The book chronicles her mother’s decision to end her life after living with Parkinson’s disease for many years and the struggle Zoe and her two sisters had coming to terms with that choice.
Paula Span of The New York Times said, “I could quote from this book all day,” and People magazine wrote Imperfect Endings “coaxes beauty from the bleak.”
A graduate of Columbia Journalism School, Zoe has written for numerous publications including The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, Salon and Vogue. Imperfect Endings was excerpted in O magazine, chosen as a finalist for the National MS Society’s Books for a Better Life Awards in the “Inspirational Memoir” category, and is a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writer’s pick.
Zoe currently lives in the Bay Area and is at work on a non-fiction book about race, Facebook and unexpected kinship. Learn more at www.ImperfectEndings.com.
Zoe can be contacted at zoecarter@mac.com.
