Directory of Writers

Directory of Sonoma County Writers

The Literary Update is creating a directory of Sonoma County Writers. If you are interested in being listed, e-mail the material you would like included: e.g., photo (jpg), a one-paragraph bio with web and/or blog links, and contact information. (Do not ask us to assemble material from your website. The bio is your responsibility.) E-mail to sonomacountyliteraryupdate@gmail.com.

Mark Adair lives in Santa Rosa and writes suspense fiction. He recently finished and published, on Kindle via Amazon, his suspense novel entitled The Father’s Child (available on Amazon at www.amazon.com/The-Fathers-Child-ebook/dp/B004DCB3W0). He is also blogging a suspense novella entitled ZAP at http://markadairzap.blogspot.com.
Contact info: http://markadair.com.
Facebook: http://facebook.com/markadairauthor.
Twitter: http://twitter.com/markadairauthor.

Ms. Hemu Aggarwal lives in Petaluma. She recently published a paperback, and on Kindle via Amazon. Her non-fiction book is entitled The Forbidden Letters. A True Story. 400 pgs. (available at www.amazon.com/dp/B0B2TKJP5Z).
Contact Info: hyaggarwal@gmail.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/hemu.aggarwal
Facebook: www.facebook.com/theforbiddenletters
Twitter: https://twitter.com/hemuaggarwal15

Bill Amatneek writes stories about his experiences as a string bassist in Americana and Middle-Eastern music groups. His book, Acoustic Stories: Playing Bass with Peter, Paul & Mary, Jerry Garcia, and Bill Monroe, won the BAIPA award for Best Music Book in 2004. He placed 2nd in the 2000 William Faulkner Writing Competition, and was a 2011 Prague Summer Program John Woods Scholar. His publishing credits include Rolling Stone, Down Beat, Bluegrass Unlimited, Yoga Journal, First Leaves, The Dickens, Pacific Sun, and the anthology, Encounters with Bob Dylan: If You See Him Say Hello.
Contact: bill@vineyardspress.com
Web: www.VineyardsPress.com.
Audio/written blog: www.vineyardspress.com/Journal

Barbara L. Baer writes fiction and essays, most recently a novella, Grisha the Scrivener, Ghost Road Press 2009.
Publisher, Floreant Press.
Longtime Book Festival volunteer.
Website: www.floreantpress.com.
email: bbforest@monitor.net

Julene Bair’s The Ogallala Road, A Story of Love, Family, and the Fight to Keep the Great Plans from Running Dry (Viking Penguin 2014) was a Kansas Notable Book, a Booklist Editor’s Choice, and finalist for the Mountains and Plains Booksellers and High Plains book awards. Her first book, One Degree West: Reflections of a Plainsdaughter, won Mid-List Press’s First Series Award and a WILLA Award from Women Writing the West. Bair’s essays have appeared in venues ranging from the New York Times to High Country News. A National Endowment for the Arts fellow, she has taught at the University of Wyoming, the University of Iowa, and Denver’s Lighthouse Writers. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the Iowa Nonfiction Program.
www.julenebair.com
julenebair@gmail.com

Two of Sandy Baker’s passions are writing and gardening–she combines those into children’s gardening books with a plot, having also been inspired by her 15 years as a Master Gardener. She co-wrote the thriller The Tehran Triangle in 2012 and also writes poetry for teens and short stories. See more about Sandy: www.sandybakerwriter.com, www.facebook.com/sandybakerauthor, and her blog “Garden Plots” at writersandy.wordpress.com.

Kathleen Barry, sociologist and Professor Emerita of Penn State University, is the author of the newly published Unmaking War, Remaking Men: How Empathy Can Reshape Our Politics, Our Soldiers and Ourselves. Her landmark first book Female Sexual Slavery broke new ground and launched a global movement against trafficking in human beings and led to the formation of The Coalition Against Trafficking in Women which she co-founded. She is the author of The Prostitution of Sexuality: Global Exploitation of Women and originated a model for new international law against sexual exploitation in collaboration with UNESCO. She is a biographer and author of Susan B. Anthony: A Biography of a Singular Feminist (NYU Press 1989, Ballantine, Author House.) Her edited volume, Vietnamese Women In Transition (Macmillan and St. Martin’s Press, 1996) captures an extraordinary moment of change, for better and for worse, in the condition of women as Vietnam.

Meg Beeler—Author, Shamanic Guide, and Spiritual Mentor—is a lifelong explorer of shamanic, animist, and meditative consciousness. She practices Earth-centered, nature-based, ancient wisdom ways, and studied Andean mysticism extensively with the Q’ero in Peru. She helps clients heal soul and spirit, find luminous presence, and move energy to remove blockages. She offers mentoring, training, healing, and ceremony for individuals and groups worldwide. Meg is the creator of Energy AlchemyTM, founder of Earth Caretakers Wisdom School, and author of Weave the Heart of the Universe into Your Life: Aligning with Cosmic Energy. Chairperson of Sonoma Mountain Preservation, she a contributor to Where the World Begins: Sonoma Mountain Stories and Images, and is passionate about engaging people more deeply with landscape and sense of place. Meg lives on Sonoma Mountain in the San Francisco Bay Area. www.megbeeler.com

Skye Blaine writes short essays, memoir, fiction, and poetry, developing themes of aging, coming of age, disability, and most of all, the process of unlearning–the heart of the matter. In 2003, she received an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University. Her personal essays and fiction have been published in six anthologies, and in national magazines: In Context (now known as Yes! magazine) and Catalyst. Skye also presented radio essays on KRML 1410 AM in Carmel, CA. Her memoir, Bound to Love: a memoir or grit and gratitude came out in November, 2015.
http://www.skyeblaine.com
skye@skyeblaine.com

Shepherd Bliss has contributed to 24 books, on a wide range of topics, including literary criticism, psychology, health, theology, gender, politics, poetry translations from Spanish, war and peace issues. He teaches writing at Dominican University and has operated the organic Kokopelli Farm in Sebastopol, specializing in boysenberries, for the last two decades. Shepherd is a long-time member of the Veterans Writing Group, facilitated by Maxine Hong Kingston (www.vowvop.org). He has been interviewed by Oprah, Bill Moyers, Donahue, and 60 Minutes. He was raised partly in Latin America and did his graduate studies with Brazilian philosopher of education Paulo Freire.
email: shepherd.bliss@dominican.edu; phone: 707-829-8185

Catharine Bramkamp is the author of Don’t Write Like You Talk: A Smart Girl’s Guide to Writing and Editing (3L Publishing). She holds two degrees in English, published hundreds of newspaper and magazines articles, a handful of novels including the A Little Real Estate Mystery series, as well as two essays in the Chicken Soup for the Soul anthologies. She is an adjunct professor of writing for two colleges and is a successful writing coach. Visit her at www.YourBookStartsHere.com.
Email: bramkamp@yahoo.com

Joan Broughton lives in Windsor and writes novels centered on the lives of contemporary women and their families. Her book The Knot was published in 2019. She is currently at work on a Sonoma County-based novel that explores the relationships of sisters and blended families.
www.joanbroughton.com

Sonoma County writer Jim Brumm has been in publishing much of his life. He has been involved in starting up four different magazines, and has worked as an editor, writer, designer, and publisher. He has written magazine articles, website content, and was a columnist in the Napa Valley Register for seven years. Most recently he has worked as a freelance writer, producing business profiles for businesses to use as marketing tools, an idea he conceived and created. His new, self-published ebook, How to Actually Make Money Writing, contains simple, step-by-step instructions for other freelance writers on how to tap into this lucrative business. Jim Brumm’s has written another book, Long-Term Thinking for a Short-Sighted World, which will be released in spring of 2012. www.jimbrumm.com.

Dani Burlison has been a staff writer for a Bay Area alt-weekly, a columnist for McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and a book reviewer for The Los Angeles Review. She writes a music/lit column at The Rumpus and is a freelancer of epic proportions with other work appearing or forthcoming in places like The Chicago Tribune, Ploughshares, Hip Mama Magazine, Spirituality & Health Magazine, Shareable and more. She teaches writing workshops and co-edits a zine with Petals & Bones and co-hosts the Get Lit reading series at Corkscrew Wine Bar in Petaluma. She is an alumna of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers and her essay collection will be published in Fall 2013.

Website: www.daniburlison.com
email: danisavestheworld@yahoo.com
Twitter: @DaniBurlison

Jacqueline Harmon Butler is an international award winning writer and the recipient of many press awards, including Italy’s prestigious “Golden Linchetto Prize” for best foreign journalist and the Lowell Thomas Gold Award for Internet publications. In a variety of international publications and anthologies, her travel writing has tempted readers’ palates with mouth-watering meals and left them salivating for more. Her books include The 7th Edition of the Travel Writer’s Handbook, Taking a Chance on Love, a memoir which chronicles her 20-year romance with a much younger Italian man, and a romantic novel, One Last Trip to Paris. For more information, please go to: www.jacquelineharmonbutler.com

Katy Byrne, MA, MFT has been a columnist in Sonoma County for over 20 years. For ten years in Sonoma County Womens Voices News, Santa Rosa, and now for the last ten in The Sun in the town of Sonoma. Katy’s columns and articles have often been described as a bit like the style of Carrie Fischer in “Sex and The City.” She is fun, candid, self disclosing, sad and happy both. Always with a touch of wit and wisdom. Her book, The Courage To Speak Up (Getting Your Hairballs Out) is a great toilet bowl book with stories and insights in each section, along with cartoons. Katy Byrne is a fabulous editor, with great references in that regard. Katy is also a psychotherapist in Sonoma, specializing in couples work, eating issues, transitions and the kitchen sink!

Denise Christian is a writer of novels, poems, and children’s books. The initial release in Nov. 2010 of, What Does The Doggie Say? was the first of three titles in the “What…Say?” series. What Do You Say? And, What Did They Say? Having the heart of a teacher, Denise takes the interactive presentations she developed into classrooms to both delight and offer students in Pre-K through 4th grades the opportunity to survey the creative writing process. Experiencing their enhanced discovery, or a newly developed passion in owning books comes through this exceptionally intimate literary event. She helps connect young readers to stories and instills a love of reading while encouraging them in language arts and to explore well and practice the writing craft. To schedule an, Author Visit, for your classroom or library, contact her at christianview2@yahoo.com or 707 490-5096.

Lilly Christine writes romantic fiction. Her debut novel Crashing Into Tess, first in the McGreers Series, was a Toronto Romance Writers “Catherine” Award winner and a “Bookseller’s Best-Best First Book” finalist. While finishing the McGreers and querying new series, she’s authoring a young adult dystopian eco fantasy adventure and publishing art criticism as Christine Griffin.
www.LillyChristine.com
www.AriaofSylvania.com
lillychristine13@gmail.com
@lillychristine1

Ed Coletti. Italian-American Poet and Painter Ed Coletti graduated from Georgetown University and the Creative Writing Masters Program at San Francisco State University (under Robert Creeley). In addition to the usual national journals and anthologies, he has published several books and also previously found time for a career as a counselor. He founded Round Barn Press and also the Poetry Azul Reading Series. His strong Internet presence includes “Ed Coletti’s P3” (http://edcolettip3.blogspot.com) and also “No Money In Poetry” (http://edwardcolettispoetryblog.blogspot.com). Ed lives with his wife Joyce in Santa Rosa.

Daniel Coshnear lives in Guerneville, works at a group home in Santa Rosa, teaches writing through UC Berkeley and Sonoma State Extension Programs, and he is author of Jobs & Other Preoccupations (Helicon Nine 2001), winner of the Willa Cather Fiction Award. He is also recipient of an Editor’s Prize from the Missouri Review and a Christopher Isherwood Foundation Fellowship. Recent publications include “The Old Lizard and the Young Goat” LA Review, “Or Stay On The Line For Operator Assistance” Juked, “Wormholes” Third Coast Review, “Unstopped” 95% Naked. dan@coshnear.org

Janis Lasky Couvreux, author of Sail Cowabunga! A Family’s Ten Years at Sea, to be released in September 2017 by Filles Vertes Publishing is a chronicle of her 10 years on a sailboat with her husband and two small boys from France to San Francisco. An award-winning writer, journalist, Franco-American, lover of languages, travel and adventure addict, sailor, mom, and grandmom, Janis is formerly a newspaper reporter and freelance journalist. She currently blogs for the Huffington Post, Pryme Magazine, and The Lady Alliance, where she writes about living bilingually, crossing oceans, backpacking adventures, and raising kids outside the box. Janis’s vignettes have been recently published in Luna Luna Magazine, Longreads, and Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, and she won the first place Adult Nonfiction award at the 2017 San Francisco Writers Conference for a segment of her debut book.

Website: www.janiscouvreux.com
Twitter: @JanisCouvreux
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sailcowabunga/
email: couvreux@sonic.net
Publisher: https://www.fillesvertespublishing.com/authors/

Marlene Cullen is enthusiastic about encouraging people to write, even those who think they can’t write. The Write Spot anthologies, edited by Marlene, are collections of short stories, poems, and vignettes that entertain; prompts to inspire writing; and a resource section with suggestions to enhance writing. Marlene hosts The Write Spot Blog and Writers Forum, treasure chests of inspirational gems for writers. Fulfilling her passion for writing and sharing with others, Marlene created Jumpstart Writing Workshops, where participants often experience transformational changes. Her workshops provide essential elements for successful writing. Marlene’s award-winning short stories and essays have been published in literary journals, anthologies, and newspapers, including Tiny Lights, Building Bridges, More Bridges, Redwood Writers anthologies, and The Write Spot anthologies. She is a member of the California Writer’s Club.

The Write Spot Website for writers: Places to submit, list of editors, and writing resources. www.TheWriteSpot.us

Diane H. Davis is a published writer of insightful fiction and self-help information, and currently has twelve titles available through Davis Publishing, www.davis-publishing.biz, as well as two bound books: Help Yourself to a Better Life and Country Love Lifts the Heart High. Also available is a Fun Fundraising Plan for nonprofits using the collection of twelve Tiny Ticklers. Davis Publishing was established in 2008 as a voice for Sonoma County, with the message of happiness – and hope for a better future. Manuscripts of approximately 4,500 words are now being accepted (self-help and insightful fiction). Contact Diane at (707) 664-8656.

Mary DeDanan is a writer and editor based in the wild hills of Cazadero. For some 40 years she has immersed herself in the creation, mechanics, and business of language. She’s worked as a journalist, book and magazine copyeditor, advertising copywriter, and theatrical literary manager/dramaturg. She earned a degree in creative writing/literature from UCSD. Mary has published numerous articles, reviews, essays, and short stories, won a few minor prizes and fellowships, writes poetry as meditation, and has a novel sizzling on the griddle. While writing is her first love, she earns a living through freelance developmental and copyediting, book doctoring, and literary loitering. Contact: Mary DeDanan, CatchWord Writing Studio: www.CatchWord.biz, dedanan@mcn.org

Stacey Dennick holds an MFA in Writing from the University of San Francisco. Her published works include news pieces for KRCB North Bay Public Media, technical and humorous stories in print (Pacific Sun, BIKE Magazine, Vintage Voices, Film/Tape World) and online. She’s written video scripts for clients ranging from Apple Computer to Trinchero Family Estates. Stacey teaches ongoing, no-fee creative writing classes through Santa Rosa Junior College’s Older Adult Program. A thoughtful and encouraging editor and writing coach she helps writers shape their memoirs, develop their fiction and focus their non-fiction. As a media creator (aka tech geek), Stacey creates reasonably priced WordPress websites and Photoshop graphics; she edits video and podcasts; she produces book layouts for print and eBooks. A fan of many genres, she’s currently working on middle grade stories and historical fiction. Website: sdennick.com; email: sdennick[at sign]comcast.net
Facebook: www.facebook.com/sdennick
Instagram: www.instagram.com/staceydennick
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/stacey-alysa-dennick-093a4b9

Iris Jamahl Dunkle is the 2016-2017 Poet Laureate of Sonoma County, CA. Her second poetry collection, There’s a Ghost in this Machine of Air, is about the untold history of Sonoma County, CA, and was published in November 2015 by Word Tech Editions. Her third collection, Interrupted Geographies, will be published by Trio House Press in 2017. Her debut poetry collection, Gold Passage, was selected by Ross Gay to win the 2012 Trio Award and was published by Trio House Press in 2013. Her chapbooks Inheritance and The Flying Trolley were published by Finishing Line Press in 2010 and 2013. Her poetry, essays and creative non-fiction have been published widely in numerous publications including Fence, Calyx, Catamaran, Poet’s Market 2013, JMWW. and Chicago Quarterly Review. Of note, her poem “How to Cope in a New Landscape” was a finalist for the The New Guard’s Knightville Poetry Contest and her poem “The Trick of Sound” was a finalist for the Yalobusha Review’s Yellowwood Poetry Prize. Her essay, “Yellow Dahlias” was nominated for a pushcart prize. She is currently co-writing a new biography on Jack London’s wife, Charmian Kittredge London. Dunkle teaches writing and literature at Napa Valley College. She received her B.A. from the George Washington University, her M.F.A. in Poetry from New York University, and her Ph.D. in American Literature from Case Western Reserve University. She is on the staff of the Napa Valley Writers conference and currently resides with her family in Northern California.

www.irisjamahldunkle.com
TWITTER: @irjohnso
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/iris.dunkle

Ida Rae Egli was raised in Mendocino County and moved to Sonoma County in 1982. She taught English and was Chair of the English department at Santa Rosa Junior College. Her first two published books were non-fiction: No Rooms of Their Own: Women Writers of Early California and Women of the Gold Rush: Frances Fuller Victor and the New Penelope. She has also published poetry and short fiction. Her new title, Krisanthi’s War: in Hitler’s Greece is a novel. She lives in East Sonoma County after spending more than a year living and researching her novel in Greece. www.idaraeegli.com, idaraeegli@gmail.com, http://amzn.to/2zckFg6

Terry Ehret has published three collections of poetry: Lost Body, Translations from the Human Language, andLucky Break. Literary awards include the National Poetry Series, California Book Award, the Pablo Neruda Poetry Prize, and the 2009 Northern California Book Reveiwer’s Nomination for Poetry. She is the co-founder of Sixteen Rivers Press, a San Francisco Bay Area publishing collective. From 2004-2006 she served as poet laureate of Sonoma County. A new collection of lyric and prose poems, Night Sky Journey, will be published in fall 2011. She teaches writing workshops through the Sitting Room in Cotati, coaches poets in manuscript preparation, and leads summer literary travel groups. For more information, visit her website at www.terryehret.com. For information about the summer literary travel, click here. Contact information: 924 Sunnyslope Road, Petaluma, CA 94952, 707-762-2689, tehret99@comcast.net.

Donna Emerson’s recent work appears or is forthcoming in the Paterson Literary Review, The Place That Inhabits Us: Poems of the San Francisco Bay Watershed, The Los Angeles Review, Eclipse, Chopin With Cherries: A Tribute in Verse, and When Last on the Mountain, among other noted journals. Her chapbook Wild Mercy is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press, and may be ordered at www.finishinglinepress.com. An award-winning writer and clinical social worker, Donna lives with her husband and daughter in Sonoma County, California, where she continues to work as a college instructor and photographer.

Chuck Forester, MFA, is currently a novelist; a poem was published in ZYZZVA, and he self-published Do You Live Around Here? — a memoir about his life in San Francisco since coming out in 1972. His blog Gaysfscribe.com features ironic, political and personal entries. Chuck lives in Sebastopol.

Joan Frank (www.joanfrank.org) is the author of six books of literary fiction and an essay collection called Because You Have To: A Writing Life. Joan’s work has received many grants and awards, including the Juniper Prize in Fiction, the Richard Sullivan Prize in Short Fiction, ForeWord Reviews Book of the Year Award, and the Dana Award. She lives in Santa Rosa with her husband, playwright Bob Duxbury.

Igor Goldkind was born in Michigan, raised in San Diego and now lives in Sebastopol. He is a poet, author and lecturer in the areas of Computational Narrative and Speculative Realism. After studying philosophy at UC Santa Cruz, in 1983 Goldkind moved to Paris to work as a radio journalist and study with Michel Foucault, the French Post-Structuralist scholar. Upon receiving a graduate degree from the Sorbonne, Goldkind moved to London where he worked first for Titan Books in the late 1980s as a marketing consultant and PR spokesperson. Here, Goldkind developed and promoted the term “graphic novel” as a way to sell the new comics being published at the time, like Watchmen, Maus and Dark Knight into the book trade. Goldkind has taught and lectured at Liverpool University, St. Martins School of Design, and the London College of Printing. Igor Goldkind’s most recent work, IS SHE AVAILABLE?, incorporates poetry, art, music, and animation; a collaboration with 27 artists from the comic, fantasy and fine art (as well as the jazz composer Gilad Atzmon) and is published by Chameleon Publishing (http://is-she-available.com). Igor Goldkind continues to write with a forthcoming collection of short stories set in and around a computer environment as well as his first novel PLAGUE; about a mass dementia epidemic. He continue to be the creative mind behind projects that link computational technologies with art, education, and storytelling.

Anne Goldman’s essay collection, Stargazing in the Atomic Age, is forthcoming from the University of Georgia Press in 2020. An earlier version of the titular essay in this collection earned a National Magazine Award nomination. Goldman’s fiction and nonfiction have also appeared in Tin House, The Georgia Review, the Gettysburg Review, and the Southwest Review, among other venues. Her essays have been cited as notable in the Best American Essays, the Best American Science and Nature Writing, and the Best American Travel Writing and have received honorable mention in the Pushcart Prize. The recipient of fellowships from the Ahmanson/Getty Foundation and grants from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities, Anne has also published three scholarly books and a range of critical essays on nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature. In 2011 she was awarded SSU’s Goldstein Award for Excellence in Scholarship. You can find more information at http://annegoldmanwriter.com/.

Don Hagelberg describes himself as an alcoholic and a drug addict. But alcohol metamorphosed into ink and the white dust of drugs became the color of the paper upon which he scribbles words to which he is now addicted. Poetry: Exit #13, The Oakland Tribune, and First Leaves; short stories: New World Finn, Vintage Voices and The Berkeley Barb; essays: Raivaaja, Axolotle and Veljeysviesti. He is one of the three poets in the chapbook anthology, Finnish American Poetry by Rauhala, Vartnaw and Hagelberg. He won third prize in the International Poetry Competition 2008, first prize in the Kippis competition 2009, and a Pushcart nomination in 2007 for the poem, “The Death of White Animals.” His work’s been heard on KGO and KQED in San Francisco, KPFA in Berkeley, KSVY in Sonoma, KHHO in Tacoma and blogtalkradio’s, The Speak Easy Café from Portland. On Redroom: www.redroom.com >> Look For Don Hagelberg

Susan Hagen is co-author of the award-winning post-9/11 book, Women at Ground Zero: Stories of Courage and Compassion. After publication in 2002, many of the women rescue workers featured in the book said that telling their stories was the beginning of their healing from the trauma of 9/11. Since then, Susan has made it her life’s work to help others give voice to the stories of their lives. As a writing mentor and coach, she tends the fire, spirit, and heart of the writer, incorporating meditation and earth-based practices into her workshops, retreats, and coaching services. As a published author, former newspaper reporter, and organizational journalist, Susan also offers editorial services for people, businesses, and organizations doing good work in the world. Contact Susan at suzhagen@sonic.net; www.susanhagen.com.

Sharon Hamilton writes romance fiction: paranormal, erotic and contemporary. Agented, awaiting first book contract. Writes in series. Has finaled in numerous romance writing contests. P.O. Box 5287, Santa Rosa, CA 95402; (707) 484-8381
sharonhamilton2001@gmail.com;
www.sharonhamiltonauthor.com

Robert Hartstein was born in the Bronx, New York in 1946. Orphaned at the age of six, Robert spent his early years in New York and California. The challenges he faced during those formative years precipitated Robert’s struggle to find his place in life and led to his decision to write A Place in Life. While parts of this story are based on Robert’s life, other events are reconstructed memories of people and places that made up the world in which he battled to survive. Robert is a retired labor relations manager with over forty years of service in the public sector. He has worked at all levels of local government—city, county, and state. He earned a Bachelor of Science Degree in Manpower Management from California State University. Following service in the Marine Corps, Robert married the former Cynthia Brown, his wife of forty-three years. They have two grown sons and three grandchildren, all living in California. Robert and Cynthia split their time between the beautiful Coachella Valley in Southern California and the majestic Russian River Valley in Northern California, where they pursue an active outdoor life and, of course, where Robert continues to write.

Katherine Hastings is the author of Nighthawks (Spuyten Duyvil NYC, 2014) and Cloud Fire (Spuyten Duyvil NYC, 2012), as well as several chapbooks. She is the executive director of the non-profit WordTemple, curator of the WordTemple Poetry Series and WordTemple Arts & Lectures programs, and host of WordTemple on KRCB FM, Sonoma County’s NPR affiliate. She is serving as Poet Laureate of Sonoma County for the years 2014 — 2016. For more information, visit www.wordtemple.com

Elizabeth Carothers Herron’s writing appears most recently in Sisyphus, West Marin Review, Free State Review, Reflections, Canary, The Wayfarer and Center for Humans and Nature. Thrice nominated for a Pushcart, she was shortlisted for the 2018 Frontier Magazine, Industry Prize in poetry, is a recipient of San Francisco’s Small Press Traffic Award in Poetry, and grants from the NEA, the Foundation for Deep Ecology, the Damien Foundation and Sonoma State University. She is the author of Desire Being Full of Distances, and four chapbooks: Report, Language for the Wild, Dark Season, and The Stones the Dark Earth. A collection of her fiction, While the Distance Widens, and an audio poetry book, Inside the World, are also available. Her articles on art and ecology have been published in Re-Vision, Orion, Parabola, The Jung Journal of Culture and Psyche, EarthLight. She has been shortlisted for the Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry, the Wildwood Prize in Poetry, the Eve of Saint Agnes poetry award, the Comstock Poetry award, the Hugh Luke Award for Fiction and the Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction. Her fondness for collaborative work has resulted in numerous performance pieces with movement artists and musicians; and a book-length hand-written poem, The Poet’s House, accompanies sculptor Bruce Johnson’s “Poetry House” www.formandenergy.com. The original manuscript resides in Special Collections at Doyle Library, which also features her haiku text for Bruce’s three oak sculptures, one for each floor of the library. A long-standing member of the PEN (Poets Editors & Novelists) International Freedom to Write and Poets & Writers, Elizabeth is also a Fellow of the International League of Conservation Writers.

Thonie Hevron uses her law enforcement experience to write suspense novels based on the lives behind the badge. Retired, she lives with her husband in the historic Northern California town of Petaluma. On her blog, (https://thoniehevron.wordpress.com) Thonie hosts police storytellers to accurately portray the law enforcement character. On Friday’s Writer’s Notes, she hosts authors discussing writing craft and lifestyle topics. Thonie’s two police procedural thrillers, By Force or Fear and Intent to Hold placed in the Public Safety Writers Association (PSWA) Writing Contest in 2012 and 2014. With Malice Aforethought, the third book, ranked in the 2016 PSWA Writers Contest and the East Texas Writers Guild 2015 First Chapter Award. With Malice Aforethought won best published novel at the PSWA 2018 Writing Contest. All the Nick and Meredith Mysteries are available on Amazon. Hevron recently signed with Aakenbaaken & Kent, who will republish her books and the upcoming Felon with a Firearm, later in 2019. She is a current member of California Writers’ Club/Redwood Writers, SistersinCrime/Norcal Chapter, and Public Safety Writers Association. For further information, go to www.thoniehevron.com.

Laura McHale Holland’s fiction, features and essays have appeared in such publications as The Best of Every Day Fiction Three, Vintage Voices, NorthBay biz magazine, the Noe Valley Voice and the original San Francisco Examiner. She currently heads the editorial department of a trade publication covering the electronic payments industry. She also belongs to Redwood Writers and the Storytelling Association of California. Her memoir Reversible Skirt was released in 2011; Resilient Ruin in 2016. The Icecream Vendors Song is a flash fiction collection, published in 2012. More info at: www.lauramchaleholland.com

Amanda Janik can be found writing creative non-fiction, poetry, grocery lists and creative content for others from her tiny trailer-turned-office in her back yard. Her freelance work has been featured on Chacos.com, in the Sonoma County Visitor’s Guide, and regularly on downtown Santa Rosa’s premier website, Out There Santa Rosa, where she writes as a Cultural Ambassador for the city. She has been writing her own work since childhood, and in the past several years has read at Get Lit!, SF LitCrawl, Lyrics and Dirges, Oakland’s Unruly Fest, and more. She is also the producer of Mortified Sonoma County, and has performed with Mortified in San Francisco on the main stage as well as at SF SketchFest and SF ImprovFest, and in Oakland, Los Angeles, Portland and New York. Amanda lives and loves in Santa Rosa. You can find her work stuff at www.amandajanik.com or her personal stuff at www.janikwriting.com. Email: askjanikanything@gmail.com; twitter: @pandajanik

Gregg K. Jann. Bettering the World (Red Lead Press 2009) is a collection of letters written over 26 years. My philosophy of bolstering our weaknesses to make our nation stronger for international relations is in the introduction. Included in my one book is my labor union contract article protecting mental health consumer employees. My school board educational goal is good for peace and competition rules and I want this goal on the state and federal constitutions. Besides election, I own an education and training company trademarked in mental health services. Marquis Who’s Who in America has included me in its registry since 2008. I have lived in Santa Rosa since 1967. Contact: PO Box 4207, Santa Rosa, CA 95402; email: whodoer1@yahoo.com. Blog on mental health and critical thinking, Jann Demystifying Affects web page: www.jannda.com

Maureen Anne Jennings has worn the hats of a journalist, copywriter, editor, publishing consultant, media relations manager, book festival director, and Fillmore East staffer. She owns more than 100 hats, not all of them work related. After the obligatory waitressing during college, she squandered a few years behind the bar at various dives in lower Manhattan. She also owned and operated a pub in northern California. Be careful what you write about. www.toughprose.com; toughprose@gmail.com

Jeanne Jusaitis is the author of two novels for children. Journey to Anderswelt, an MG fantasy, can be found on Amazon in paperback and Kindle form. Lilah and the Magic Kit, which received the 2013 BAIPA award for best children’s chapter book, can also be found on Amazon. Her poems and short stories, for children and adults, are published in several anthologies, and she is now completing Book 2 of Journey to Anderswelt. Jeanne holds a BA in Fine Arts and an MA in Education. Her stories are inspired by her memories of growing up in northern California, her many years of teaching middle graders, and chaperoning teens through Europe. Email contact: mizitis@comcast.net

Lakin Khan is the Fiction Director for the Napa Valley Writers Conference. Her poems, stories and essays have been published locally in zaum, The Dickens, Zebulon Nights and Tiny Lights. For several years, her column Nature’s Way was published by Newbytes, the newsletter for Sonoma State University. Currently she is editing these columns for a book that ponders the ways in which nature has re-adapted to our presence and is now colonizing our suburban and urban worlds. These essays and other writing can be found at her blog, Rhymes with Bacon, http://lakinkhan.blogspot.com.

Janet Landman, PhD, is a research psychologist, writer, and poet. She has taught psychology at the University of Michigan, Babson College, and Boston University. A recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, Landman has published empirical journal articles, poems, and two nonfiction books. Her poetry has appeared in numerous literary journals, including The Dickinson Review, Icarus, North American Review, Northeast Corridor, Rattle, Salmagundi, and Washington Square. Her poems have garnered first-place awards in national poetry competitions, such as the 2002 National Writers Union competition judged by Adrienne Rich and the 2010 Poetry Prize competition sponsored by the Bellevue Literary Review (NYU School of Medicine) and judged by Marie Ponsot. Her first book, Regret: The Persistence of the Possible (Oxford, 1993), was named a Book of the Year by The Independent and by the Princeton Theological Seminary and the Association of Theological Booksellers. Looking for Revolution, Finding Murder: The Crimes and Transformation of Katherine Ann Power (Paragon, Fall 2019) traces Katherine Power’s ethical evolution from good Catholic girl, to idealistic antiwar activist, to gun-toting revolutionary, to unwitting accomplice to murder, to longtime fugitive, to voluntary but defiant prisoner, to woman transformed in the autumn of her life. www.janetlandman.com. jktlor@gmail.com. Paragon House: https://paragonhouse.com/xcart/looking-for-revolution-finding-murder-the-crimes-and-transformation-of-katherine-ann-power.html

Jo Lauer is a psychotherapist in Sonoma County, California. Her articles and essays have appeared in Sacred Hoop, Psychology Today, Journal of Clinical Activities, Assignments & Handouts in Psychotherapy Practice, Tiny Light, Moondance, GRIT magazine, In The Family, and Sonoma County Women’s Voices. She has published two novellas, Waltzing with the Azaleas and Sojourner. Her story, “Quilt of Souls,” appears in the Vintage Voices 2010 Redwood Writers Anthology, Words Poured Out. Her essay, “She” appears in Potpourri For and About Women (2010). She is the author of An Unlikely Trio (Prequel to Best Laid Plans), Best Laid Plans (A Cozy Mystery), and Returning: A Collection of Stories. Please visit her blog at www.joscreativeuniverse.blogspot.com. She can be reached by e-mail: josrca@sonic.net.

Leigh Anne Lindsey lives in Sebastopol & writes sci-fi/futuristic thrillers-suspense, science, physics, astronomy & tech. Novel-in-the-works: Age Me Not. Member Redwood Writers, Santa Rosa and The Women’s National Book Assoc, San Francisco Chapter. While in Silicon Valley 18 years, wrote marketing and investment materials. While on the air as a rock DJ n Aspen CO for KSPN-FM, she wrote and produced radio commercials. Father was Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives in the mid-50s. Read more @ www.Leigh-Anne-Lindsey.com. Follow her @ Twitter/LeighALindsey, LeighAnneLindsey.blogspot.com, Facebook: www.facebook.com/Leigh.Anne.Lindsey; Scribd.com/LALwriter; RedRoom.com/member/LALwriter; LinkedIn: AuthorLeighAnneLindsey.

Susan Littlefield is a paralegal by day and a writer by night. She enjoys weaving short stories out of the “what if” situations of her life. She started writing poetry when she was eleven and wrote her first story when she was in high school. In 2006, she completed her Bachelor’s degree in Liberal Studies; she wrote a novella for her final project. In recent years, she has published four short stories and placed first in the Writing for Dollars short story contest. She has just completed her first novel, a psychological thriller. Please visit Susan’s blog at www.susanlittlefield.blogspot.com.

Nancy Long is a writer, director and performer. She hosted the Livewire Literary Salon and has published numerous short stories and plays. Recently, her piece A Dance I Call Love won First Prize and was performed by Petaluma Readers Theatre in February 2010. Her play Some People Find Their God received acceptance at an off-broadway theatre festival in New York City, Canada, Dominican University and at the Ross Valley RAW Festival. Nancy has performed with Writers on the Edge and Terry McGovern’s Marin Actor’s Workshop. She has created two 5-Minute Street Play Festivals in 2009 sponsored by the Arts Council of Sonoma County and reviewed numerous plays for ForAllEvents.com. She has also worked as Theatre Production Manager (and as Director and Performer) for Dominican University One Act Play Festival. Presently, she is Producer for the Petaluma Readers Theatre and helps coordinate the People, Places and Things Poetry Group in Petaluma; volunteers for the Annual Petaluma Poetry Walk and V-Day Petaluma.

Cecile Lusby’s mature life began with divorce and single motherhood. She finished her education in midlife, earning credentials as an English teacher and a school counselor working with teenage foster youth in San Mateo County. She is retired and living in Sonoma County where she contributes to the Sonoma County Gazette and the Independent Coast Review, and has published a memoir, Lullabies from Liberty Street. Webpage: cecilelusby.com; Email: cecilusby@hotmail.com

C.T. Markee. Born and raised in San Francisco, Charles spent his boyhood summers wandering the hills, creeks and forests of Marin County with his two best friends, sharing adventures that shaped some of the activities in his recently published novel, Irish the Demon Slayer. After graduating from the University of California in Berkeley he joined the Bay Area technology explosion, a choice that helped him support and raise a family of six boys and three girls. With his family grown, he left Silicon Valley in 2001 to forge a career in creative writing. Charles and his wife enjoy life in their Moonview Cabin in the hills north of Santa Rosa. www.charlesmarkee.com

Juanita J. Martin, Fairfield’s 1st Poet Laureate, 2010-2012, is an award-winning poet, freelance writer and performance artist. Her poetry appears in journals such as Blue Collar Review, Soma Literary Review and Rattlesnake Review. She’s an active member with Ina Coolbrith Circle, Redwood Writers and Marin Poetry Center. In 2011, Juanita won Best of Show at Solano County Fair, Vallejo. She’s been published in Beatitude Golden, Continent of Light and Marin Poetry Center’s Volume 13. She’s been a featured reader at Healdsburg Literary Guild Third Sunday and is a former Sonoma County Library Slam Champion, host of Petaluma’s Poetry of Remembrance 2010 and Sonoma County Book Festival’s Teen Slam. She was creator and host of UniverSoul reading series at Barking Dog Roasters, Boyes Springs, 2008-2011. Her intelligent, thought-provoking poetry is inspirational and political. Her poetry collection The Lighthouse Beckons was published in 2012 (ISBN: 978-0-972604-8-8).

Beth Ann Mathews grew up in the Midwest and earned her master’s degree in marine biology from the University of California at Santa Cruz. As a professor at University of Alaska Southeast for 20 years, she studied harbor seals, Steller sea lions, humpback and gray whales, and harbor porpoises and led undergraduate research on board tall ships in the Atlantic and from field camps in Hawaii and Alaska. Deep Waters: A Memoir of Loss, Alaska Adventure, and Love Rekindled will be published by She Writes Press in May 2023. Beth has published numerous research articles and a chapter from Deep Waters placed second in the 2018 Redwood Writers Memoir Contest. Deep Waters is Mathews’s first book. She is a member of Redwood Writers. She and her husband enjoy sailing their boat Reslience in San Francisco Bay.
BethAnnMathews@gmail.com
www.elizabethannmathews.com

Lynda McDaniel. Even as a kid, Lynda McDaniel encouraged the creativity of her friends. Today, she coaches and inspires adults to confidently produce books, blogs, and articles about their expertise or passion. So how did she become a writing coach? Of course it started with lots of writing. Lynda’s written 1,200+ articles for major publications and authored a dozen books, including her award-winning Words at Work and Contemporary Hawaii Woodworkers. She’s currently working on two new books about creativity and the writing process. And she’s coached scores of executives and staff at organizations such as Microsoft, Visa, Boeing, Citibank, YMCA, and University of Washington. Lynda offers her free Inspired Writing Toolkit at www.lyndamcdaniel.com. Or write her at lynda@lyndamcdaniel.com.

Lynn Millar writes weekly about Walking in Sonoma County. In fact, that’s the name of her blog. Geared towards people with bad knees, bad habits and bad attitudes, any path with a hill in the way comes with a warning. Walk descriptions include path details and sites to behold (flowers, trees, creeks and other bodies of water). Sometimes, she breaks away from the County, but even in San Francisco, she’s looking for the flattest walk. Watch for her on the trail at http://backtowalking.wordpress.com.

Martin Monroe is a tech and sports blog writer, song lyricist, and poet. As a mobile editor for InfoQ he provided original content of interest to mobile software developers and covered software conventions such as QCon San Francisco, where he also conducted video interviews that—along with his other work—are viewable on infoq.com. Armed with that technical writing experience of covering enterprise software development, he continues to independently cover tech news on web sites Blasting News, Hub Pages and others. He also composes song lyrics and poetry, and writes baseball posts for various sports web sites like the Sportster (www.thesportster.com/baseball/the-15-best-baseball-players-who-also-shamed-the-game).
Links to more writing samples:
The Lyrical Poetry of Martin B. Monroe (www.amazon.com/dp/B071JD78YC)
www.infoq.com/author/Martin-Monroe
http://idaconcpts.com/author/martin-monroe
www.linkedin.com/in/martin-monroe-67487849

Ray Morgan is a Western man. His backyard is the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific coast. He is an accomplished storyteller and local actor. He has always been an ardent fan of the science fiction genre and is pleased to finally bring some of it to the world with his most recent books, Come the Quiet and After the quiet, http://www.amazon.com/Come-Quiet-Tome-Two-Volume/dp/1470060140/ref=sr_1_cc_1?s=aps&ie=UTF8&qid=1357101624&sr=1-1-catcorr&keywords=come+the+quiet+ray+morgan through Amazon and Kindle. These stories are end of the world fantasies set in Sonoma County. Where will you be when the quiet comes? He has also written plays and hopes some of the story will go out to the world at large and please you.

Michael Nagler is President of the Metta Center for Nonviolence in Petaluma and the author of three books on nonviolence, including the 2002 American Book Award winning Search for a Nonviolent Future and most recently the Nonviolence Handbook, available from Berrett-Kohler publishers and elsewhere. Michael received the Sonoma County Season for Nonviolence Lifetime Achievement Award in 2015. He has lived at the Blue Mountain Center of Meditation’s Ashram in N. CA. since 1970.

Robin Noelle is a professional writing coach, public relations practitioner and successful author of numerous books and magazine articles. She has more than 20 years of experience writing for marketing, sales and public relations. Noelle specializes in non-fiction writing. Her books have been published by prestigious imprints such as Avalon Travel Publishing, Pearson Education and McGraw-Hill. Book credits include How to do Everything MacBook, Word 2012: In Simple Steps, and The Moon Guide to Puerto Vallarta. As a writing coach, Noelle has the background and skills to help budding or experienced writers in all aspects of the writing process.
(707) 200-3886
Robin@NorthBayWritingCoach.com
www.NorthBayWritingCoach.com

Pat Nolan is a writer living in Sonoma County. His poems, prose, and translations have appeared in literary magazines and anthologies including Rolling Stone, The Paris Review, Big Bridge, Saints Of Hysteria, Poems For The Millennium, Vol. I, and Up Late, American Poets since 1970 as well as in literary magazines in Europe and Asia. He is the author of numerous collections of poetry. He is the author of over a dozen books of poetry, most recently, Intellectual Pretensions, from Editions de Jacob (2009). He was also co-editor of Life Of Crime, Newsletter of the Black Bart Poetry Society during the 1980’s, which has been reissued in one volume as Life Of Crime, Documents In The Guerrilla War Against Language Poetry (Poltroon Press, 2010). On The Road To Las Cruces (Nualláin House, 2011) is his first published novel (See Sonoma County in Print). Pat Nolan is available for speaking engagements and readings. Contact through nuallainhousepublishers@gmail.com

Kenneth J. Nugent, author of Petaluma Slough, was born in New York the eighth of eleven children. Educated at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. His passion for California and The West thrived while he served on boards of the Sonoma County Historical Society and the Petaluma Historical Museum and Library. He has written a church history where historic stained-glass windows had been forgotten in a ranch henhouse. His anti-war drama, “The Finger,” won the Dominican University Marin Fringe Festival “First Place Best Play” honor. Tom Hanks portrayed his deceased college roommate and muse, Pulitzer Prize winner, Mike McAlary, in Nora Ephron’s Broadway smash, “Lucky Guy.” The dramatic plot evoked the brief, mysterious nature of mortality, and its powerful message inspired Nugent to redouble his efforts to complete his debut novel, now available on Amazon: https://amazon.com/author/kennethjnugent

Gwynn O’Gara, 2010-2011 Sonoma County Poet Laureate, is a Sebastopol poet known for her celebration of natural imagery and the exploration of interpersonal relationships through poetry. She is the author of three poetry collections, Snake Woman Poems, Fixer-Upper and Winter at Green Haven. She also co-authored Fruit of Life, Poems of Passion and Politics with Susan Kennedy, Penelope LaMontagne, and Phyllis Meshulam. For the last twenty two years, Gwynn has helped California Poets in the Schools bring poetry into the lives of students of all ages. She has also worked with adult students through the popular series, The Writer’s Sampler, sponsored by the Sebastopol Center for the Arts. Gwynn also teaches creative writing classes through The Sitting Room in Cotati.

Jennie Orvino was born and raised in the suburbs of Chicago, lived in Milwaukee for 10 years after college and then moved to Sonoma County in 1978. She has published poems, feature articles and interviews in print and online, has been a radio producer, spoken word performer and small press publisher. Her book, Poetry, Politics and Passion: memoir, poems and personal essays, was released in February 2012. Her collaboration with Bay Area musicians, Make Love Not War, was on the Grammy nomination ballot in 2002. Awards include: 1st prize poetry, The Dickens; second prize in Java Jive (North Bay Bohemian);The Don L. Emblen Award for achievement and promise in creative writing. Email: jennieo@sonic.net. Website: www.jennieorvino.com

Renée Owen is one of eighteen poets featured in the new release from Red Moon Press — A New Resonance 7: Emerging Voices in English-Language Haiku, edited by Jim Kacian and Dee Evetts. This perfect softbound, 186 page book is the seventh volume in a “best of” series that has won the Haiku Society of America’s Merit Book Award in each of its previous issues. New Resonance poets have won innumerable contests and many are recognized amongst the leaders of literary haiku around the world. These eighteen new members to this rather exclusive confederacy, then, have a very high standard against which to measure themselves, but equally high expectations of their ultimate position in the haiku community.

Roy Parvin is the award-winning author of two books of fiction, The Loneliest Road in America and In the Snow Forest. He has recently completed a memoir entitled My Year of Sleeping Dangerously and is also the author (under the nom de namaste of Yoga Matt) of Yoga for the Inflexible Male, forthcoming this fall from Ten Speed Press, a division of Penguin Random House. His work has been selected for inclusion in the Best American Short Stories series, has been nominated many times for the Pushcart Prize, and has been widely anthologized. He has also been awarded a National Endowment for the Arts grant, a Bread Loaf Fellowship, the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in fiction, and a Ucross fellowship. Roy is an accomplished teacher, having taught in the MFA program at San Francisco State University and at numerous workshops around the country. Website: royparvin.net
rpwritersworkshop@gmail.com

Richard K. Pate has degrees in both Architecture and Fine Arts. Raised in Texas, Mr. Pate resides in Northern California. His first publication, The Remembrance Album of Harriet Pruden, is a work of historical fiction. This unique tale is based closely on a true story and is built around an authentic pioneer-settler poetry collection; perhaps the world’s only narrative poetry anthology. (The Library of Congress comments “it would seem to be unique.”) Please visit the author’s website at www.rkpate.com and while you are there be sure to check the descendant’s page to see if your ancestor contributed to Harriet’s album! 70+People, 80 Years….100 Poems!

Rebecca Patrascu is a poet whose work has appeared in numerous print and online publications, including APJ, Disquieting Muses, The Marin Poetry Center Anthology, and Digging Our Poetic Roots. A Petaluma resident for more than two decades, she is a past winner of The Pinch Literary Award and a semi-finalist for the New Women’s Voices competition for her chapbook, Before Noon. She has a BA in Writing from Dominican University and is an MFA candidate at Pacific University. For more information, please visit her website: www.rebeccapatrascu.com

Peg Alford Pursell is the author of Show Her a Flower, A Bird, A Shadow (ELJ Editions, March 2017). Her work has been published in Permafrost, The Cortland Review, the Journal of Compressed Arts, and Vestal Review, among many others. She’s the recipient of various awards and honors, including the SC State Fiction Award, The South Carolina Academy of Authors Award, and the Flannery O’Connor Award for Fiction shortlist. She directs Why There Are Words, a national neighborhood of reading series, and WTAW Press, an independent publisher of exceptional literary books.

Website: www.pegalfordpursell.com
email: peg@pegalfordpursell.com
Twitter: @peg_a_pursell
Facebook: www.facebook.com/peg.alfordpursell

Harry Reid, author, playwright, and architect is MIT grad with MA in Anthropology and History from Sonoma State University. His many plays and opera have been performed in San Francisco and elsewhere in the Bay Area. His Ethos in 19th Century Alaska, cross-currents of American and Tlingit cultures, can be found in major university libraries. Harry’s is author of seven novels available on Amazon, including The Adventures of Charles T. Woolley and The Concert: The Diary of Count Frederigo Alfieri.
Website: www.hbreid.com
Email: HBReid100@gmail.com

Linda Loveland Reid‘s moto is “Live ’til you tilt!” She is author of two novels, Touch of Magenta and Something in Stone, and, writes for Sonoma Discoveries, an art and cultural magazine. As past president of Redwood Writers with 300 local members, Linda serves on board and chairs the Short Play Contest and Festival held each May in coordination with 6th Street Playhouse in Santa Rosa. An artist, Linda works in figurative oils. She directs community theater in Sonoma and Marin Counties. Linda holds two B.A. degrees from Sonoma State University, where she currently teaches art history classes for SSU’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.
website: LindaLovelandReid.com
Email: LindaLReid100@gmail.com

Rosella Rhine. Raised in San Francisco, Rosella began her business career in public relations, primarily working on the bond issue to create the Bay Area Rapid Transit District. In 1993 she moved to the Italian Riviera to write a novel. Upon her return to Marin, she was a freelance writer for the San Francisco Chronicle and Marin Independent Journal. She published her memoir, Life’s a Piñata: Full of Surprises in 2010, and in 2013 published a mystery novel, Murder by Wheelchair. Rosella moved to Santa Rosa in 2012. She became a member of the Redwood Writer’s Group, where her short story “Reflections of a Man” was included in their 2013 Anthology. See: www.rosellarhine.com

Ed Rimbaugh. First poem (Scimitar and Sword) accepted for publication by The Oregonian in 1966. First self-published poetry title: Many Faces Many Moods, 1967. Participated in Canyon Poets (Riverside Co.) in 1970, becoming involved with students of the Watts Writers Workshop. During 1970s and 80s organized poetry readings at venues such as UC-Riverside and Nosotros Fine Arts Workshop in Riverside Ca. With the aid of Neeli Cherkovsky (friend of C. Bukowski), published Asphalt Daisies in 1971. Started Inland Writers Magazine (listed in Directory of Small Presses and Little Magazines) in 1972 and published, edited and illustrated chapbooks such as Two-Way Street by Cathy Delmia. Currently (2010) engaged in “laptopping” and burning-to-disc 40 years of poetry and visual art production. PO Box 481, Guerneville Ca 95446-0481. Email: erimbaugh@yahoo.com

Author and screenwriter Michael Lance Ritter has spent 40 years studying the history, geography, settlement pattern and ecology of the American West. He earned an M.A. in history at Sonoma State University and was in the PhD history program at the University of California, San Diego. His text, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, Man of Two Worlds, (available at amazon.com) has been followed by an exciting biopic, Man of Two Worlds. Michael is a member of the Western History Association, Western Writers of America, Robinson Jeffers Association, Association for the Study of Literature & the Environment and the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. He has been a parent, teacher, editor, screenwriter, entrepreneur and world-class athlete. Email: mritter4u@comcast.net. See: www.jeanbaptistecharbonneau.com

Beverly Riverwood first taught writing at Miami University in Ohio in 1961. Since then she has taught creative writing, literature and reading at every grade from K-college. After raising her family, Bev has used her skills in businesses and law, earning an MA and a JD, working in advertising, public relations and environmental law. A sculptor, she has written for arts publications, including local papers. She is working on a novel and her memoir, emphasizing sixty years of social involvement in art, music, women’s rights work and community organizing. At present, she enjoys tutoring, studying history, playing her Celtic Harp and singing with the Occidental Community Choir. http://beverlyriverwood.com

Clara Rosemarda is an evocative writing teacher, memoirist, poet, and lecturer, whose work has been published in literary journals and anthologies. Co-author and co-editor of the anthology STEEPED: In the World of Tea, Clara has been in private practice in Santa Rosa as a counselor and healer for thirty years. She believes that living a creative life is not a luxury. Contact Clara Rosemarda: 707:579-2081 or rosen@sonic.net

Jo-Anne Rosen is a book and web designer living in Petaluma. Her stories have appeared in Other Voices, The Florida Review, The Dickens, The Summerset Review, Pithead Chapel, Redux, Valparaiso Fiction Review and other journals, and the anthology 95% Naked. Her stories have been performed at the New Short Fiction Series in Hollywood as well as by Off the Page Readers Theater in Sonoma County. She publishes an online chapbook series of fiction, poetry and memoir (see www.echapbook.com). She also offers publishing services for self-publishing writers, from manuscript to camera-ready files. Her first short fiction collection, What They Don’t Know, was released in 2015. Contact: jo@wordrunner.com; More info: www.wordrunner.com or www.joannerosen.us

Brianna Sage has written poetry since the age of 9, has been performing since the age of 15, and created her own monthly show at the age of 17. The Northbay Poetry Slam is a Sebastopol event, hosted every month by Brianna. This highly successful show brings in crowds as large as 150 people to HopMonk Tavern on the first Sundays of the month. Brianna herself has competed and placed in numerous poetry slams across North America, as well as performing and recording at the record label AlleyOneMusic and the What Wuz Da’ Buzz project. By the age of 17 Brianna had already published her first poetry book The Tales Of An Old Soul and recorded her first CD Stycks and Stones, as well as performed at events such as Harmony Festival and The Goddess Crafts Faire. On the rise in the growing slam poetry scene Brianna can still be seen every first Sunday of the month at HopMonk Tavern and Northbay Poetry Slam. Contact: Brianna.Marie.Sage@gmail.com

Heather Seggel’s work has appeared on The Toast, at Elle.com, Time.com, WashingtonPost.com, in the North Bay Bohemian and San Francisco Bay Times. She reviews books for several trade publications and is gradually moving into freelance commercial writing. Her life trajectory led her from Santa Monica to Cazadero to Ukiah to Santa Rosa, and she’s trying to turn the page and figure out where’s next.
www.heatherlseggel.weebly.com
www.heatherseggel.contently.com
Email: hlsegg@hotmail.com

Catherine (Clemens) Sevenau is an irreverent humorist, astute storyteller, and family scribe. The author of two books, Queen Bee, Reflections on Life and Other Rude Awakenings, (2016); and Behind These Doors, A family Memoir, (2014), Catherine reflects on her journey with levity, courage, and grace. Her kaleidoscope of frank and tender tales are about sin and prayer, good intentions and unattended sorrows… and about finding the way back home. She is a weekly blogger and monthly columnist for the Sonoma Valley Sun. In 2010, she founded and continues to co-host Random Acts, a monthly open mic at Readers’ Books in Sonoma.

P.O. Box 1206, Sonoma, CA 95476
www.sevenau.com
www.facebook.com/CSevenau
www.linkedin.com/in/catherine-sevenau-18b37631
csevenau@earthlink.net

Jeane Slone is the past Vice President and present board member of the California Redwood Writer’s Club, a member of the Healdsburg Literary Guild, Military Writer’s Society of America, and the Pacific Coast Air Museum. Ms. Slone is host of the television show, Writer/Speak. She is a tutor for the Library Literacy Program. Jeane distributes over 85 local authors’ books in 12 Sonoma County shops. Ms. Slone has published the historical fictions, She Flew Bombers, winner of the national 2012 Indie Book Award and She Built Ships During WW II (which is being converted into a English for second language book) and She Was an American Spy During WW II. Jeane is a member of CMedia Center, 1075 Mendocino Ave., Santa Rosa, where she is presently producing audio CD’s of her three historical fictions and will be distributing them through ACX, Amazon. Contact: info@jeaneslone.com; Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LocalAuthorsDistributor?skip_nax_wizard=true; Website: www.jeaneslone.com

Wanda Smith has authored several books from a variety of topics including: computer products, poetry, and horses. She has a Master’s Degree in Engineering from Stanford University and over 40 years’ experience in the high tech industry. Because of her contributions to the computer industry, Wanda was included in the 1984 Esquire Register of People Changing America. Other honorees were Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Charles Schwab, Steven Spielberg, and Sally Ride. After giving a presentation of her book, Horses of the Wine Country, the Sonoma County Horse Council asked Wanda to create an international equitation center which is now in development (www.cepec.us). Wanda’s books include: The Ugly Docling – Smart Little Lena (2016), Horses of the Wine Country (2009), California Crystals (2009), ISO and ANSI Ergonomic Standards for Computer Products (1996), and Using Computer Color Effectively (1990). Book cover images and summaries may be viewed at: www.wsproductions.biz/books.htm

Clarice Stasz is Professor of History Emerita, Sonoma State University. Raised in New Jersey, she discovered the world of Jack London soon after moving to the area. Her books on London and his times are American Dreamers; Charmian and Jack London and Jack London’s Women. In addition to six text and scholarly books, she published The Rockefeller Women and The Vanderbilt Women. A lifelong musician, she is also a song writer. In retirement, she is completing two self-published books: Slanderley, a twisted mystery romance, and Gypsy and the Bird Man, a history based upon her Hungarian and Bohemian ancestry.

Nina Tepedino was born in Albany, New York on November 29, 1932. Her life in the arts has included: professional singer, pianist, dancer drummer, mime, liturgical rites, public school music educator, lay woman minister, photographer, weaver, and she taught for Children with Special Needs programs in Sonoma County, California until 2010. She has degrees in music education, Master of Education in Creative Arts for Learning and a Master of Divinity from the Starr King School for the Ministry, Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley. She began writing poetry in 1975 and has poems published in journals and anthologies nationwide. Her first published book, If You Lived In Sam’s Neck (November 2012), for children and their families, chronicles in photographs and verse her back-to-the-land experiences in Maine and Mt. Shasta. Her poetry book, Woman Wandering 1975-2015, published November, 2015, is available on Amazon.com under Lovejoy Press, Sebastopol. Woman Wandering is a collection of fifty poems, spanning forty years of poetic impressions. It is a memoir in poetry, to chronicle Miss Tepedino’s life as a woman, her life as an artist, her life with Nature, her delights and displeasures and her elder wisdom to be shared. As she walks toward the Tree of Life, she embraces the living and growth in her life, as her creative force prospers and continues to wander. She currently lives in Sebastopol, California.

Julia Park Tracey is an award-winning writer, editor and journalist. She is the great-niece of Doris Bailey Murphy, who left dozens of diaries covering an 80-year span. The Doris Diaries is a multimedia project designed to publish and broadcast the historic contents of Ms. Murphy’s journals. Read more at www.thedorisdiaries.com. Her award-winning blog, Modern Muse, was named the best multimedia site by the East Bay Press Club in 2010; the same association named her blog Best Independent Blog in 2007. She is also a founding member of the writers’ collective, IndieVisible. Learn more at indie-visible.com. Read more about Julia and the Doris Diaries at www.juliaparktracey.com. You can follow Julia on GoodReads, Facebook and Twitter, and follow ongoing excerpts from The Doris Diaries on Twitter and Facebook as well.

Pat Tyler, a member of the California Writers Club, Redwood Branch, is a workshop facilitator (currently at City of Rohnert Park; formerly, MADF, Sonoma County Jail). She is a freelance editor for: California Writers Club, Redwood Branch, Romance Writers of America, Berkeley Branch, (and by appointment) – 707-696-9640 or pat.tyler@att.net. Publications include: (Print) Good Housekeeping, Fate, Tacoma News Tribune, LaVoz, Habitat for Humanity. (Online) Tiny Lights, Verb Sap. (Anthologies) To Honor a Teacher, More Bridges, Vintage Voices. Annual Competition Awards: Writer’s Digest, Friends of the Library, East of Eden Writer’s Conference, San Francisco Writer’s Conference. Education: Master of Arts – Sonoma State University; Rohnert Park, CA and (a summer course in writing fiction, titled “The Art of Lying,” Merton College, University of Oxford, England). Website: www.writetoday.net

Originally from Veracruz, Mexico, Maria de Lourdes Victoria is an award-winning author whose work has been published internationally in English and Spanish. Maria’s third novel, La Casa de los Secretos, was published by Planeta de Libros in July, 2016. Her first novel, Los Hijos Del Mar ( Ediciones B, 2006), was a finalist for the Mariposa Award (Best First Novel in Spanish). Her second novel, Más allá de la Justicia (Entre Líneas, Libros y Palabras, 2010) took third place in Barcelona, Spain, at the prestigious Premio Planeta de Novela Book Awards. Maria’s short stories have appeared in prominent literary journals, such as Nimrod and Quercus Review. Her social justice articles and stories have been featured in numerous legal journals. Maria lives in Seattle and Petaluma and is currently working on her fourth novel. Website: MariadeLourdesVictoria.com

Tom Walsh lives in Penngrove and writes mystery thriller fiction. Melange Books recently published Bless Me Father (available on Amazon at http://amzn.to/2uJdULW). More information about Tom and his work can be found on these links:

https://youtu.be/XSOvTbMxS_Q
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/
https://www.facebook.com/tom.walsh.3990418
https://www.facebook.com/blessmefather.novel/
www.bless-me-father.com
Argus Courier (article)

A.V. Walters was born in Canada, to American parents. (And after thirty years in California, she no longer says ‘eh’ at the end of her sentences.) Several years ago she moved to a chicken farm in Sonoma County, where she began writing and became an advocate of “bucket farming.” Her debut novel, The Emma Caites Way, won the BAIPA Best Literary Fiction Award. Her newest book, The Gift of Guylaine Claire, a nod to her Canadian roots, was released as an ebook July 1, 2012 by Two Rock Press and will be released in paperback in September. Ms. Walters lives in West County. She is published by Two Rock Press (tworockpress.com) and has a regular blog on rural Sonoma County living at two-rock-chronicles.com.

Author Joanne Whitfield moved to western Sonoma County in 1980 from the Bay Area, where she was an established freelance writer — published everywhere from Women’s Circle to Boy’s Life to California Living and more. Her novel, Cody Angel, was published by New Victoria Publishers of Vermont. She is currently working on a new novel, California 1848, a fictional account of the Gold Rush. A graduate of San Francisco State University in Creative Writing as well as in Painting, she studied with the late Stan Rice, Kay Boyle, and many other notable writers. She also was a correspondent with the Oakland Tribune in the early 1990s, and most currently retired from a 27-year career as a writer/editor for Postal Service headquarters in Washington D.C.; she produced a monthly magazine for 100,000 postal employees in the Pacific Area. Most summers, you’ll find her polishing up on her craft at the Squaw Valley Writer’s Conference, where Amy Tan and Mark Childress and other writers always are great sources of inspiration.

Jennifer J. Wilhoit is a published author of books, essays, and research articles, and she writes a blog about the ecotone of the inner/outer landscape. Jennifer’s writing focuses on the interconnection between humans and nature, spirituality, grief and death, the writing life and process, community service, and creativity. She earned a PhD in Environmental Studies through which she conducted research about artisans and conservation; she also holds an M.A. in Adult Education. For excellence in writing, Jennifer recently earned VIP status and was inducted as a lifetime member into Worldwide Who’s Who. Jennifer Wilhoit founded TEALarbor stories, a nature-based business through which she compassionately and creatively: mentors writers and offers traditional writing services; facilitates Story & Nature Guiding©; offers life transition support; and mediates conflict. Jennifer is a hospice volunteer; she also enjoys being in nature, making visual art, reading, and traveling. She has lived all over the U.S. including small islands in the Puget Sound; Jennifer recently moved to West County.
Website: www.tealarborstories.com
Blog: tealarborstories.blogspot.com
Contact: tealarborstories@gmail.com

Ann Wilkes writes science fiction, urban fantasy, articles and maintains a popular sci-fi blog where she delivers reviews, news and discussion. Her short stories read like Twilight Zone episodes – often tragic, funny or both. Her latest sales have been to Dark Quest Books anthologies, Beauty Has Her Way and No Man’s Land. As Ann Hutchinson, she writes memoir, mainstream fiction and lyrics. At Clever Copy, she does copywriting and editing for hire. When she’s not working or writing, she’s dancing with her husband or volunteering. Find out more at annwilkes.com and clevercopy.net.

Farrell Winter has been published in the Redwood Writers anthology Vintage Voices, the Sitting Room anthology Spirit Matters, Bay Area Music Market Magazine, Pro Sound News, Wine Country Film Festival, Sonoma County Free Press, California Peace & Freedom Party Newsletter, and zines including Mishap, Basilisk, The Good Book, and Trivia Comix. In 2010 Mr. Winter read his poetry at the San Mateo County Fair Writing Contest and YWCA Writers against Domestic Violence. His one-act anti-smoking play is unpublished. Currently he is researching his autobiography and revising his feminist science fiction novel, Zohu: A World Ruled by Women. Email: zalmoxis@sbcglobal.net

Kathleen Winter is author of three poetry collections, including Transformer (March 2020), selected by Maggie Smith for the Hilary Tham Collection at The Word Works Press. Winter’s second book, I will not kick my friends, won the Elixir Poetry Prize, and her debut collection, Nostalgia for the Criminal Past, won the Texas Institute of Letters Bob Bush Memorial Award and the Antivenom Poetry Prize. Her poems have appeared in The New Republic, The New Statesman, Poetry London, Agni, Cincinnati Review, Tin House, Michigan Quarterly Review and other journals. She has received fellowships from Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Dora Maar House, James Merrill House, Cill Rialaig Project and Vermont Studio Center. Her awards include the Poetry Society of America The Writer Magazine/Emily Dickinson Award and the Ralph Johnston Fellowship at University of Texas’s Dobie Paisano Ranch. Winter is an associate editor at 32 Poems. She teaches creative writing at Santa Rosa Junior College and Sonoma State University.

Jack Withington, author of Historical Buildings of Sonoma County. Contributor to the Sonoma County Historical Magazine. Member of Redwood Writers Club, United States Marine Corps Combat Correspondents Association, Military Writers Society of America.
Email: ccpenn@sonic.net

Jean Wong was born in Honolulu. Many of Jean’s works are rich in the traditions and culture of the Chinese in Hawaii. She has been a contributor to Vintage Voices, Synchronized Chaos, Tiny Lights, Short, Fast, & Deadly, and Get Born. One of her poems has been set to music by composer Georg Hajdu and is currently played internationally. She is a recent winner of the Redwood Writer’s short story contest. marcjeanhw@comcast.net; www.sonic.net/~marcjean/jean

Gor Yaswen, Artist/Writer. Gordon Yaswen, who died tragically in a motorcycle crash March 2, 2016, was a self-taught writer and artist whose work was published in magazines and anthologies. Gor self-published 14 non-fiction books and 26 chapbooks of poetry with drawings. He taught autobiography techniques, lead WESTWORD, a Sebastopol writer’s support group, and claimed to draw and write as a spiritual path. His books, chapbooks, note-cards, and drawings are available by order at: 740 First St., Sebastopol, CA 95472 or yaswen@aol.com.

Nicole R. Zimmerman is a 2019 recipient of the Discovered Awards for Emerging Visual and Literary Artists produced by Creative Sonoma and funded, in part, by the National Endowment for the Arts. She holds an MFA in writing from the University of San Francisco and is an alumna of Lit Camp, a juried writers conference. Her work, including a Pushcart nomination, appears in newspapers, anthologies, and literary journals such as Toho, Ruminate, Origins, South Loop Review, and Creative Nonfiction. Nicole freelanced as a reporter for Petaluma Patch, as a Towns correspondent for The Press Democrat, and as a longtime copywriter/editor for Viator, a TripAdvisor company. She has taught creative writing in after-school programs and is an AWA Affiliate, certified to lead workshops in the Amherst Writers & Artists method. She hosts Shut Up & Write!™ sessions weekly in Penngrove via Meetup.