Keynote Speaker

Julia Whitty was born in Bogotá, Colombia, and emigrated as a child to the United States with her Tasmanian father and Anglo-Indian mother. Her latest book, The Fragile Edge: Diving & Other Adventures in the South Pacific, published by Houghton Mifflin in May, 2007, is the recipient of the 2008 PEN USA Literary Award for Creative Nonfiction, 2008 John Burroughs Medal Award for outstanding natural history book, the 2008 Kiriyama Prize for nonfiction, the 2008 Northern California Book Awards for creative nonfiction, and a finalist the 2008 Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Her first book, A Tortoise for the Queen of Tonga, published by Houghton Mifflin, and translated into German by Marebuchverlag and Italian by Sartorio Editore, is an award-winning collection of short stories recognized by the PEN/Hemingway Award, the O. Henry Awards, and the Rona Jaffe Foundations Writers Award. Her magazine articles have been winners of a National Magazine Award, a John Bartlow Martin Award for Public Interest Magazine Journalism, and a James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism.

Whitty’s environmental correspondent at Mother Jones magazine, and a blogger at The Blue Marble. A former filmmaker, her more than 70 nature documentaries have aired on PBS, Nature, The Discovery Channel, National Geographic, Outdoor Life Channel, Arts & Entertainment, and with many other broadcasters worldwide.

Book Talk Authors

Micheline Aharonian Marcom is the author of Three Apples Fell from Heaven which was a New York Times Notable Book and Runner-Up for the PEN/Hemingway Award. The Daydreaming Boy won the 2005 PEN/USA Award in fiction and was named a best book by the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. The third book in the trilogy, Draining the Sea, was published in March 2008. Her fourth novel, The Mirror in the Well, was published by Dalkey Archive in September 2008. Marcom received a Lannan Literary Fellowship in 2004, a Whiting Writers’ Award in 2006, and Fulbright Senior Specialist Fellowship to go to Beirut, Lebanon in Spring 2009. She is a Visiting Writer at Mills College.

Sharon Bray, Ed.D., is best known for her innovative work leading expressive writing groups for cancer patients, which she continues at a number of hospitals, including Stanford Cancer Center.  Her two recent books, A Healing Journey:  Writing Together through Breast Cancer (2004) and When Words Heal: Writing through Cancer (2006) chronicle her work with cancer patients.  

Sharon has taught creative writing and led writing groups for senior citizens, women, at risk teens, and cancer patients.  She’s also the author of a children’s book, poetry, memoir and several professional articles.  She has been an invited speaker at conferences across the U.S., in Canada and Japan.  She now teaches for the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program, The Writers’ Workshop at Stanford Medical School, and teaches professional development courses in therapeutic writing at Alliant International University and the Pacific School of Religion.  She is currently writing a novel.

Jacqueline Harmon Butler of Wild Writing Women is a recipient of many press awards for her writing, including Italy’s prestigious “Golden Linchetto Prize” for best foreign journalist and the North American Travel Journalists Association Runner Up Award for Best Travel Article Written For Internet.  In a variety of international publications and anthologies, her travel writing has tempted reader’s palates around the world with mouth-watering meals and restaurant adventures. Her latest book is the 6^th Edition of the Travel Writer’s Handbook. www.JacquelineHarmonButler.com

Yiyun Li grew up in Beijing, China. Her stories and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The Best American Short Stories, O Henry Prize Stories, and many other publications. Her debut collection A Thousand Years of Good Prayers won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Festival, the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Guardian First Book Award and many other acclaims. She was recently selected by Granta as one of the best young American novelists. Her novel, The Vagrants, will be published in February 2009. She lives in Oakland, California and her husband and their two sons, and teaches writing at The University of California, Davis.

Workshop Presenters

Marcy Alancraig is the author of The Ghosts Between Us, forthcoming from Rockway Press.  Other work has been published in Sisters Singing: Sacred Stories by Women, Porter Gulch Review, Common Lives/Lesbian Lives, Korone and Shirrim. She teaches English and creative writing at Cabrillo Community College, sneaking time for writing between grading stacks of papers.

Lisa Alpine of Wild Writing Women.  Curiosity about what and who is around the next bend or beyond the curve of the horizon has fueled Lisa Alpine's voyaging since she left home at 18 to live in Paris. She has owned an import company, published a newspaper and, for the last quarter century she has been a professional writer. Her short stories appear in numerous anthologies, from I Should of Stayed Home, Hyena's Laughed at Me and Now I Know Why, to Lonely Planet's Tales From Nowhere. Lisa teaches writing at The Writing Salon in San Francisco and at her home studio in Marin County. For details on her writing workshop calendar, visit www.lisaalpine.com

Meliza Bañales, aka Missy Fuego, writes books, sews clothes, and makes movies.  She has won a 2009 Airspace Residency, 2008 CQC Grant, a 2006 Frameline Completion Grant, 2002 People Before Profits Poetry Prize, was the first Latina on the west coast to win a poetry slam championship in 2002 and toured with Sister Spit in 2007.  She has a second forthcoming book of poems entitled 51 Poems About Nothing At All , finished another short film with J. Aguilar entitled Getting Off, and will tour with Body Heat in March 2009.  Come be her friend at: www.myspace.com/melizabanales/missyfuego.

Susan Bono is a writing teacher and freelance editor who has edited and published the hard copy edition of Tiny Lights: A Journal of Personal Narrative twice annually since 1995, and its online counterpart, www.tiny-lights.com, for nearly that long. Her writing has appeared in publications such as Sheila Bender’s Writing & Publishing Personal Essays (Silver Threads, 2005), the St. Petersburg Times, the Petaluma Argus Courier, Passager Magazine, on KRCB radio’s Word by Word and North Bay Theater Group's Page on Stage. She's promoted the craft of memoir and personal essay at writer's conferences, retreats, workshops and literary gatherings from Cupertino to Crescent City. She is enjoying midlife with chickens in Petaluma, CA

Calvin Crosby, Community Relations Director for Books Inc., has over 15 years of book store experience focusing on author events. He is also the author of Red Punch, Green Jell-O! the Heinous Truth about Utah, a response to the Olympic Games in 2000.

Kathleen de Azevedo was born in Rio de Janeiro Brazil and currently teaches English at Skyline College. Her work has appeared in many publications including the Los Angeles Times, Américas, Boston Review, Greensboro Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Gettysburg Review and TriQuarterly. Samba Dreamers, her novel about Brazilians in Hollywood, was nominated for the Northern California Book Award and received a PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles Award in 2007.

Katharine Harer teaches English and Creative Writing at Skyline College, is the faculty editor of Talisman, the annual magazine of student art and literature, and co-coordinator of Culture Comes Alive at Skyline College, a project which brings literary and arts programs to campus.  Harer has been Executive Director of the California Poets in The Schools Program, a California Arts Council Poet in Residence, and director of the Small Press Traffic Literary Arts Center.  Her poetry has been published in Spring Cycle, In these Bodies, and The Border.  Hubba hubba won Slipstream Magazine’s Eighth Annual Poetry Chapbook.  She is currently working on a book about her travels in Chile tracing the steps of Pablo Neruda. 

Joan Holden. As principal playwright for the Tony Award-winning San Francisco Mime Troupe, 1967 -2000, Holden wrote or co-wrote a satire a year to be performed in the parks and tour the country, including The Independent Female; The Dragon Lady’s Revenge; False Promises; The Hotel Universe; the Factwino trilogy, Ripped Van Winkle; Seeing Double; Back to Normal, Social Work, and City for Sale.   She has created shows in collaboration with artists in Israel, the Philippines, Nepal and Hong Kong; adapted comedies by Dario Fo, Beaumarchais, Moliere and Ben Jonson for the Eureka Theater, the American Conservatory Theatre, and the Berkeley Repertory Theatre; and taught playwriting at U.C. Davis and SFSU.   Her stage adaptation of Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed played the Intiman Theatre, the Mark Taper Forum, the Trinity Repertory Company, Guthrie  Lab, TheatreWorks, Brava! and dozens of others.  She is presently collaborating on a show about undocumented migrants, for Z Space Studios.

Carla King of Wild Writing Women is a motorcycle travel writer and author of the popular real-time Internet dispatches "American Borders," "China Road," and "Indian Sunset." Her writing has been published in many international publications and anthologies. Her book, American Borders, is the first in a series of misadventurous travelogues. www.carlaking.com

Suzanne LaFetra of Wild Writing Women is an award winning writer whose work has appeared in many newspapers and literary journals, including the San Francisco Chronicle, the Christian Science Monitor, Brevity, Skirt, Ladybug, Rose & Thorn, Smokelong Quarterly, Literary Mama, and on San Francisco’s NPR affiliate radio station. Her essays have been included in fourteen anthologies, including the Chicken Soup, Rocking Chair Reader, and Travelers Tales series. She has worked as a freelance journalist for many Bay Area publications including the East Bay Monthly, Diablo Magazine, Solano Magazine, the Contra Costa Times, and the Berkeley Daily Planet. She wrote the weekly Arts & Leisure feature for seven Knight Ridder newspapers during 2004-2005. Her writing has garnered over a dozen literary awards and is represented by Amy Rennert. When she’s not being a soccer mom, Suzanne’s currently plugging away at something she hopes will grow up to be a novel.

Ellen Lee, a technology reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, has also written for the Contra Costa Times, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and Washington Post.  She contributes to the Chronicle’s technology blog, “Tech Chronicles,” as well as produces podcasts and videos for the Chronicle’s web site, SFGate.com.  She is also a past president for the Asian American Journalists Association, San Francisco Bay Area Chapter.

Elline Lipkin is the author of The Errant Thread, which was selected by Eavan Boland for the Kore Press First Book Award.  She received her MFA in Poetry from Columbia University and her Ph.D. in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Houston.  She was a Postdoctoral Scholar with the Beatrice Bain Research Group on Gender at UC Berkeley for two years.  Currently, she is a Research Scholar at UCLA's Center for Research on Women where her work focuses on the use of the visual within contemporary American women's poetry and she is completing a poetry manuscript entitled Cast.

Kathleen McClung has taught writing for over fifteen years at Skyline and other colleges, mentoring hundreds of writers including Women in Transition and Honors students. She has taught classes at The Writing Salon in San Francisco and Berkeley and provided supervision and advocacy for student teachers in the credential program at Mills College. In addition to teaching, Kathleen has served as a book editor at small presses including UCSF Nursing Press, Food First Books, and Westview Press, producing cutting-edge books for clinicians, scholars, and activists.  Her memoir, fiction, and poetry have been published in The Rambler, Spirituality & Health, Hawaii Pacific Review, Poetry Northwest, Albany Review, Hot Flashes, off our backs, and elsewhere.  Her work has won awards from the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Writer’s Digest, Memoirs,Ink., the National Society of Arts & Letters, and the Academy of American Poets.

Linda Watanabe McFerrin, poet, travel writer, and novelist, is a contributor to numerous magazines and anthologies. She is the author of two poetry collections, past editor of a popular Northern California guidebook and a winner of the Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction. Her novel, Namako:  Sea Cucumber, was named Best Book for the Teen-Age by the New York Public Library. In addition to authoring an award-winning short story collection, The Hand of Buddha, she has co-edited several anthologies, including the Hot Flashes: sexy little stories & poems series.

Linda has judged the San Francisco Literary Awards and the Kiriyama Prize, served as a visiting mentor for the Loft Mentor Series and been guest faculty at the Oklahoma Arts Institute. A past NEA Panelist and juror for the Marin Literary Arts Council, she has mentored a long list of accomplished authors toward publication. www.lwmcferrin.com

Pamela Michael of Wild Writing Women and River of Words is an award-winning writer, non-profit organization director, education reformer and radio producer. She has written numerous articles for magazines and newspapers, including the San Francisco Examiner, Odyssey, Salon.com, Shape, Orion Afield and others. Her books include The Gift of Rivers, River of Words: Young Poets and Artists on the Nature of Things, A Woman's Passion for Travel, and River of Words: Poetry & Images in Praise of Water. She won first place in the Book Passage Travel Writers Conference with her story, "Khan Men of Agra," which has been widely anthologized.

Co-founder, with Robert Hass, of the much-honored River of Words www.riverofwords.org organization, she has worked for decades to help youth make creative connections to the earth through poetry and art.

Cathleen Miller of Wild Writing Women Is the internationally bestselling author of Desert Flower and The Birdhouse Chronicles.  Her essays have appeared in a multiple of publications. Currently she’s at work on a biography of Dr. Nafis Sadik, an advocate for women’s reproductive freedom and the first female director of the United Nations.  Cathy is a professor of English at San José State University.

Laurel Minter is the recipient of the 2004 Alfred. P. Sloan writing fellowship for her screenplay Finding Grace and a 2005 Samuel Goldwyn Writing Award for her screenplay The Route.  In addition, she received a 2000 Special Projects Award from 4Culture for her play, Facing West, which was produced at Northwest Actors Studio.  She was a panelist for the 2000 Theater Puget Sound regional theater conference, “Passion for the Art.  Laurel teaches screenwriting and filmmaking for Stanford University’s On-line Writer’s Studio, Bellevue College, Cascadia College, Seattle Central Community College and has taught acting, playwriting, and film for Seattle Children’s Theatre, the Tony award winning Seattle Repertory and Cornish College of the Arts.

Maureen Murdock is a depth psychotherapist in private practice in Santa Barbara. She is the author of the best-selling book, The Heroine’s Journey, as well as the newly revised Fathers’ Daughters: Breaking the Ties that Bind; Unreliable Truth: On Memoir and Memory; Spinning Inward: Using Guided Imagery with Children; and The Heroine’s Journey Workbook. She edited a anthology entitled Monday Morning Memoirs: Women in the Second Half of Life and her books have been translated into a dozen languages. She is currently writing a memoir about madness and addiction in the family and teaches memoir writing at the San Francisco Writing Salon and UCLA Extensions Writers’ Program. Her website is www.maureenmurdock.com

Tristine Rainer, Director of the Center for Autobiographic Studies, teaches in the USC Master’s in Professional Writing program and is a creative editor for memoirists. She is author of Your Life as Story and The New Diary.

Amy Rennert, president of The Amy Rennert Agency, is an award-winning writer and the former editor-in-chief of two national magazines. Amy Rennert specializes in books that matter. The Amy Rennert Agency, founded in 1999, provides literary representation and career management for established and emerging authors. Amy represents commercial and literary writers in both fiction and narrative non-fiction. Her authors include Annie Barrows, co-author of the #1 Booksense pick and instant New York Times bestseller The Guernsey Literary and Potatoe Peel Society, National Book Award Finalist Beth Kephart, singer songwriter Jimmy Buffett, a #1 New York Times bestselling fiction and nonfiction writer, Edgar-nominated and two-time Agatha Award Winner Jacqueline Winspear, Cornelia Read, author of the commercially and critically acclaimed novel Field of Darkness, and Terry Ryan, author of the New York Times bestseller The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio, which was made into a feature film starring Julianne Moore and Woody Harrelson.  Amy Rennert is on the faculty of the Stanford Publishing Course and she teaches regularly at Book Passage in Corte Madera, California.

James Tipton, author of Annette Vallon, A Novel of the French Revolution, has an M.A. in English: emphasis creative writing from SFSU, and a Ph.D. from U.C. Davis in English.  At Davis, Jamie worked with the poet Gray Snyder on his poetry and doctoral dissertation, on the great nature and love poems of the San Francisco and Marin poet, Kenneth Rexroth.  Since then, he has been a Lecturer at Davis, taught English and creative writing at colleges throughout the Bay Area, and was a Lecturer for a year at the University of Bordeaux, France, as well.  Jamie has been writing seriously since he was sixteen, when he was inspired by his high school creative writing teacher and by the poetry of Walt Whitman.  He also was lead singer in a rock band and sang in the San Francisco Opera Chorus for years.

Pat Walsh is the author of 78 Reasons Why Your Book May Never Be Published and 14 Reasons Why it Just Might, and was the founding editor of MacAdam/Cage, a publisher of fiction and narrative non-fiction As editor-in-chief, he oversaw the acquisitions, editing, and promotion of a list that grew from four titles a year to sixty.

Susan Wooldridge is the author of poemcrazy: freeing your life with words  (in a 20^th printing from Three Rivers, Random House) and  Foolsgold: Making Something from Nothing and freeing your creative process.  (Harmony Books, Random House, 2007.)  Poemcrazy was a long-running Quality Paperback Book Club Selection, a Writer’s Digest Book Club Selection and a Book Sense (Independent bookstores) Pick. Anne Lamott wrote, “you’re going to love it.”  Foolsgold  has been featured by both One Spirit and Quality Paper Back Book Club.  Rachel Naomi Remen says “….beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.  And a book that may save your life.”  Susan also has a chapbook of poems, Bathing with Ants  (Bear Star Press).   She conducts workshops on writing and creativity throughout the U.S.   She lives in a co-housing village in Chico, California.

Check out Susan’s website:   www.susanwooldridge.com

Questions?  Contact Marijane Datson, WOW! Program Director, 650.726.1411, mjdat@pacbell.net