Sonoma County Literary Update

If you are a Sonoma County writer with a book or chapbook newly published, let’s help you celebrate! Just send your announcement to editor@socolitupdate.com. Book announcements are posted in the order received.

Include a book front cover image (jpg), brief book description, and information on how your readers can find out more about you and your work or order a copy. Please send this announcement as plain text, preferably in an email (no flyers, pdfs or docs with special formatting).  The most recent announcements are posted at the top of the page.

Your announcement will appear in its entirety in the emailed version of the Update for the month it is posted. Subsequently, authors’ names will be listed in the emailed Update with links to this page.

Archived pages of books in print may be viewed here for 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025.

Sonoma County writers published in local, national, and international literary journals or anthologies will be recognized here as well. If you have a publication in a literary journal or anthology (within the last 30 days) you’d like to announce, send the following information to editor@socolitupdate.com: Your name, title of the piece, name of the journal and date of publication (issue/volume), link to journal’s or publisher’s website (if available). This list of journal publications will be posted monthly and archived.

Sonoma County Writers Published in Periodicals

During January 2026, the following authors reported their work has recently been published in journals, magazines or anthologies, both print and electronic. Links to periodicals do not always go to the poem or story itself. Unless specified otherwise, the works are poems. For an archive of previous publications in periodicals, click HERE.

Renée Owen:
“the three-year-old” in Acorn (No. 55, 2025)
“Statistics” and “a hummingbird” in Mariposa (No. 53, 2025)
”fluttering wings” in Presence (No. 83, 2025)
“by-the-wind-sailors” in THF Volunteer Anthology 2025 or print copy available from Lulu Press.
“Bombs Away” in Whiptail Journal (No. 14, 2025)
“Tomfoolery” in Contemporary Haibun Online (No. 21.3, 2025)
“night deepens” in The Heron’s Nest (December 2025)

 

New and Noted Books by Sonoma County Writers in 2026

Shawna L. Swetech, R.N.—Standing in Their Fire: Poems from a Hospital Nurse

Standing in Their Fire, Shawna Swetech’s first poetry collection, has just been released by Kelsay Books. The 51 poems are all inspired by experiences during her 35-year nursing career: from being a frightened student at a near-code, decades of giving bedside care, through negotiating retirement.

“Shawna Swetech’s powerful collection burns with the passion of a nurse dedicated to her calling. “To be a nurse is to be in their fire: the diseased, the incised, the dying.” These poems are drawn from decades in nursing and chart her progress from a student attending a near-disaster ER case to a senior nurse overwhelmed by increasing documentation. Throughout, her compassion shines as she writes about patients desperately ill and grieves for them in moments, crying in the supply room with prayers “may these words/be caring hands, a lifeline of lines.” In the third section, she writes of retirement and turns to nature for solace and healing in graceful poems that evolve into free-flowing forms. Anyone who has worked in medicine will resonate with these poems. Anyone who has experienced illness will take comfort in this portrait of nurse who has been willing to stand in fire for them.”
—Catharine Clark-Sayles, MD, author of The Telling, the Listening and Brats

“Shawna Swetech’s poems are both brutal and tender, testifying to the body’s vulnerability, and the beauty of our humanity even in—perhaps especially in—moments of extremis. Drawing on her decades-long nursing career for vibrant details that nail the scene, Swetech brings us inside the hospital rooms where she encounters sufering and courage, agony and transcendence.”
–Alison Luterman, author of Desire Zoo and In the Time of Great Fires

Published by Kelsay Books, 2026
ISBN: 978-1-63980-988-2, $20
Available on Amazon and Kelsay Books
Visit ShawnaSwetech.com for more details and information on upcoming readings.

Redwood Writers Club—Moonshadow: Tales of Hidden Light

Where darkness deepens, hidden light awakens.

In this luminous collection of forty-one stories from the Redwood Writers Branch of the California Writers Club, shadows become gateways to discovery. Ordinary moments shimmer with mystery and meaning-grief transforms into grace, love rekindles in unexpected places, and courage rises quietly in the most unlikely hearts.

Thank you for helping us celebrate Moonshadow, our 2025 prose anthology, which beautifully represents the talent of our Redwood Writers branch.

Judy M. Baker (Editor/Illustrator), Crissi Langwell (Editor), Mara Lynn Johnstone (Editor)

Redwood Writers Press
ISBN: 979-8985350364
Available on Amazon

Thomas Nguyen — War and Other Problems

War and Other Problems tells the story of someone who grew up amid the hardships of the Vietnam War—with a father killed in the line of duty, a mother struggling to raise four children in a poor farming community, and the constant fear of invasion. He left school for the military to do his part in protecting his home, only to encounter new horrors and a losing battle. He spent years as a prisoner of war. Life wasn’t any easier when he got out.

Escaping to America was a long, dangerous journey that involved swimming across a river at night, sneaking past checkpoints, running desperately through jungles, surviving the bombing of a refugee camp, and navigating new hazards around every corner.

When he finally arrived, it was to face a whole new set of troubles. But despite family drama, medical ailments, and acquaintances both kind and cruel, he has persevered through it all.

Originally he just wanted to write down his story so his children could understand what he went through. Now that it’s finished, it’s the kind of wild ride that many people ought to appreciate. 

Available on Amazon and everywhere else books are sold. 

Renée Owen & John Thompson—Moonblind

Newly released, this hand-sewn artist’s book created by Renée serves as a textural interpretation of both the poets’ lives and what’s happening in our world today. Handmade indigo-dipped Cave paper covers, letterpress printed title, silver flyleaves, beaded spine and waxed linen thread. Section headers of Renée’s original art with abstract calligraphic mark-making. The award-winning collaborative rengay poems, written in alternating stanzas by Renée Owen and John Thompson, reflect the poets’ deep immersion in and love of nature.

Dimensions: 7″H x 5″W x 1.5″D.

Published by Pig Blossom Press in 2025.

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Redwood Writers Club 2025 Author Launch Books

The following books, featured at the Redwood Writers Club 2025 Author Launch on Saturday, May 17, 2025, were published between January 1, 2024 and May 9, 2025. Videos of the event may be found on YouTube. The 2026 Author Launch will take place on March 28.

Jean Wong’s book Bear is Not a Bear, also featured at the Author Launch, was submitted separately and announced on this page in May 2025. 

Jesse Bilyeu—Apocalyptic Lullaby

Six-year-old Punkin finds herself the last human alive after a meteor storm brings about a zombie apocalypse. Alone in her paranoid uncle’s fully stocked survival shelter, she lives safe and sound until her 15th birthday. With the considerable resources of the shelter depleted, she must brave the topside world for provisions. Along the way, she befriends a wounded puppy and frees a chronicler she will never know. In her otherworldly music, Punkin discovers a secret that could free the world from the scourge of the undead. But she must survive in those horrors, to see it done.

Available on Amazon: amazon.com/Apocalyptic-Lullaby-Killshot-Diaries-Bilyeu/dp/1967265011

Abby Lynn Bogolmony—The Lighted Pull of Dreams

In this extraordinary poetry collection influenced by the moon’s silver luminosity, Abby Lynn Bogomolny elevates us with gorgeous images to “fill ourselves and fly.” Yet each boon is balanced by gravity. From her immigrant grandparents’ struggles to those of her own, she writes with heart and wit of vivid Brooklyn streets, the pine flats of Florida, and coastal California. If you thrive on words from a female-centered perspective, one with a strong sense of place in lyrical rhythmic lines, The Lighted Pull of Dreams is a must read.

Available from Finishing Line Press: finishinglinepress.com/product/the-lighted-pull-of-dreams-by-abby-lynn-bogomolny

Susan Church-Downer—All You Care to Eat: A Novice Buys a Restaurant

Five years after their romantic breakup, Susan and her best friend buy a vegetarian buffet restaurant, having little idea how demanding, frustrating, and rewarding the endeavor will be. What could go wrong? In the crucible of financial pressures, challenging employees, customer expectations, and their own unresolved issues, they create an extraordinary venue for delicious, healthy food, art, music and community—and lose buckets of money. This memoir spans their ten-year run and is for anyone who has fantasized about owning a restaurant as well as those already doing it.

Available on Amazon: amazon.com/All-You-Care-Eat-Restaurant/dp/B0DTP9WK7L

Diana Morgan Dean, Psy.D.—Compost Happens: Growing a Flourishing Life After Childhood Abuse

One woman’s journey of transforming childhood sexual abuse into compost to grow a flourishing life. Thirteen-year-old and motherless, Diana is determined to care for and protect her younger siblings despite their father’s constant abuse. But when his cruel girlfriend convinces him to send her away, she is spun into a decades—long battle to reconnect with her family and find wholeness within herself. She chases true healing, from coast to coast and beyond, through doomed marriages to two men and one woman, to living on a sailboard, and from careers as a secretary to that of a newspaper photographer, minister and neuropsychologist. It is only through great loss that Diana is finally able to find the family, and the love, that she’s been searching for all along.

Available on Amazon: amazon.com/Compost-Happens-Growing-Flourishing-Childhood/dp/B0DZ2Y64KB

Colleen Dolan—The Ghost Ship Fire

Colleen’s daughter Chelsea, a well-respected San Francisco electronic musician known professionally as Cherushii, was one of 36 young people who died in the Oakland Ghost Ship Fire. The book, The Ghost Ship Fire, chronicles the terrifying events of that December night and Colleen’s devastating loss, piecing together the gripping story behind the media headlines. It moves to the high-profile criminal trial two years later that captured the nation with tales of horrifying death at an off-the-grid artists’ collective. Colleen’s struggle with questions about her daughter’s death, accountability, and justice will help others who are grieving understand they are not alone in their search for answers.

Available on Amazon: amazon.com/Ghost-Ship-Fire-Colleen-Dolan/dp/1637776365

Laura McHale Holland—Shinbone Lane

San Francisco, 1974. Sixteen-year-old runaway Maddy is escaping the blame for a crime she didn’t commit. Miles from home, she is befriended by two elderly neighbors, Clara and Ted. The teenager soon finds a place among the kaleidoscope of personalities on the oddly named Shinbone Lane. Ted’s Italianate Victorian house overflows with travelers, free spirits and artists. His backyard is a haven for all who can see its magic. But like all who tread on it, Shinbone Lane has secrets. And, like all secrets, they lie uneasily in the dark, until the truth emerges to lay the past to rest.

Available on Amazon: amazon.com/Shinbone-Lane-Laura-McHale-Holland/dp/1733668381

Carol Jacobsen—Doing the Right Thing

This third book in the Women of Color and Accomplishment series was inspired by the events of 2020. Drawing from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s words, “The time is always right to do the right thing,” she painted 100 colorful portraits of Black women who overcame challenges of race and gender to achieve their dreams and also give back to their community. This book contains inspiring stories of 31 of these overlooked women. It’s a fun and colorful way to learn about the histories of women who have made a positive impact on society and furthered the cause of social justice.

Available on Amazon: amazon.com/Women-Color-Accomplishment-Doing-Right/dp/1962669009

John M. McCarty—Golf at Northwood

Golf at Northwood is a work of historical fiction. The novel traces the adventures of Alister MacKenzie during his transition from surgeon to camoufleur to golf architect. He soon travels to Sonoma County in California where he carves the Northwood Golf Course out of a redwood forest along the Russian River. The story leaps from 1928 to 1961 as eight-year-old Eddie Bale befriends an eccentric Homer Williams who maintains the layout by his lonesome. Eddie comes of age and together with Dr. Charlie Schaap rescues the course from loan sharks, developers and con artists.

Available on Amazon: amazon.com/Golf-at-Northwood-John-McCarty/dp/B0DQHFTXBD

Taylor Metzler—If the Gods Be Willing

The Greek Gods thrice blessed Cassia’s life with her loving wife and their son, who’s just gone off to college. Her happiness is shattered when her wife contracts a magical illness. Now she must challenge Fate and the Gods themselves to save the woman she loves and restore the life they had. Yet, how can she stand before the Gods when that means standing against the one she loves? Will the Gods be willing to save her wife?

Available on Amazon: amazon.com/If-Gods-Willing-Cold-Death/dp/B0D52RG6R6

Lori Pappas—The Magic of Yes: Embrace the Wise Woman Within

An empowering and transformative journey for women seeking to navigate life’s challenges with wisdom, courage, and grace. As modern life becomes increasingly fast-paced and demanding, it reminds us that true wisdom comes not from age or experience but from the ability to reflect, learn, and embrace the present moment. In a world where self-care and mindfulness are crucial to well-being, practical tools and inspirational stories help readers discover the magic within themselves. It includes a Timely Message of Empowerment, Tools for Self-Discovery and Growth, Stories that Inspire and Heal, and a Blueprint for Embracing Change.

Available on Amazon: amazon.com/Magic-Yes-Embrace-Woman-Within/dp/B0DKPWW1SD

Sarah Paris—for the birds

“Paris’ haiku are signposts on the highway of poetry, imploring us to slow down to observe all the little things that are actually big and important. She reminds us that these, added up, are what make a meaningful and beautiful life.” —Bryan Rickert, former president, Haiku Society of America
“In for the birds Sarah Paris uses her ‘outside voice’ to celebrate birds and contemplate outdoor spaces. I savored these poems during the dreary aftermath of a New England spring snowstorm and felt uplifted and carried along on a wave of West Coast color and sound, as if spring migration were happening in my head. Paris’s often playful, always resonant haiku open many windows onto the birds and other creatures with whom we share this world. These are haiku to savor and enjoy, preferably on a park bench or along the trail.” — Kristen Lindquist

Available from Red Moon Press: redmoonpress.com/product/for-the-birds-haiku-of-sarah-paris

Elaine Rock—Dusty Roads

Barbara “Dusty” Roads was a trailblazing stewardess and union leader who took on the airline industry’s sexist policies in the 1950s and ’60s. Fighting against marriage bans, age limits, weight restrictions, unequal pay, and humiliating girdle checks, she refused to back down. As one of the first female union lobbyists to Congress, she pushed for workplace equality and later made history by filing the first-ever EEOC sex discrimination complaint. Her efforts helped stop a strike, transform airline policies, and open doors for women and men nationwide. “Dusty Roads started it all.“ — Gloria Steinem

Available on Amazon: amazon.com/Dusty-Roads-Hidden-Ignited-Movement/dp/B0DL4DDX7B

Rebecca Rosenberg—Silver Echoes

1920s Chicago: Rising starlet Silver Dollar Tabor’s life shatters after a traumatic attack, unleashing a hidden self. She plunges into the city’s dangerous underworld, her ambition twisting into destruction, her love affair with screenwriter, Carl, fraying.
1932, Colorado. Her mother, Baby Doe, haunted by Silver’s disappearance, desperately seeks answers. With Carl, she uncovers a shocking truth that rewrites their family’s history. This true story explores the dark side of ambition, the cost of hidden selves, and the enduring power of love.

Available on Amazon: amazon.com/Silver-Echoes-Historical-Twenties-Biographical/dp/B0F2GHC2KK

Jenna Scott—White Sheep, Black Wool: Finding Your Flock

In her journey of self-discovery and acceptance, Jenna Scott’s captivating narrative explores the struggles of fitting in, the power of embracing individuality, and the beauty of finding your place in the world.

Available on Amazon: amazon.com/White-Sheep-Black-Wool-Finding/dp/B0D93TMJQK

Tommie W. Whitener—The Bar Pilot

Ryan is a bar pilot on San Francisco Bay and the book is heavy on the many fascinating places, people and situations unique to that world famous body of water. As skilled as he in in piloting the huge ships in and out of the Bay, so he fails time after time in his search for the love of his life. Expertly piloting colossal ships under the Golden Gate and through the Bay’s perilous tides, screaming winds and hidden shoals, Ryan knows the San Francisco Bay piloting grounds like the back of his hand. But once ashore his mastery disappears, and he repeatedly dashes himself against the treacherous reefs of love. He scrambles up and down the flimsy ladders on the sides of giant cargo carriers and container ships like a squirrel on a tree, but when it comes to holding out for the woman of his dreams, he’s caught in a continuing undertow of frustration, disappointment, and depression.

Available on Amazon: amazon.com/Bar-Pilot-Search-Love/dp/099868158X

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Books by Sonoma County Authors Published in 2025

For details, see: socolitupdate.com/sonoma-county-in-print/2025-soco-writers-in-print

• Tommie W. Whitener—The Showrunner: Hollywood Culture Clash
• Debra Palmer, PhD—Between Wounded and Well
• Robin Gabbert—Somehow, I Haven’t Drowned
• Dan Coshnear—Professional Poems
• Frances Rivetti—Floating in the Middle
• Sherrie Lovler—Distant Voices
• Brian R. Martens—Merlin’s Wing
• Robert Waxler and David Beckman—You Say, I Say: Staying Alive with Literature, Language, and Friendship
• Pat Nolan—Ode to Sunset: A Year In The Life of American Genius
• Anna Citrino—Stories We Didn’t Tell
• Susan E. Gunter and Linda L. Reid (editors)—Switching to ON! The 2025 SebArts Writers Anthology
• Nancy J. Martin—The Long Red Hair and Other Short Stories
• West County Writer’s Circle—A View From My Window
• Karen Peterson, Editor—Work as We Have Known It
• Karen Pierce Gonzalez—Down River with Li Po
• Eric Johnson—Journeyman’s Dues
• Jean Wong—Bear is Not a Bear
• Karen Pierce Gonzalez—Moon kissed, Earth wrought, Vision Drunk
• Donna Emerson—Daphne Lifts Up
• Lisa Shulman—Fragile Bones, Fierce Heart
• Phyllis H. Meshulam— (Re)Creations
• John Monroe Johnson—Toss Repeat
• Dave Seter—Somewhere West of the Mississippi
• Hiram Larew—This Much Very: Poems
• Janet Constantino—Becoming Mariella
• Christine Walker—Tap Dancing at the Bluebird
• Roslyn Smith Ball—Nullipara: Selected Memoirs of Love, Loss, and Healing
• Barbara L. Baer—Masha & Alejandro Crossing Borders

Redwood Writers Club Author Launch Books, published 2024:

• Richard Boyd—Souls, AI Computers, and the Future of Humankind
• Barbara Cottrell—Darkness Below
• Melissa Geissinger—Nothing Left But Dust
• Lenore Hirsch—Connection: Stories
• Mara Lynn Johnstone—Story Seeds for Fantastical Trees
• Marie Judson—Elf Stone of the Neyna
• Crissi Langwell—Masquerade Mistake
• Bill Lynch—Mekong Belle: Love’s Impossible Choice
• Marty Malin—Transit: A Journey of Transfiguration
• Ana Manwaring—Backlash: Venom and Vengeance from ‘Nam
• John McCarty—Journey to Duncans Mills
• Rod Morgan—Language Through the Prism
• Maetreyii Ma Nolan—Into the Heart of the Infinite
• Laurel Patterson—Land of Light
• Richard Rachlin—Conspiracy of Lies
• Christopher Ruttan—Moving Like Fish in the Sea

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