Who We Are

First-time author and screenwriter Deborah Barigian narrates a compelling journey through several generations of her Armenian family as they endured genocide, emigration, and the challenges of holding onto their cherished cultural traditions. 
 
A born storyteller, Deborah’s writing style is a free-flowing stream of consciousness that brings to life a family story steeped in the vibrant details of Armenian experience spanning 120 years.
 
A longtime member of CWC Marin who recently re-joined, Deborah says, “I am so grateful for the support and the valuable things I’ve learned from my peers and mentors. I honestly didn’t know I had it in me to write anything, but I’m so encouraged now that I’ve jumped in the deep end to tell the story of my family and ancestors. It’s been such a liberating experience, and I’m sure I’m being guided through the process by unseen hands.”

John Byrne Barry is a writer, designer, actor, bicycle tour leader, and crossing guard. He is author of When I Killed My Father: An Assisted-Suicide Family Thriller; Bones in the Wash: Politics is Tough. Family is Tougher, which won Best Book 2015 from the Bay Area Independent Publishers Association (BAIPA); and Wasted, a “green noir”  mystery set in the Berkeley recycling world. 

Diane Bouchard is an employee of Dominican University who completed her MA in Business Administration in 2022 and decided against an MBA which would have been logical and certainly opened career opportunities beyond her wildest dreams. Instead she chose a path to indulge her creativity by embarking on the MFA program and her first submission to the New York Times Modern Love column was published in Tiny Love Stories. 

Since then, Diane, who was widowed after a blissful 25-year marriage, has written too many sad tragic stories of love and loss until encouraged to “write something happy even if she has to make it up”. Which she did, and so many wonderful things transpired, including embarking on her debut novel, Dear Celeste, which she hopes to complete this summer. 

Diane is a member of Mount Tam Writers and has given impassioned readings at Books by the Bay and Writers Night Out to appreciative audiences who seem to laugh at all the right places. Known for her wit and Canadian self-deprecating writing style, Diane is delighted to join the CWC!

Robyn Brooks, M.F.A., author of the poetry chapbook, “venus in retrograde” (Finishing Line Press, 2015), is an award-winning poet, playwright and director. Her plays have been staged/read at Berkeley Repertory Theatre; Tennessee Women’s Theater Project; Theatre of Yugen; Theatre Rhinoceros; Potrero Stage, IATI Theater, and Ross Valley Players. A PlayGround SF Writers Pool playwright from 2007-2013/2023-2026, and People’s Choice Commissioned/Resident Playwright 2024-2025, Brooks is a MNPG People’s Choice Award winner, a selected playwright for Best of PlayGround ’24, and Best of the Best of PlayGround ‘24. Her one-act play, Tales of a Baby Dyke in a Smoking Jacket, received a staged reading at Ross Valley Players New Works. Her full-length play, The Ghost of Genevieve Baptiste, CIMIENTOS 2024, is a semifinalist in the Playwrights Foundation 47th Bay Area Playwrights Festival (BAPF47). Brooks is a model in the internationally renowned Women En Large: Images of Fat Nudes, included in Martin Parr’s photo book collection, in the permanent collection at Tate Modern, London, UK.

New Play Exchange

Patricia Cannon has been a Registered Nurse for almost twenty years at UCSF Medical Center and has practiced in cardiac critical care, neuro intensive care, heme oncology, and currently specializes in research. Her passion is her Faith, photography, and the written word in all its forms. Her poetry has been published in various magazines and books.

Erik, from San Rafael, writes fiction, short stuff, a lot of it, but has not been published enough to have a big ego . . . yet.

His long-suffering wife confides to friends that she considers his writing addiction as “harmless, cheaper than therapy, and it keeps him off the street.”

He is grateful to The Iowa Review, Typishly, Military Experience and the Arts and others for sharing some of his stories.

Christie is a native Californian who is writing a memoir about her early life in the Sierras, and later adventures in Big Sur, Mt Shasta, and in The Sangre De Cristo mountains of New Mexico, spanning from 1945 to 2010. She has self- published two books on Amazon: Veil, Poems of Transformation and Writing Our Way Through Life, A Self-coaching Workbook. The workbook is a non-profit project serving homeless shelters, although readers say it can benefit anyone. It is available at The Depot Bookstore in Mill Valley. Christie is seeking sponsors to help give more of these workbooks to non-profit organizations that serve the homeless.

 Christie produced several music events and one album for environmental and humanitarian causes and recently directed and produced a documentary film shot in Bolinas. Boundless Heart, by Pitaka Christie Close, can be found on YouTube. It’s a peek into Zen experience and contemplative retreats.

 Christie is also a local artist working in non-toxic and recycled materials, with an
online showroom at victressarts.com. She facilitates a small writer’s group that meets
bi-weekly at her showroom in Mill Valley where memoir writers read works in progress.

Before becoming a full-time writer and freelance editor in 2015, I was a trial attorney and legal writing instructor for four decades and concurrently devoted twenty-five years as a basketball coach, primarily at the high school level. I have authored or co-authored (as ghostwriter) nine published works and am working on a second novel and a TV series screenplay. My ghostwriting work spans several genre, including memoir, true crime, military, sports, leadership, spiritual, fiction, business, political, and self-empowerment (prescriptive). I also freelance developmental edit and assist writers in querying agents and submitting to publishers.

I am a Bronx native. I earned a BS in Education from the City University of New York and a JD from the University of California, Berkeley. I play guitar, hold a black belt in karate, am a certified workout junkie, hike regularly in California and Colorado, and play pickleball. I live in Mill Valley, California.

My current project is a historical novel about Junia, the only woman described as an apostle in the New Testament.

Colleen is a writer, Certified Grief Educator, and retired Educational Therapist. Her daughter, Chelsea Faith Dolan, was a well-respected electronic musician and producer known professionally as Cherushii. Chelsea died in the Ghost Ship fire, one of 36 talented young friends who attended a party on the second floor of the warehouse.

Colleen witnessed the fire on December 2, 2016, attended every day of the trial two years later, and has written several articles about her grief experience.

 The Ghost Ship Fire chronicles her journey from the night of the fire to her eventual acceptance of grief as an ongoing part of her life. This book is written for bereaved parents searching for the How and Why of their children’s deaths. You are not alone.

Lane Dooling lives in Marin County and has a son, daughter, stepson, and stepdaughter. Her other family members include rescue dogs Yoko and Gigi. Lane is the Marketing and Social Media Coordinator for the Marin History Museum. Her favorite part of the job is researching and writing about local history. She enjoys historical mystery books and movies. She is currently working on a book set in Marin County during the early 1940s on the brink of the nation’s entry into WWII. Her hobbies include walking the dogs, exercising, baking, and adding some sparkle to the lives of family and friends. 

Published Work:

•  https://www.storyhouse.org/lane3.html 
• https://www.storyhouse.org/lane2.html 
• https://www.storyhouse.org/lane7.html 
• https://www.storyhouse.org/lane.html 
• https://www.storyhouse.org/lane9.html 
• https://www.storyhouse.org/lane4.html 

Carol is a third generation Marinite. She lives in San Anselmo with her husband and two golden labradoodles. A retired operating room nurse, Carol enjoys gardening and owning a small business as a jeweler.

Carol’s new book Son on the Run is based on a true story of a brilliant young man whose paranoia, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia compelled him to travel the world, fleeing his demons. Carol has her own mental health challenges, including a long history of undiagnosed bipolar illness, which spurred her to write this story. Her hope is to reach other people struggling with mental illness, either with family or friends.

Check out Son on the Run on Amazon!

Jen is a writer, former Professor of Child Development, and mother of two. She writes about parenting and being kind to yourself. When she’s not writing, she’s hanging out with her teenagers or playing with her sweet, crazy dog. She lives in West Marin and is looking forward to meeting other writers in this group.

Subscribe to her newsletter!

https://www.drjenferris.com

Marilyn is an author and oral historian whose first oral histories were of Sicilian fishermen on San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf. Marilyn’s works include Marin Mind/Scapes: Stories of Art, Wellness and Nature, The Madonna del Lume/Blessing of the Fishing Fleet, and Marin City Memories, which relates the experiences of Black workers who migrated to the Sausalito shipyards during World War II. Her most recent book, Miners, Milkers and Merchants: from the Swiss-Italian Alps to the Golden Hills of Australia and California, recounts the lives of three brothers who emigrated from Ticino in the mid-nineteenth century. She writes a substack newsletter Solo Travels After 50 in which she posts a diary of trips she has taken as a solo traveler over several decades. She is currently working on a memoir with the working title: Taking the Waters: Finding Renewal in Tuscany’s Hot Springs. In this memoir plus travel book, she confronts the realities of aging through traveling alone in her late seventies to hot springs in central Italy. 

English teacher Gini writes historical novels, flash fiction, and poetry, and founded San Rafael Writers & Artists online workshops in 2024. Novels in her American Madams trilogy won the 2018 and 2020 IPPY silver medals. Through JGKS Press, she offers coaching and editing services for fiction and memoir.  Gini is past recipient of the CWC Jack London service award.   https://www.ginigrossenbacher.com

Nitai is a writer and artist, focusing on adventure memoirs, such as his “Riding Backwards Down the Gila”, 2023, -available at Sausalito Books By The Bay-, and “100 Sketches of Japan”, 2024, both with his own illustrations.

Current projects are a vision quest memoir, and a collaboration on international love letters.

Neil, or Nitai, as he has been known since 1979 after his initiation at the Berkeley Hare Krishna Temple, has received his Masters in Arts Leadership and Cultural Management at Colorado State University (Dec 13, 2024).

A professional gold miner, USFS Wildland Firefighter, and an Archaeology tech, he lately manned the customer service counter at Sausalito’s Ship-n-Mail. For fifteen years, he spent half the year packing and shipping fine art, and the other half traveling and living in Asia.

Nitai is learning the skills of storytelling & starting a deep dive promoting and marketing his books, with Amazon, social media, and ‘booking’ readings/signings at bookstores in the West.

During his professional career, he published five monographs and over eighty articles in professional and scholarly journals. Haro served with the U.S. President’s Cabinet Committee on Opportunities for the Spanish Speaking, and as a consultant for the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. An American Council on Education Fellow in 1986, he also completed the Harvard University Institute for Educational Management in 1987. Haro was an elected Trustee of The College Board, and an elected board member of the University of California Alumni Association.

After retiring in 2003, Haro started writing novels under the pen name Roberto de Haro. Hs books include: The Mexican Chubasco, Camino Doloroso, Alejandro’s Story, Twist of Fate, Intermezzo of the Longing Hearts, For Nadine’s Love, The Wayward Zephyr, and The Hawk’s Reemergence.

I am an Hungarian American author of three published novels. My initial books, Lipstick and Lies and Hollywood Buzz showcase heroines of the WWII home front, the female pilots of the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots (WASP). A third novel Triptych is set in postwar Hungary, spun loosely from personal family stories. The Ocean Between Us, a personal essay about my journey to a deeper understanding of my Hungarian refugee mother and my heritage, was published in the Fall 2016 Chicago Quarterly Review. An early excerpt of my current novel in-the-works was published in Catamaran Literary reader in Summer 2022. I am a member of MWA, SINC, a proud alum of the Community of Writers, and have appeared as a guest expert on the PBS series History Detectives.  www.margitliesche.com

Deanna Lutzeier is a lifelong learner who has spent the past decade immersed in creative writing. She graduated from Emerson College’s MFA program with high marks and earned a merit-based scholarship. “Utopia 40,” a short story created in a Gothic Literature class, was featured in the CWC Literary Review for 2020. She is working on a Young Adult novel under a pen name and various short stories. In addition to writing, Deanna enjoys Hula, ballet, learning French, and volunteering.

I am an artist who writes, paints, and works in fabric. I was born in Pennsylvania but, after living here more than fifty years, California is my home.

When I was six years old I started writing in my diary on a daily basis and have continued writing personal journals ever since. Those first entries did not say much more than “we had spaghetti for dinner” but they sparked a desire to write poetry and short stories, correspond with a pen-pal for over sixty years, and eventually write and publish two books. There are several more books currently in the works which I suspect will always be the case.

I studied art at Columbus College of Art and Design in Ohio and Academy of Art College in San Francisco. I also earned a business degree from St. Mary’s College in Moraga. I have shown and sold my art in solo and group shows. My books have not made the bestseller list yet, but I continue to write because I continue to have words and ideas I want to share.

My husband, Preston McCoy, and I live in Terra Linda near our children and grandchildren. I like to garden, spend time in Nature, do genealogy research, and take long walks when I’m not writing or making other art.

My books are available in paperback or eBooks through Barnes and Noble or Amazon. “The Wright Place at the Right Time” and “The Ghost of Etienne Passat”

Preston is a graduate of the College of Marin and the University of Oregon, with a major in Political Science. His family roots are Iowa pioneering farm people, but he was born in New York City and grew up in California during the 1940’s and 50’s. Mill Valley was his home for grammar school and high school. His parents gave him a strong sense of history and a curiosity about everything. He has a lifelong passion for bicycles, modified cars, and photography.

After his career as a Business Systems Analyst and Technical Writer, Preston focused on writing about family history and his own life experiences. In this way he emulated his father, who wrote colorful family stories about life and times in rural Iowa during the horse and buggy days. In addition to writing, Preston builds electric assist mountain bikes (eBikes) and enjoys riding the fire roads on Mt. Tam and in the Marin Open Space.

Diana E. Putterman is a retired advertising executive who has been published professionally in Broadcast Magazine and AdAge. Today she volunteers as an English teacher to asylum seekers and translates Spanish to English for Immigration for Justice. She lives in Marin County, has two sons, hikes, and practices yoga. Her thesis, Blanquiando, has earned over 300 downloads on Dominican scholar. She has expanded the thesis into a book, The Women Don’t Talk, a Story of Racial Compromise and Hidden Identity. Her websites are dianaputterman.com and blanquiando.com.

MA, MFT: Rosie is a former healthcare administrator and psychotherapist.

• Her new book, If You’d Only Listen: A Medical Memoir of Gaslighting, Grit & Grace is now available from most retailers.
• Her work has appeared in the Literary Medical Messenger, the Los Angeles Times, Mobius, the Chicago Tribune, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Pittsburgh Tribune Review and others. It appears in the anthology, The Magic of Memoir: Inspiration for the Writing Journey. She also writes political satire for the Progressive Populist.
•  Winner, Zibby Book Award, for If You’d Only Listen, in the category of “Overcoming.”
•  Inclusion in Crime Bits: 100 Opening Gambits for Great Thrillers, chosen by Lee Child, Judge.
• Finalist in The San Francisco Writer’s Conference 2023 Writing Contest for the Introduction to If You’d Only Listen: A Medical Memoir of Gaslighting, Grit & Grace, published in their anthology.
• Winner, Joyce Turley Scholarship from the 2020 San Francisco Writer’s Conference for an essay.
• Winner, Listener Favorite Award from KQED-FM, the popular San Francisco NPR affiliate in its “Perspectives” series.

My grandfather shook his school bell on the steps of a one-room schoolhouse. He passed that bell on to my father who passed it onto me. This old, brass bell sat on my desk in Mission Viejo, California, until I retired as a third-generation elementary school teacher. But before retirement, I earned my Masters of International Studies while living and teaching a year at a communist, government school in Shenzhen, China. China opened doors that launched me into exploring other cultures and for a season, I lived in Argentina and Spain, then back to my roots in Santa Fe, New Mexico, before settling in Marin County, California, where I now reside. But days travel over the horizon and pass from sight with each sunset, and it soon became time to get serious about my unfulfilled passion for writing. My first book, Under My Rice, is a hybrid memoir of one teacher’s struggle to achieve the impossible in China. My inspirational stories are published in Guideposts Magazine, Angels, and Mysterious Ways. I also write children’s books and dabble in screenplays. In the works are a thriller screenplay, “Swerve”, and a children’s book series, Swing High Sally.

Mike has a galaxy in his mind. Full of worlds and alien peoples, constantly pestering him with their stories. He has no choice but to get them down as best he can.

He started a short story about a singer who nursed the surviving alien from a spaceship crash back to health. They communicated by singing. This story became a trilogy, then a series (find it here):

• Aliens Crashed in My Back Yard

• My Spaceship Calls Out to Me

• Space Girl Yearning

• Alien Invasion: There Goes the Neighborhood

Since his main character is a singer, Mike wrote lyrics for songs she performed. Once he had lyrics, he needed music. So, he got music composed and sung, and now has seven songs produced. Sci-fi with a sound track!

His biggest influences are Ursula Leguin and David Brin, because they are masters at drawing many loosely connected stories out of a consistent universe.

In addition, Mike completed the book started by his wife who passed away in 2023, The French Woman’s Ghost, combining romance, murder mystery, and a beautiful ghost—his first foray into romance writing.

In his years as a business consultant, he also wrote over 20 books and workbooks.

After a successful career in integrative medicine, health education and marketing, Diane is following her passion to write.   She is currently working on her first fantasy novel, a paranormal suspense.

Previously, two of her prose poems “India” and “I Remember” were published in 2016 by Vistas & Byways.  She also participated in the writing and editing of a non-fiction book Power Choices by psychologist Dr. Brenda Wade.

Jett Walker was raised in Long Beach, California. After college she taught school in Long Beach and Compton. She lived in Italy, Delaware, Washington D.C. area, and Aspen, Colorado before settling in Tiburon 33 years ago. Once in the Bay area she attended the Academy of Art. She did a lot of writing in college at Long Beach but turned her creative endeavors to art working in paint, etchings, and sculpture. She is a past president of Marin Society of Artists. Ten years ago she started her first novel. It has been edited and reedited umpteen times. It awaits its finished draft. In the meantime she has just completed her second novel’s first draft. She loves words and is fairly fluent in Italian and Spanish, having studied in Spain, Peru, Mexico, and Costa Rica.