by CWC Marin administrator | Nov 23, 2013 | Events
Mollie Giles
January 26, 2014, 2-4 p.m., Book Passage in Corte Madera
Award-winning author Molly Giles is best known for her short stories. Molly Giles is a short story writer, novelist, and professor in the Department of English at the University of Arkansas. She formerly taught at San Francisco State University.
She is the author of Creek Walk and Other Stories published in 1997 and the novel Iron Shoes published in 2000. Her story collection Rough Translations won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. She also appears in Sudden Fiction (60 New Short-Short Stories).
Her short stories have been translated into Spanish.
With a masters degree in English, Giles was a professor of Creative Writing at San Jose State University and is currently Professor and Director of Programs in Creative Writing at the University of Arkansas.
by CWC Marin administrator | Nov 3, 2013 | Classes and Workshops
Novato AAUW 5th Annual Author Event
Saturday, November 9, 2013, 2 – 4 p.m.
Trevitt Hall, 710 Wilson Ave., Novato.
Novato AAUW presents Lynn Henriksen, author of Tell Tale Souls: Writing the Mother Memoir.
Keeping Spirits Alive—Tap Memory and Write Memoir
Memories . . . If you don’t write them down, they will be lost. Wouldn’t that be a shame?
Lynn Henriksen invites you into a spirited and soulful world where the focus is on “Keeping Spirits Alive.” You’ll find keys to unlock memories and how to perceive them in a whole new light. Tapping memory creatively will trigger unexpected impressions and provide the means to move memory into memoir with honesty and imagination. Learn why emotional memory is the all-powerful catalyst in discovering the character and spirit of people and the significant events you want remembered. Then find out how to use emotional memory to create stories filled with passion and energy. After all, that’s what will make the memoirs only you can write memorable.
Whether you’re just thinking about writing memoir or well into it and whether your stories are heartwarming or heartwrenching, get your creative juices flowing and awaken your voice to breathe life into inspired memoirs.
Lynn Cook Henriksen, The Story Woman™, is the founder of “TellTale Souls,” an enterprise promoting writing memoir creatively through workshops, classes, speaking presentations, and her award-winning guidebook, TellTale Souls Writing the Mother Memoir: How to Tap Memory and Write Your Story Capturing Character & Spirit. As an intuitive leader, Lynn discovered a profound way to keep spirits alive after witnessing Alzheimer’s disease ravage her mother’s mind. As an author, teacher, and entrepreneur, she has helped hundreds of people from 9 to 90 capture the memories and feelings they never thought they could record.
Lynn is a member of California Writers Club, Marin and past president of the Women’s National Book Association, San Francisco.
by CWC Marin administrator | Oct 24, 2013 | Contests
We have just received a series of notices of upcoming writing contests run by JM Northern Media LLC, a group based in Hollywood, California that was founded in 1999 to “produce annual events and report on the people who are making things happen in the world of digital media and beyond.”
Their contests include DIY Convention: Do it Yourself in Film, Music & Books; the New York Book Festival; the Aliens to Zombies Convention; the Young Professionals in Energy International Summit; BookFestivals.com, and more. Cities for their contests also include New Orleans, San Francisco, and London, among others. 2013 winners are posted on their site(s). There are a few negative comments on various sites, but JM Northern Media claims to be legitimate.
Considerations — For ANY Contest
Do your part up front.
Enter contests where you feel you have a good chance of winning and where entering and winning does not hurt your marketing budget, but rather is likely to pay off in publicity and book sales.
Is the contest worth entering?
When a book wins the Pulitzer Prize or National Book Award, or a children’s book wins the Newberry Medal, readers take notice. The book and the author receive considerable media attention. While other contests, such as those run by JM Northern Media might be questionable, having an award sticker on your book cover or a statement about your award on your website will probably help your book’s sales.
Even if you win a contest, it does you little good if it doesn’t help increase sales and media attention for your book, so be careful what contests you enter.
Following are some guidelines for determining whether a book contest is worth entering, just a waste of your money, or perhaps even a scam.
What is the prize?
Consider if you are going to have a significant outlay of your own money to get to an awards dinner. That can get expensive: travel expenses, lodging, trophies or certificates. If it’s a legitimate contest, your expenses should be covered.
Read the fine print. Will you be published. Or, if published, will you be represented by a publishing house, literary agency, publicist? Who pays for what? In traditional publishing, the author does not pay for anything up front.
Who is conducting the contest?
Make sure the contest is being run by a reputable individual, company, or organization. Any legitimate contest will have a reputable website with a disclosure page listing contest rules, guidelines, and other information. Magazine or Craigslist ads are not indications of legitimate contests. While it’s true that anyone can build a webpage so that isn’t the ultimate proof, it does help because of the commitment of time and expense to build a site.
Judges and Judging
A legitimate book contest will have judges and a judging process in place.
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How long has the contest been around?
If the contest has been around a few years and has a published list of winners, it might be worth entering. Consider the entry criteria (including fees), take time to Google the organizers to see what turns up. View their list of judges, which should consist of writers, publishers, and recognizable publicists. Not “Judges may include” but actually listing the names of the judges, or telling you what group of people compile the judges.
Fees? Who Pays for What?
A contest with a reasonable fee is usually legitimate, particularly if there are cash and/or travel prizes connected. Fees usually pay for advertising the contest, for prizes, and sometimes for small gratuities given to thank the judges for their time. Most importantly, the fee should ensure that a solid system is set up for reading/judging your work.
Beware of additional fees once you win the contest, such as receiving a discount on book coaching services.
Note how many copies of your book are needed. A legitimate contest will usually need more than one book because there are multiple judges who will need to read the book. See also if a statement is made about what happens to the books-do the judges keep them or donate them to a library?
Contest Deadlines and Rules?
At least a month should pass between the deadline and the announcements so the judges have time actually to read the books.
Be sure you hold onto the rights of your work, unless, of course, it is a top notch contest that comes with publishing with a major house.
by CWC Marin administrator | Sep 30, 2013 | Events
The pitfalls and unexpected rewards of turning memoir into fiction.
with
Mary-Rose Hayes
Sunday, April 13, 2014
2:00-4:00 p.m.
Book Passage – 51 Tamal Vista Blvd., Corte Madera
Mary-Rose Hayes will discuss writing her new novel WHAT SHE HAD TO DO; the reasons it took so long (more than ten years) and how that was a blessing in
disguise; 
why the characters in the book didn’t seem real until she stepped out of their lives and allowed them to develop on their own; and how, by the time she had typed “THE END” for the final time, she had surprisingly come to terms with past issues of her own.
British-born Mary-Rose Hayes is the author of eight previous novels including the TIME/LIFE best seller AMETHYST, and two political thrillers co-authored with Senator Barbara Boxer.
The Marin branch was chartered with CWC in 1999. For additional information, visit our History page or the California Writers Club website: www.calwriters.org
by CWC Marin administrator | Sep 16, 2013 | Events
“The Evolution of a Book:
From Idea to Publication”
Sunday, October 27, 2013: 2 p.m. to 4 p.m.
Book Passage, Corte Madera
Author of the bestselling novel The Oracle of Stamboul, Michael David Lukas has been a Fulbright Scholar in Turkey, a night-shift proofreader in Tel Aviv, and a waiter at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in Vermont. A 2010 National Endowment for the Arts fellow and finalist for the 2012 California Book Award, he lives in Oakland.
Michael David Lukas
Michael is a recipient of scholarships from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Summer Writers’ Institute, Squaw Valley Community of Writers, and Elizabeth George Foundation.
Sunday, October 27, 2013, 2 p.m. to 4 p.m.
Book Passage, Corte Madera.
