by CWC Marin administrator | Mar 13, 2013 | Events
Dear CWC Branch Member:
We are very excited to announce a Writers Workshop with New York Times Bestselling Author Robert Dugoni, You won’t want to miss this event or the opportunity to have dinner with Mr. Dugoni after the event. Visit www.trivalleywriters.org to sign up now. I look forward to seeing you there.
Paula C. Chinick, President
CWC Tri-Valley Branch
Writing Workshop with Robert Dugoni
Creating Plots & Playing God
New York Times Bestselling Author Robert Dugoni will conduct a workshop “Creating Plots & Playing God”
Saturday, April 6, 12:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.
Does your novel or story keep your audience hungry for more? Do your characters resonate with your readers? If not, you won’t want to miss this workshop with Mr. Dugoni as he delves into ‘Creating Plots for Page Turners’ and ‘Playing God: Creating Memorable Characters’.
Robert Dugoni is the author of The Cyanide Canary, The Jury Master, Damage Control, Wrongful Death, Bodily Harm, Murder One, and The Conviction. Visit www.robertdugoni.com for more information about this very accomplished author.
Registration/check-in begins at 12 Noon at the Four Points by Sheraton, 5115 Hopyard in Pleasanton, CA.
Cost: CWC member $60, non-member $70.
Snacks & Beverages provided during break.
Reservations and payment required by April 1st.
Visit www.trivalleywriters.org to reserve your seat online or contact Deborah Bernal at reservations@trivalleywriters.org and mail check to:
CWC Tri-Valley Writers
Attn: Workshop
4682 Chabot Drive #10953
Pleasanton, CA 94588
by CWC Marin administrator | Mar 2, 2013 | Events
Petaluma Workshop
June 1, 2013
#1 New York Times Best Selling Author Cheryl Strayed (author of “Wild“, “Torch“, & “Tiny Beautiful Things“) is coming to Petaluma for a full day writing workshop, craft talk, and reading June 1, 2013.
TICKETS are going FAST: http://www.cherylstrayedevent.com
Cheryl Strayed is a memoirist, novelist and essayist. Her second book, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail was published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf on March 20, 2012 and has been translated into twenty-eight languages.
It debuted at No. 7 on the “New York Times Best Seller list” in hardcover nonfiction and on July 15, 2012, it reached No. 1 and held that spot for seven consecutive weeks. In June 2012, Oprah Winfrey announced that Wild was her first selection for her new Oprah’s Book Club 2.0. The actress Reese Witherspoon optioned “Wild” for film before it was published, with plans to star in the production as Strayed.
In 2010 Strayed began writing the “Dear Sugar” advice column for the literary web site The Rumpus. The column grew a fervent online following.
In July 2012 a collection of the columns was published by Vintage Books as Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar. It debuted at No. 5 on the “New York Times Best Seller list” in the advice and self-help category and has also been published internationally.
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 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.
Dear CWC Branch Member:
Does your novel or story keep your audience hungry for more? Do your characters resonate with your readers? If not, you won’t want to miss this workshop with Mr. Dugoni as he delves into ‘Creating Plots for Page Turners’ and ‘Playing God: Creating Memorable Characters’.
