InsideStorytime

with
Karl Soehnlein

Theme - "Rediscovery"

6.30 p.m. - 8.30 p.m.

Thursday, July 15th,

  Cafe Royale,

800 Post Street, San Francisco.

 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CAPITOL CITY YOUNG WRITERS CONFERENCE

Saturday, July 17, 2010

10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.

San Domenico School

1500 Butterfield Road

San Anselmo, CA 94960

415.258.1900

Patricia V. Davis is honored to be Speaking with the Following:

PETER S. BEAGLE is author of novels, nonfiction, and screenplays. He won early recognition from The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards as a high school senior for a poem; the award was accompanied by a scholarship to the University of Pittsburgh, where he graduated with a degree in Creative Writing. He wrote his first novel, A Fine and Private Place, when he was only 19 years old. Today he is best known as the author of The Last Unicorn, which routinely polls as one of the top ten fantasy novels of all time. Peter also wrote a teleplay the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation, and the screenplay for the 1978 Ralph Bakshi-animated version of The Lord of the Rings, the film which first inspired a teenaged Peter Jackson to read J.R.R. Tolkien. But in the mid-'90s he returned to prose fiction of all lengths, and in 2005, he finally published a coda to The Last Unicorn, a novelette entitled "Two Hearts," as well as beginning work on a full-novel sequel. In 2006, "Two Hearts" won the prestigious Hugo Award for Best Novelette, and in 2007, it won the Nebula Award in the same category. The story was also nominated as a short fiction finalist for the World Fantasy Award. In 2006, Beagle won the Inkpot Award for Outstanding Achievement in Science Fiction and Fantasy. In 2007, Beagle won the inaugural WSFA Small Press Award for "El Regalo," published in The Line Between (Tachyon Publications).

PETER BEREN is a literary agent and a publishing consultant to authors, self-publishers and independent publishers.  Formerly Vice-President, Publishing at Palace Press International, Publisher of Sierra Club Books and Publisher of VIA Books, he has more than 30 years experience in the publishing industry. The author or co-author of six books, including The Writers Legal Companion and California the Beautiful, he started his career in publishing as a founding staff member of the Boston Phoenix, a lifestyle news weekly .  Peter's consulting clients have included: Nolo Press), Shambhala Publications, Patients Beyond Borders, The School for Self-Healing and Tarcher/Penguin. He served as Marketing Advisor to MILIA: The New Media Publishing Market held annually in Cannes and his literary agency clients include such authors as Brian Froud (Abrams), Laurence Boldt (Penguin), Randi Gunther (New Harbinger) and Don Elium (Ten Speed/Random House).

DAVID CORBETT is the author of four critically acclaimed novels: The Devil’s Redhead, Done for a Dime (a New York Times Notable Book), Blood of Paradise (nominated for numerous awards, including the Edgar, and named both one of the Top Ten Mysteries and Thrillers of 2007 by the Washington Post and a San Francisco Chronicle Notable Book), and Do They Know I’m Running? published in March 2010 to widespread praise. His short fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies, and his story “Pretty Little Parasite” was selected for inclusion in Best American Mystery Stories 2009. David has also contributed a chapter to the world’s first serial audio thriller, The Chopin Manuscript—which won an Audie Award for Best Audio Book of 2008—and to its follow-up, The Copper Bracelet. He has taught at UCLA Extension, Book Passage, Wordstock, and the East of Eden Writers Conference. For more about David, go to www.davidcorbett.com.

PATRICIA V. DAVIS’ aim is to leave her spot of the world just a little bit better than it was before she got there. She focuses on that through her writing, teaching, philanthropic work, and the promoting of other people who she believes have that same goal.  She wrote the award-winning Harlot’s Sauce: A Memoir of Food, Family, Love, Loss and Greece, with the hope that it would encourage young women not to make the same mistakes she made. Adelphi University adopted it as a reader for its Gender Studies program, Marin Independent Journal called it “delicious”, The Greek Star called it “an inspiring, great read”, and the Orange County Register called her a “Renaissance woman”. As founder and editor-in-chief of the non-partisan Harlots' Sauce Radio  e-magazine and podcast, she loves encouraging new writers and interviewing other “Renaissance people”, such as Neal deGrasse Tyson, Scott James, Jane Friedman, and more. Patricia’s essays, opinion articles, political/social satire, and celebrity interviews have appeared in various newspapers and magazines nationally and internationally. Holding a Master's Degree in Creative Writing and Education, she has taught, spoken, read, and conducted seminars extensively in various venues and schools throughout the US and overseas.  Davis has just been named one of Top 25 Mentors for Young Women and Girls 2010, by the Hot Mommas Project 

VERNA DREISBACH is the founder and president of Capitol City Young Writers, an organization that began because of her own daughter’s passion and love of writing.  Verna is the editor to the Seal Press anthology, Why We Ride: Women Writers on the Horse in their Lives.  Her writing has been featured in books, literary journals, magazines, and newspapers.  Through her agency, Dreisbach Literary Management, Verna represents both fiction and non-fiction authors.  She is the co-founder of The Writers Police Academy, with author Lee Lofland, offering writers the opportunity to learn hands-on police techniques to better their fiction writing.  She teaches through the University of California Davis Extension, serves on the education committee to Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson’s For Art’s Sake Initiative, is part of Sacramento Metro Chamber’s Leadership program for the class of 2010, and has been chosen for Leadership California’s class of 2011.   

STEFANIE FREELE is the Healdsburg Literary Laureate, and the author of the critically-acclaimed short story collection, Feeding Strays, a current Book of The Year Award Finalist. Her recent fiction can be found in Glimmer Train, Vestal Review and Pedestal Magazine. She has an MFA from the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts, teaches Creative Writing at the Healdsburg Plaza Arts Center, and is the Fiction Editor of the Los Angeles Review.   Freele sees her position as a Literary Laureate as a way to champion "literary citizenship," a phrase borrowed from Managing Editor of Red Hen Press, Kate Gale, and based on writers helping other writers by writing reviews, buying books and attending each other's events. She also frequently spreads the news about submissions and contests via email. Her first official project will be to review and recommend books for adult and young readers for local newspapers and KCRB 91.1-FM. "I'm trying not to choose authors who are on big presses. I'm trying to spread the news of smaller press folks who can use a leg-up," Freele says. For more information about Stefanie, visit www.stefaniefreele.com.

LEAH GARCHIK lives in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district with her husband. She has two grown sons for whom she has baked many cakes. She learned how to knit and everything else useful in her native Brooklyn. She has been writing a daily column in the San Francisco Chronicle since 1984; the National Society of Newspaper Columnists named it “Best Items Column in the Country” in 1992, and in 1998, 2000 and 2004, the San Francisco Bay Area Publicity Club named her Favorite Columnist, and a Chronicle Readers' Poll named her Best Gossip. She also reviews books for the Chronicle, does freelance magazine features, wrote the text for San Francisco; The City's Sights and Secrets, a Chronicle book, and Real Life Romance, a collection of quotes from the Overheard portion of her column. She is a panelist on the KALW audience-participation quiz show, "Minds Over Matter" and former bell-ringer in a German polka band. Her garden is overgrown, but she is a tall person, so she doesn't have the heart to prune. She prefers bittersweet to milk chocolate.

DEBORAH GRABIEN was deeply involved in the Bay Area music scene from the end of the Haight-Ashbury heyday until the mid-1970s. Most of her friends have been trying to get her to write about those years—fictionalized, of course!—and, now that she's comfortable with it, she's doing just that, with the multi-book story of the JP Kinkaid mystery novels. After publishing four novels between 1989 and 1993, she then published the five novels of her Haunted Ballads series, brought out by St. Martins Minotaur between 2003 and 2007. Still Life With Devils, a stand-alone thriller about a serial killer who may not be human, was released by Drollerie Press in December 2007. Deborah’s latest novel, Dark’s Tale, a story for Young Adults about a house cat abandoned in San Francisco Golden Gate Park, was released in March of this year. These days, in between cat rescues, cookery, and working for the Afghan Women’s Writing Project, Deborah can be found playing one of eleven guitars, or writing fiction that deals with music, insofar as multiple sclerosis—she was diagnosed in 2002—will allow. For more about Deborah, visit her website at deborahgrabien.com

SETH HARWOOD graduated from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 2002, and teaches writing and literature at Stanford University and the City College of San Francisco. In 2005, Seth started writing Jack Wakes Up. After almost 9 months of working on the novel, July 2006, the “Jack Palms Crime Podcast Series” was born. As Jack Wakes Up was followed by A Long Way From Disney, Jack Palms II: This is Life, and Jack Palms III: Czechmate, his podcast audience grew into a sizeable world-wide following, as covered by the San Francisco Chronicle here. When Breakneck Books published Jack Wakes Up in March 2008, Seth's online audience jumped all over amazon.com and bought enough copies to raise the book to #1 in Crime/Mystery and #45 overall in books. Jack Wakes Up was subsequently purchased by Three Rivers Press and was re-released on May 5th 2009—‘Cinco de Harwood’. It received rave reviews from Publisher's Weekly, Michael Connelly, and was featured in the New York Times Book Review. Seth talks about how he sold Jake Wakes Up by giving it away in free podcasts at his website’s home page. Seth’s short stories have been published in various online and print journals, and his story “White” was nominated for a Pushcart prize. Seth’s latest novel, Young Junius, is coming out in the fall.

PAUL R. KAUFMAN is a George Foster Peabody Award-winner for documentary film, “The Public Mind,” series with Bill Moyers, and co-author with Daniel Goleman of the internationally published The Creative Spirit (Dutton/Penguin), a Quality Paperback Book Club Main Selection and Book-of-the-Month Club Selection.  He is a first-prize winner at the Palm Springs International Short Film Festival, and has been awarded a Cine Golden Eagle for television production, including vignettes with Academy Award-winner and legendary animator Chuck Jones.  Paul’s programs have been praised by The New York Times as "an example of creativity at work" and by The Washington Post as “thought-provoking and delightful.” Paul’s “Creativity in Service” videos are powerful fund-raising and volunteer enlistment tools for a variety of worthy causes, such as innovative inner-city education, efforts to reduce urban violence, women helping mothers facing cancer, volunteers aiding young people in foster care, and therapists providing pro-bono therapy to traumatized children. He has held Visiting Senior Research positions at Harvard University and Stanford University., and while with Stanford’s Program in Information Policy, he worked with the Executive Office of the President of the United States creating guidelines to protect public broadcasting from partisan political manipulation.

MICHAEL KRASNY, Ph.D., is host of KQED's award-winning Forum, a news and public affairs program that concentrates on the arts, culture, health, business, and technology. Before coming to KQED Public Radio in 1993, Dr. Krasny hosted Bay TV's Take Issue, a nightly news analysis show, programs for KQED Public Television, KRON television, and National Public Radio, and did news commentary for KTVU television. Since 1970, he has been a professor of English at San Francisco State University.  He is a widely published scholar and critic, as well as a former regular contributor to Mother Jones magazine and a fiction writer.  Dr. Krasny has interviewed many of the leading newsmakers and cultural icons of our time, including Saul Bellow, former President Jimmy Carter, Cesar Chavez, Noam Chomsky, Jane Goodall, Rosa Parks, Salman Rushdie, Carl Sagan, Susan Sontag, Gloria Steinem and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. He is the recipient of many awards and honors, including The SY Agnon Gold Medal for Intellectual Distinction, The Eugene Block Award for Human Rights Journalism, The Inclusiveness in Media Award from The National Conference for Community and Justice, and a Koret Foundation Fellowship. He has also been named ‘Best Talk Show Host’ by Focus magazine, The San Francisco Publicity Club and Citysearch. His book, Off Mike: A Memoir of Talk Radio and Literary Life, was published in 2007.

KAY ANDREAS (KOSTOPOULOS) is an acting teacher and director for the Stanford University Drama Department.  She also teaches and directs projects at Stanford for the Graduate School of Business, Symbolic Systems, School of Medicine, and Continuing Studies Program. She is an MFA graduate of A.C.T., where she taught acting and directed student projects as a core faculty member of A.C.T.'s Advanced Training Program. Kay has appeared on many regional stages, including A.C.T., the California and San Francisco Shakespeare Festivals, the Magic Theatre, and Stanford Summer Theatre. A San Francisco Bay Area based vocalist and percussionist, she has performed with guitarists, Lenny Carlson and Josh Workman; pianists Larry Vuckovich, Si Perkoff and Roscoe Gallo; bassists Bill Douglass and Barry Green, and percussionists Jimmy Robinson, Michael Pinkham, Oliver Brown, and Roberto Acevedo. She has also been a featured vocalist with David Hardiman's Big Band. Her group, Black Olive Jazz, has performed at concerts, nightclubs, wineries, and universities.

VICKI LARSON is the mom of two teenage boys who happened to grow a lot taller than she is, so, she’ a lot nicer to them, even when she’s fretting over missed curfews and driving skills. When she’s not doing that, she puts in long hours as the Lifestyles Editor at the Marin Independent Journal and as editor of the IJ’s alt weekly, Here.  A longtime journalist, she has worked for almost every newspaper in the Bay Area, (her favorite job was as editor of FastForward, an award-winning monthly newspaper for and by kids) and has freelanced for numerous publications and Web sites, including the San Francisco Chronicle, Hispanic magazine, NurseWeek, and Photo District News. She’s a regular contributor to Mommy Tracked: Managing the Chaos of Modern Motherhood; has an essay in “Knowing Pains: Women on Love, Sex and Work in Our 40s,” a fundraiser for breast cancer; and sometimes has something intelligent to say on her blog, the OMG Chronicles. Vicki is also working on a novel, (of course) as well as living out a childhood fantasy by being the lead singer in a chick band, Sounds Like China. Her biggest claim to fame, however, is having one of her jokes published on the same page as Jerry Seinfeld and Rodney Dangerfield in Jokes to Go.

GIL MANSERGH was featured in "Writers Digest Magazine" as a "Freelance Success," and has written over a thousand articles or columns for magazines, newspapers and websites and over 60 nonfiction books, manuals and curriculums, including a teen sex-education program for the YWCA, and multi-country cultural guides for international business travelers. A respected Psychological Educator, and 5-year director of the prestigious California Writers Club Conference at Asilomar, Gil is also a Book Doctor (independent story editor) who helps others make their books into bestsellers.  A film critic since 1995, Gil screens over 300 movies each year for his weekly newspaper columns, New York Times affiliated movie blog and “Cinema Toast” radio show on Santa Rosa’s KRSH-FM.  In 2007, he became the producer and host of the Sonoma County/NPR radio show "Word By Word: Conversations With Writers." Broadcast from KRCB-FM, Gil’s eclectic guest list includes award-winning writers Lisa See, Michael Chabon, Sarah Andrews, Eion Colfer, Matthew Pearl, Yiyun Lee, Margaret Cezair Thompson, Seth Harwood, Riane Eisler, Patricia V. Davis, Steve Hockensmith, Michael Krasny, Pamela Gray, and Ray Bradbury.

NICK PETRULAKIS has been the manager of Books Inc. in Alameda for the last ten years. Books Inc. is the oldest independent book store chain on the west coast. Nick has been responsible for organizing author visits, children’s reading hours, and a monthly book club at this wonderful location of this marvelous book store chain. Nick is also an accomplished freelance writer whose work has appeared in numerous magazines and periodicals throughout California.  His fun and popular blog can be found at: drinkswithnick.blogspot.com.

JAMES REDFORD (Keynote Speaker) is Founder of The James Redford Institute for Transplant Awareness (JRI), a nonprofit dedicated to educating the public about the need for organ and tissue donation through film, educational outreach and the web. To meet this goal, James Redford produced The Kindness of Strangers, an award-winning HBO documentary film. Through JRI, James also produced Flow, a short drama targeted to high schools and community-based youth programs. As a liver transplant recipient, James continues to speak to young audiences about the miracle of organ donation. James is currently developing The Forgotten, a documentary about the Iroquois Confederacy and its impact upon the democratic ideals of the Founding Fathers. He is also producing Mann V. Ford, an HBO documentary about the Ramapough Indians of New Jersey and their fight against the toxic legacy of the Ford Motor Corporation.  Other credits include adapting and directing Spin, starring Stanley Tucci, Dana Delany, Ruben Blades. Redford also wrote the original screenplays for Cowboy Up, starring Kiefer Sutherland and Darryl Hannah as well as Skinwalkers, a PBS/Mystery! film that was the highest rated PBS program of 2002. The Acting Thing, a comedic short written by James, was named best comedic short film at the Houston Film Festival. James also just completed writing and directing Bad Dad, a short comedy filmed in Marin County starring Jason Patric. Jamie holds a Bachelor's degree in creative writing and film from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and a Master's degree in literature from Northwestern University.  He lives in Marin County with his wife and two children. He enjoys playing Marin County's local music scene as a guitarist and songwriter with the Phat Barbees.

JEANNETTE SEARS, as a lyricist for “Jefferson Starship” from 1978 to 1984, wrote the words for many of the bands popular songs, including: “Save Your Love”, “Be My Lady”, the title track for “Winds of Change”, and more. These songs are featured on four of the band’s Gold and Platinum albums, including, “Freedom at Point Zero”, and “Nuclear Furniture”. A number of her songs were turned into some of the first MTV music videos. Many of Jeannette’s published songs reflect her concern about the future of the planet, and the effects of the United States’ foreign policy in Guatemala and El Salvador. Her song, “Guatemala” was turned into a powerful music video by Emmy award winning director, Ray Telles. The footage in the video shows actual scenes of a kidnapping by a death squad in Guatemala. The video was picked up by numerous organizations, including Amnesty International, and used to raise awareness about human rights abuses in Central America. A solo album by Pete Sears, “The Long Haul”, features a line-up of great musicians and lyrics by Jeannette Sears, including the song, “A Light Rain of Grace”. Jeannette has also just completed her first novel by the same name.  Written with warmth, pathos, and humor, it is the story of a female rock star who survives in the music industry for over twenty-five years, overcoming drug abuse and the long-term effects of child molestation. Jeannette and Pete live in San Rafael, where she is currently writing songs for the popular group, “MoonAlice”, who is opening for U2 at the Oakland Coliseum in June 2010.

HUNTINGTON SHARP is Senior Editor at Red Room which Publishers Weekly called “Facebook for authors.” Red Room provides everyone in the publishing ecosystem, including authors, journalists, and publishers, with an online home where they can promote their work to new readers, connect with colleagues, and express themselves. Redroom.com, which was launched to the public in January 2008, by CEO Ivory Madison, was built on a successful, trusted brand, The Red Room Writers Society, of which Huntington was a founding member. As senior editor of this noteworthy site, Huntington’s law degree only tangentially prepared him for his work, which includes: editing the “magazine” aspect of the website, featuring especially noteworthy writing and multimedia on the homepage and other feature pages, helping new and established authors, many of whom have little to no experience with the web, create their pages and do online things, such as blogging, for the first time, and advising authors about using the site and the Web for promotion and marketing. It’s hard to believe that this former Eagle Scout with a truly dogged commitment to le mot juste is only twenty-nine.

RANSOM STEPHENS, Ph.D., is a professor of particle physics Pturned author and speaker. Ransom has worked on experiments at SLAC, Fermilab, Cornell and CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. During this time period, he discovered a new type of matter, and was on the team that discovered the top quark. During the tech boom that ended in 2001, he directed patent development for a wireless web startup and, a few years later, led an engineering commando team in conquering signal integrity issues in timing noise. Ransom now lives in Petaluma and makes his living writing novels, giving speeches, producing and hosting literary events, (such as San Francisco’s Litquake and Inside Story Time) and teaching writing seminars. But he still helps engineers solve problems. He is the author of over 200 articles on impossible subjects like quantum physics, the future of publishing, and parenting teenagers. His first novel, The God Patent, was called “a milestone not only for Ransom, but for the book industry as well, as it is the first debut novel to emerge from the new paradigm of online publishing.…an ambitious first novel that sings of the heart and the scientific method as two parts of the same song,” by the San Francisco Chronicle. For more information, visit www.TheGodPatent.com.

BOB YEHLING is the author of The Write Time: 366 Exercises to Fulfill Your Writing Life, and Writes of Life: Using Personal Experiences in Everything You Write, which won the 2007 Independent Publishers Book Award., in addition to Full Flight, Shades of Green, Coyotes in Broad Daylight, The River-Fed Stone and the forthcoming novel, The Voice. He teaches fiction, poetry and non-fiction writing workshops at colleges, universities and writers conferences throughout the country. He is also a book and magazine editor, author’s consultant and three-time Boston Marathon participant. He and fellow Capital City Young Writers Board member, Verna Dreisbach, are at work on a new book, The Hybrid Writer. More about Bob can be found at: http://www.wordjourneys.com/

JEROMIAH LANDON RUNNING WATER ZAJONC (Jeromy Zajonc) was born and raised in Northern California. Jeromy’s first job in film was fetching soft drinks for George Lucas. He has since worked on various feature films and hit television shows. Graduating from UCLA in 1999, he co-wrote, co-directed, produced, and acted in a UCLA Guerilla Theatre Play titled, "Bumbia", as a protest against the jailing of Mumia Abu Jamal. He has worked with many accomplished actors and filmmakers including Ed Harris, Vince Vaughn, Scott Rosenberg (“Con Air”), DJ Caruso, and Griffin Dunne.  He is the son of renowned helicopter stunt pilot, Robert “Bobby Z” Zajonc. Now a producing partner at Winston Movie, LLC., and Project Producer at California Film Institute,  Jeromy was instrumental in the launch of the Noah and Logan Millers' national bestselling memoir, Either You're In Or You're In the Way. He is currently leading the motion picture releasing team for "Touching Home" starring The Miller Brothers and Ed Harris, coming out April 29, 2010.

Guest Speaker- Writing Mamas Salon

Book Passage Corte Madera

6:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m.

 February 14, 2010

Guest Speaker - San Francisco Writers Conference

 California Writers Club Centennial Celebration

click on image below for details about this event