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.
by CWC Marin administrator | Feb 15, 2013 | Events
Point of View
Patricia Bracewell
and
Gillian Bagwell
April 28, 2013, 2 to 4 p.m.
Book Passage in Corte Madera
Patricia Bracewell
author of Shadow on the Crown (Viking/Penguin, 2013)
Patricia is a writer of historical fiction set in 11th century England. Her debut novel, Shadow on the Crown, is the first book in a trilogy about Emma of Normandy, whose marriage in A.D. 1002 to an English king set in motion a series of events that would lead, eventually, to the Norman Conquest of A.D. 1066. She was born and raised in Los Angeles and spent much of her childhood with her nose in a book.
In college she majored in English Literature, performed in several campus theater productions, worked part-time in a bookstore and sang with a small band in a local bar. She spent her final undergraduate semester in Switzerland and followed that with several months of travel, last stop Great Britain.
and
Gillian Bagwell
author of September Queen (Berkeley/Penguin, 2011)
and
The Darling Strumpet (Berkeley/Penguin, 2011)
Gillian Bagwell grew up in Berkeley, California, and began her professional life as an actress, studying at the University of California Berkeley and the Drama Studio London at Berkeley before relocating to Los Angeles to pursue a career in film and television. She moved into directing and producing theatre, founding The Pasadena Shakespeare Company, where she served as artistic director for nine years, producing thirty-seven critically acclaimed productions. She united her life-long love of books, British history, and theatre in writing her first novel, The Darling Strumpet, based on the life of Nell Gwynn. Her second novel, The September Queen, is the first fictional account of the perilous and romantic odyssey of Jane Lane, an ordinary English girl who risked her life to help the young Charles II escape after the disastrous Battle of Worcester in 1651 by disguising him as her servant.
Point of View defines the choices available to the writer: omniscient versus character viewpoints (first person, the rarely used second person, third person, shifting viewpoints).
Presenters will provide examples illustrating each type of viewpoint; discussion of the advantages of each viewpoint, the disadvantages, and what a writer must consider before making a choice. Q & A to follow.
by CWC Marin administrator | Feb 15, 2013 | Events
Constance Hale
From the Swamp to Squidoo
May 26, 2013
Book Passage in Corte Madera
Connie Hale takes you on a romp through the history of the English verb, offering tips on how to perk up your prose.
Constance Hale, the author of three books on the craft of writing talks about how she went from speaking Hawaiian creole as a child to majoring in English at Princeton and scrubbing copy at Wired magazine in its heyday.
Her latest book—Vex, Hex, Smash, Smooch—offers keys to unlocking your innate creativity. In a highly interactive presentation, she mixes anecdote with practical tips and turns the principles in the book into hilarious challenges and wacky contests. (You may even win a prize!) Throughout, she encourages writers to make creative mischief.
A former editor at Wired, Health, and The San Francisco Examiner, her freelance work has appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, and the Smithsonian, among other publications. She directed the program in narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation at Harvard, and teaches at UC Berkeley Extension.
