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. 

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.

After growing up on the East Coast and then school and initial career in the Midwest, Susan chose California as her home in 1984. Her profession evolved from consumer marketing to social marketing to enhancing civic health and our capacity to use nonpartisan approaches for long standing social challenges (see her organization Common Knowledge).

Susan is often considered a writer because of all the communications she has crafted to engage people with deep sensitive topics. But she is first and foremost a dedicated listener to what people care about when they are not just reacting to the marketplace of ideas (which has some pretty strange merchandise these days). Susan “writes” everyday, transcribing what she’s heard from underappreciated “invisible” people who hold our communities together, as well as from a rowdy gang of muses that will not leave her alone. She has come to agree with Ursula K. LeGuin: “We can’t restructure our society without restructuring the English language.” Her genre-defying creative explorations are fueled by the creative tension between becoming an elder while at the same time unbecoming anything familiar to most of the givens she was given.

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.

As a kid, I wanted to be a theologian, archaeologist, and writer. Writing historical fiction about women of the Bible ticked all the boxes. Voila! The theme of my writing is that many ancient women had more power and influence than we are led to believe. Using the tools of modern historical research, I’ve reconstructed the stories of these gutsy, wise, and sometimes treacherous biblical characters.

I majored in the Philosophy of Religion, with post-graduate courses in writing craft and attendance at many writers’ conferences, including Haystack, workshops, and critique groups. I hold a certificate in Novel Writing from the University of Washington. I’ve combined my years of biblical research with my love of literature and archaeology. Many of my shorter works have appeared in literary magazines. I’m a member of several professional writing associations. I’ve lived in or visited most locations in my novels, Judith: The Wise Woman of Bethulia and Junia: The Forgotten Apostle, the story of the only named female apostle in the New Testament.

I’m a transplant from Seattle and I’ve made myself at home here by running every trail and street of San Francisco and the entire county of Marin. I live in Sausalito.

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 

Judy’s fiction stories have appeared in Birdland Journal and Shark Reef, along with two poems in The Garden Gazette. As a journalist she syndicated travel articles over USA Today Wire Services. She also wrote feature articles and a science column in Marinscope’s weekly newspaper and was their San Rafael city editor. Judy holds a BA from UC Berkeley in Sociology/English and an MA in Radio/Television from San Francisco State University, where she specialized in communications. She completed fiction courses of study with both UC Extension and Writer’s Studio. Currently, she’s finishing a fiction short story anthology, a fiction craft book, and chairs a committee to write the San Francisco Garden Club’s 100-year history.

Hannah has lived in Marin County since she was four years old and has been working in real estate for 22 years. While sharing her adventures with family and friends over the years, many of them remarked, “you should write a book!”  Finally, she is doing just that.  She is excited to share these stories and the lessons she has learned. She plans to self-publish this combination of memoir and vignettes. 

Anita Garner has enjoyed a lifelong career in broadcasting, from her family’s gospel music radio shows in the Deep South in the 1950’s to years on the air in Los Angeles, then hosting nationally syndicated shows.  For two decades she was a voice for KCET-TV/Hollywood/PBS for Southern California.  She’s written short stores, a musical for the stage, and blogs regularly at theagingofaquarius.com, a website shared with a fellow broadcaster/writer. She is a recipient of a Marin County Arts Grant in literature.  Her story, Hank Williams Was A Friend Of Mine, won a John Steinbeck award and her short story, Still Life appears in Saturday Evening Post’s Great American Fiction, 2015.  A memoir, The Glory Road, will be published soon by the University of Alabama Press. 

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.

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.

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.

Mary Mitchell worked for forty years as a teacher and graphic designer. Now she compiles books, slide presentations, animations, and even ballads to pass family stories on to her children and grandchildren. She became obsessed with genealogy and historical research when she wrote her first book, which was about her father. The Man in the Purple Cow House and other Tales of Eccentricity was published in 2005. It took her twelve years to write. Since then, she has published seven more print books, mostly about her family’s history, and one online book about the Portuguese trying to cross the Atlantic.<

In the process, Mary has uncovered direct family lines to fourteen ancestors who traveled to New England on the Mayflower, eighty-one European kings and queens, numerous margraves, counts, earls, and barons, and as a huge surprise, ten ancestors who were canonized by the Catholic church as saints complete with their own saint’s days. Her favorite part about it all is uncovering the amazing stories of how our ancestors lived so many years ago.

Dave was born near Indianapolis, joined the Navy, married an attorney and lived sixteen different places around the world during their forty-plus year careers. Dave is a former Principal Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, and a former CEO of EADS North America. He and his wife retired to Trinidad to live near their grandchildren. Dave has published three leadership books, two novels and two books about the Pentagon. He is currently finishing a fictional historic autobiography of his mother and is working on a novel involving Russia and their anthrax threat.

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.

Priscilla Royal writes the Prioress Eleanor / Brother Thomas medieval mystery series. She grew up in British Columbia and earned a BA in World Literature at San Francisco State. A theater fan, reader of history, mystery and fiction of lesser violence, she belongs to California Writers Club, MWA, and Sisters in Crime. Fifteen of her books were published by Poisoned Pen Press. Both “Elegy to Murder” and her seventeenth and latest, “Prayers of the Dead”, are independently published.

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.