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Member News
| M. Elizabeth Clark announces the publication of her novel, The Mothers' Group
(Hutton Electronic Publishing, 2006. $21.95. ISBN: 0-9742894-6-9), the story of four women—Molly, an
all-American beauty from Chicago, Elise, an entrenched yet irreverent socialite, Jennifer, a sassy
local architect and Claire, a neurotic and patrician New Englander—whose lives become complicated as
they navigate the quirky and urbane world of San Francisco. |
| Kennette Reed announces the publication of her book, Discovering Your Passion: The
Things that Make Your Heart Sing (Krau Publications, 2006. $29.95. ISBN: 0971371822).
Discovering Your Passion offers the tools needed to begin the journey of uncovering the joy
and excitement that comes when individual skills, talents, and innate desires are revealed. You can
visit Kennette at www.kraupublications.com. As part of her book tour, she will also be signing
books at Cody's Bookstore in San Francisco on Wednesday, April 5, 2006, from 11:30am-1:30pm, and be
interviewed on KRON-TV Morning News on Sunday, April 9, 2006, from 8-8:30am. |
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Local author and WNBA member Geri Spieler has won a literary prize for an excerpt from her
book An Unlikely Assassin: Sara Jane Moore and the Plot to Kill the President. Spieler was
awarded second prize in the non-fiction category of the 2006 Writing Contest of the San Francisco
Writers Conference. The third annual conference was held February 17-19 at the Mark Hopkins Hotel
in San Francisco. Her work was one of nearly 300 entries in the international competition. She
was awarded a $100 prize and a certificate at the conference, which annually brings together
authors, editors and literary agents. An Unlikely Assassin is the compelling story of Sara
Jane Moore, the only woman who ever fired a shot at an American President. Spieler has known Sara
Jane Moore for almost 30 years, and did groundbreaking investigative research for this book—and
found shocking material never before released.
Spieler is a former journalist and writer for the Los Angeles Times and the San
Francisco Chronicle and is a contributor to many magazines. She lives with her husband and
six chickens in Palo Alto. See her web site here: www.gerispieler.com.
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WNBA Events
•Join us on April 27 at Valencia St. Books for a Benefit Reading for our sponsoring bookstore. As many
of you know, independent book stores are having a difficult time these days, and we want to help Valencia St.
Books stay open and vibrant. As an incentive, the bookstore is offering us 5% off any book (s) we order or buy.
Bring something to read and a used book to donate to the store. Details to come!
•Join WNBA on May 23, 2006 for our "From Passion to Publicity" panel. Chaired by Lin Lacombe, VP and
Publicity Chair for WNBA and an independent publicity consultant who will discuss the art of book publicity and
promotion for published and unpublished authors. She'll give us information on how to attract media in print, on
the web, on the air, at industry conferences, and more. Lin recently presented at the Bay Area Independent
Publishers Association Get Published! Symposium speaking on independent book publishing and marketing, and her
session was packed!
Paula Hendricks, who is a published author and photographer, will join her. Her company, Cinnabar Bridge
Communications, specializes in book projects: from publishing a book as a marketing tool, to creating a great
cover, to developing the plans that will make your book a success. Come find out how you can get started
marketing your passion! Details in next month's newsletter.
WATCH FOR INVITES TO OUR UPCOMING EVENTS:
- Thursday, April 27: Benefit Reading for Valencia Street Books
- May 17: Annual Effie Lee Morris Lecture and Reception—SF Public Library
- May 23: Promoting your book
- June 9th: National Meeting—be sure to get your questions and input to us by June 5th
In 2007:
- Meet the Agents
- Litquake—WNBA reading TBS
- Two Part Blogging Workshop
- Authors Showcase
- Mixers
- Holiday Party
- And more…
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In This Issue
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Welcome
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Welcome to the April edition of Bookworm, our monthly Newsletter—news and events featuring San Francisco WNBA
members!
"The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself" —Albert Camus
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From Our Chapter President
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April is National Poetry Month. When the Lilly Foundation bestowed $100 million dollars to the Poetry Foundation,
poetry in this country got a new lease on life. There are more grants and programs available to poets and writers
than ever before. Thank you to our member Deborah Grossman who told us about a great resource for poets: click on
www.poetslane.org for all the latest
information on readings, classes, conferences as well as contests and calls for submissions. In honor of National
Poetry Month, the Poetry Foundation (www.PoetryFoundation.org) will deliver daily poetry podcasts of poetry readings, interviews
with poets and documentaries on poetry.
WNBA member and poet Kevin Arnold is a member of the board of Poetry Center San Jose. On May 20th they will
sponsor an all day festival with Al Young, California State Poet Laureate. They have a great line-up of poets,
and information tables on small presses. Check the website for more info: www.californiapoetsfestival.org.
Enjoy Poetry Month! Go to a reading, buy a poetry book, or write a poem! And let us know about anything
extraordinary you encountered.
In other news, WNBA-SF has just broken 100 members—at last count we had 110 bookwomen and men in our group. We
are writers, academics, teachers, literary agents, booksellers and friends of the book. Our chapter now ranks up
with the largest WNBA chapters—New York, Washington, D.C., Boston and Nashville.
Renewal letters are in the mail. In an attempt to get everyone onto the same renewal schedule, and to make our
bookkeeping more manageable, we have sent individualized letters to you. Let us know if you have any questions
about the new system.
Have a great month,
—Joan Gelfand
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BookWorm Talks to Cara Black, author of Murder in Montmartre
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 WNBA-SF member and author Cara Black lives in San Francisco with her husband, a bookseller, and
their teenage son. She is the acclaimed author of the Aimée Leduc Mystery series. The latest novel in the
series, Murder in the Montmartre, is an April BookSense pick and a Los Angeles Times
bestseller. In Murder in Montmartre, a childhood friend of investigator Aimée Leduc is accused of
shooting her partner. In order to clear her friend of the charges against her, Aimée must confront Corsican
Separatist terrorists, Montmartre prostitutes, a Surrealist painter's stepdaughter, the French Security
Services and the Parisian police. But in so doing Aimée comes one step closer to identifying the culprit in
her own father's death, a death that still haunts her.
Cara is a member of the Paris Sociéte Historique in the Marais. Like her protagonist, Aimée, Cara once had a
moped and appreciates their temperamental tendencies. She also, like Aimée, likes dogs and owns a Coton de
Tulear. Unlike Aimée, she has never owned an apartment on the Ile St. Louis but feels she will someday when the
lottery smiles on her. She loves black and white photography, in addition to writing. Visit Cara at www.carablack.com.
- When did you start writing?
- I kept journals on my first trip to Europe (that was in the Middle Ages), but as a hitchhiking
backpacker, I kept dropping them down the sewers in Paris or losing them in train stations so I gave up. I
finally started writing when my son entered preschool and there was a space of 3 free hours a day. Luckily I
got into a fiction class at UC extension and then into a writing group, to which I still belong to
today.
- Why did you choose your particular genre?
- This connects with your next question but the story I wanted to tell had such a broad scope, historical
background and context that I realized narrowing it down and using the framework and structure of a detective
novel could really help me tell it much better.
- What inspired you to choose your subject matter?
 In 1984 a friend in Paris took me to the Marais, then still an un-gentrified quartier and
showed me the apartment her mother had lived in during the German Occupation of Paris in WWII. Her
mother, a fourteen-year-old schoolgirl at the time, had worn a yellow star and lived on rue des Rosiers
the Jewish section with her family. One day in 1943 when she came home from school, the apartment was
empty, her family gone. Not knowing when they'd return or what to do or if the French Police under
German orders would come back for her, she asked the concierge's help. The concierge helped her with
ration and coal coupons and she lived there for a year on her own, going to school and somehow avoided
being round up for deportation. At Liberation in 1944 she stood outside the Hotel Lutetia (then a Red
Cross terminus for Holocaust survivors returning from the camps) every day after school hoping to find
news of her family. One day a woman took her aside and told her, 'I saw your sister get off the train at
Auschwitz'. And then she knew, but that was all the information she ever found out. Hearing this story,
standing on the narrow street in the Marais touched me in a deep way. I couldn't get it out of head.
Years later when I took the writing class, I just knew somehow I had to tell this story and weave it
with contemporary events in France (then 1994) at the time they were joining the European Union. And how
the past never really goes away.- How difficult / easy has your experience been as a published author?
- Writing is something I have to do. Bottom-line. I'm useless otherwise. The highs and the lows come, like
everything else in life, but at least at 3am in the morning there are not many jobs one can do that aren't
illegal or fattening. Seriously, book promotion is another part of the job that I had no clue about. And
these days it's de rigueur. But I love my publishing house, they are a feisty independent quality New York
press that take chances, let me take risks and roll up their sleeves and really edit the old fashioned way. I
think I'm very lucky.
- What advice would you give other aspiring authors?
- Be passionate about what you write...I don't always agree with the saying 'write what you know' for me
the saying 'write what you're passionate to know' really applies. I had a familiarity with France, things
French but never knew Paris the way I do now when I started writing. I still discover amazing things all the
time and my research leads me to unknown corners, which I hope keep the stories fresh. And don't forget
sensory details, one or more on every page, that bring your reader to that uneven cobbled street in Paris
inhaling the smell of fresh baked bread and hearing the hee-haw police siren in the distance.
- Anything else you would like to share with the WNBA?
- Voltaire said "Writing is rewriting" and that's on a pink Post-it stuck on my computer. Every few days I
scrunch it up, throw it across the room. And then when I calm down make another one and try to follow his
advice.
Are you a WNBA-SF member and published author? Would you like to share your story with WNBA-SF? Contact the
editor for the chance to be featured in our Member Profile section of BookWorm!
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BookWorm Talks to Elaine Dallman, author of Nevadans
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WNBA-SF member Elaine Dallman has been active throughout her literary career in programs that bring poets
and poetry directly into the community. One hundred and eight five of her poems have been printed in a wide
variety of literary anthologies, including Celebration of Writers, Discover America, as well as in literary
journals such as Epoch and Peregrine; more are forthcoming in Home Means Nevada: Literature of the Silver State.
In 2005, Finishing Line Press published a chapbook of her poetry, Nevadans. Her work was discussed at a Modern
Language Association session led by Dr. M. Lou Lewandowska, and she has won 125 national and international
contests, including The Stroud International Festival, The Poetry Society of England, and The Poetry Society of
America. In addition, Ms. Dallman has received sixteen grants and scholarships for innovative teaching, writing
and publishing from such organizations as the National Endowment for the Arts through the Nevada State Council of
the Arts, The American Association of University Women, the Illinois Arts Council, and Villa Montalvo. Through
the Nevada State Council of Humanities, she directed workshops in which thousands of men and women enrolled. She
is presently on the Board of Directors of the San Francisco Poetry Museum. Visit her at www.elainedallman.com.
- When did you start writing?
- 1965
- Why did you choose your particular genre?
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 I naturally wrote in it.
- What inspired you to choose your subject matter?
- What was happening to me in life.
- How difficult / easy has your experience been as a published author?
- a) The mental satisfaction that follows the achievement of writing a good poem is a major motivation. b)
It is very difficult to sell poetry books.
- What advice would you give other aspiring authors?
- To succeed, write bland poetry. Go into fiction, or better yet, engineering or business.
- Anything else you would like to share with the WNBA?
- The relentless drive to revise a poem until totally "done" is very satisfying. It's like a victory of
spirit over matter. There is a growth of mind in writing and in reading deep poetry.
Are you a WNBA-SF member and published author? Would you like to share your story with WNBA-SF? Contact the
editor for the chance to be featured in our Member Profile section of BookWorm!
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Classes, Conferences, and Other Writing Announcements
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"You Want to Write" workshop with WNBA-SF member, author, and board treasurer Teresa LeYung Ryan, Saturday
April 29, 9-11:30am
Whether you're writing articles, short stories, or books, Teresa LeYung Ryan will help you identify the themes
and give you resources so that you can get your work published. The first 90 minutes we'll focus on your current
project (examine themes and archetypes). The last 30 minutes Teresa will answer questions about the publishing
arena. Please bring publications (including books) that you enjoy reading and your current project.
Teresa LeYung Ryan is the author of the novel Love Made of Heart (now archived at the San Francisco
History Center, and recommended by the California School Library Association). Teresa is also a career coach for
writers. She says, "I want to see everyone step into their dreams." For more information about Teresa, go to
www.LoveMadeOfHeart.com.
For registration details please checkout the Foster City Spring Leisure Update or visit the Foster City
Recreation Center. To register online please visit payment.fostercity.org/sdi or www.fostercity.org and under "Services" click
on "Classes".
Age Level: 18-Up Course No. 3001.041
Cost: $25 Foster City residents; $30 non-residents
When: Saturday, April 29: 9-9:30am continental breakfast; 9:30-11:30am workshop
Where: Foster City Recreation Center, Crane Room (corner of Shell and Hillsdale), Foster City CA
Poetry event at California Writers Club, Peninsula Branch, Saturday April 15, 2006, 10am-noon
On Saturday April 15, 2005, 10:00-noon in Belmont, celebrate National Poetry Month with the members of California
Writers Club-SF/Peninsula Branch and poet Stephen J. Wersan. Many WNBA members are also CWC members. Margaret
Davis will be receiving the Louise Boggess award at this meeting.
When: General meeting 10:00-11:00am; 11:00-noon Stephen J. Wersan. Come and build relationships.
Cost (Includes a continental breakfast): $15 for CWC members; $18 for non-members.
For more information, go to www.sfpeninsulawriters.com/events/meetings.html.
Workshops offered by Editcetera in April
Editcetera, a cooperative association of freelance publishing professionals, is offering the following workshops
in April, 2006.
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The Versatile Copyeditor
When: Six Wednesdays: April 19-May 24, 6:30-9pm.
Cost: $290 for enrollments paid on or before April 12; $310 after April 12. Class limit: 24
Instructor: Amy Einsohn
This course presents the knowledge and skills that will prepare you to copyedit books, journal
articles, corporate documents, and newsletters. Topics include hard-copy and on-screen procedures, tools
and resources, and the principles of editorial style.
The textbook for this course is The Copyeditor's Handbook, written by the instructor and
published by the University of California Press. Plan to devote five hours a week outside of class to the
reading and copyediting assignments. The course concludes with a mail-in exercise that will receive a
detailed critique from the instructor.
Amy Einsohn is a freelance editor and writer with more than twenty years of experience in the Bay Area
business, publishing, and academic communities. She has taught editing classes through Editcetera since
1986 and has also taught at UC Berkeley and UC Berkeley Extension.
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Building Your Editorial Career: Opportunities and Strategies
When: Tuesday, April 25, 6:30-9:30pm
Cost: $75 for enrollments paid on or before April 18; $85 after April 18 Class limit: 24
Instructor: Barbara Fuller
Whether you are an experienced editor or want to become one, this workshop gives you information on
the wide range of Bay Area clients who regularly hire editors and on strategies you can use to obtain the
work. You learn how to prepare for an editorial career, present your services to potential clients, and
maintain good working relationships. Bring questions with you.
Barbara Fuller has worked in publishing since 1985 for a variety of clients, including Computer
Literacy Press, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Institute for the Future, KQED Books, Lucas Learning,
McGraw-Hill/Contemporary, National Association of Neonatal Nurses, Prima Publishing, Sierra Club Books,
Sierra magazine, and Ten Speed Press. As director of Editcetera, she has helped connect hundreds of
clients with qualified freelance publications professionals. She has taught writing at UC Davis and
editing for UC Berkeley Extension as well as for Editcetera.
Where: First Presbyterian Church, 2407 Dana St, between Haste St and Channing Way, Berkeley CA.
For more information, or to register for a class, go to www.editcetera.com/workshops.htm or
call Editcetera at 510-849-1110.
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