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In this issue:
>Michael Krasny, Martin Yan, Holly Payne, Bella Andre, Roger Parker at the 2012 San Francisco Writers Conference
>ASK THE PROSE PROS: Is it time for me to self-publish? An interview with Carla King
>THE POETRY TRACK: Why ALL writers need to check it out. Story by Brad Henderson
>SFWC Scholarships...Is there one for you?
> Calendar of Events, Contests, and Deadlines.
> Writing News and Interesting Stuff
Held in conjunction with The San Francisco Writers University http://SelfPubBootCamp.com
LOOK WHO IS COMING TO the 2012 SFWC Now!
Michael Krasny, Martin Yan, Holly Payne, Bella Andre and Roger Parker are the latest welcome additions to the 2012 San Francisco Writers Conference roster of presenters.
Mr. Krasny is the host of KQED's Forum,
a current events radio show that features newsmakers and authors with important
things to share on almost any timely subject. He has interviewed President
Obama, John Updike, Norman Mailer, Toni Morrison, Hillary Clinton, Desmond Tutu,
Al Gore, Above all, he is a lover of well-written books that explore new ideas.
An author himself, his most recent book is Spiritual
Envy. http://michaelkrasny.com/
Martin Yan is the energetic chef who popularized
Chinese cooking on his KQED television show 'Yan Can Cook', an entrepreneur who
founded Yan Can International Cooking School and a string of Yan Can
restaurants, and a prodigious cookbook author...30 of them to date! If you have
ever considered writing a cookbook, he will get you inspired to write it. www.yancancook.com
Holly Payne burst into the literary scene a few
years ago with her first book, The
Virgin's Knot. In 2008 she established Skywriter Books to publish her third
book, Kingdom
of Simplicity. That book went on to win the highest
award in independent publishing, The Benjamin Franklin Award for Best First
Book (fiction) from a new press and grand prize in the
Writers Digest Self-Published Book Awards. A gifted teacher, she will
have a lot to share about writing from life experience and the realities of
self-publishing. www.hollylynnpayne.com
Bella
Andre is a best-selling romance novelist known for "sensual, empowered stories enveloped in
heady romance" (so says Publisher's
Weekly). Her books have been Cosmopolitan Magazine Red
Hot Reads twice (GAME FOR ANYTHING and WILD HEAT) and have been translated into
German, Thai, Japanese and Ukrainian. The Washington Post has called her, "One of the top digital writers
in America." www.bellaandre.comDo YOU plan on coming to the SFWC? If you haven't registered yet (or booked your room at the Mark Hopkins) remember the event will sell out. The current registration rate is $595. It will be $695 at-the-door. The SFWC Room Rate at the Mark is $179...until our room block is exhausted. So grab those rates ASAP. Click here for 2012 SFWC registration information.
Ask the Prose Pros: IS IT TIME for me TO SELF-PUBLISH?
An interview with Carla King, founder of the Self-Publishing Boot Camp
SFWC: You created the program and wrote the book...but who teaches at the Self-Publishing Boot Camp?
Carla: Experts, experts,
and more experts! Editing or design, web marketing or ebook formatting...each of
our eight speakers is an expert in the topic on which they're speaking and has wide-ranging experience in many
aspects of the publishing business.
Join Carla King, Laurie McLean and a host of self-publishing
experts at the next Self-Publishing Boot
Camp. It
will be held in conjunction with San
Francisco Writers University on Saturday November 12th
from 9 am to 5 pm on the Stanford University Campus in Tresidder Union's
Cypress Room.
In one day you'll learn everything you need to know about how to create, format, post, market and sell your own books. Imagine having your book just in time for holiday gift giving!
SFWC Poetry TRACK: Not a Separate Parallel Universe
SFWC regulars know me as "that professor dude in cowboy boots" who, for the past six years, has co-directed the conference's poetry track. The San Francisco Writer's Conference is renowned for its powerhouse curriculum that helps fiction and nonfiction writers write professionally and get published. In addition there's always been a poetry track, and it's not just for a small cohort of bards. The poetry track aims to be integral part of the conference and to inform and empower the experience of all who attend.
The 2012 SFWC Poetry Track will offer talks, panels, and workshops on how to use poetic techniques to make your titles and stories sing ("Buy me, read me, distinguish this author with 15 minutes of fame...or at least a decent advance)"; on how to read to an audience with charm and confidence; and how reading and writing poetry adds breadth and depth to any writer's tool kit. (Story is continued below)
IS THERE AN SFWC SCHOLARSHIP THAT IS RIGHT FOR YOU?
The simple answer is most likely--YES. We have more scholarships than ever this year! Deadlines are looming, so here is a quick sampling of our scholarships:
Go to the SFWC website to get the details and see which scholarship may work for you.If you still have questions, email us at sfwriterscon@aol.com. Don't worry...if you are already registered and win a scholarship, you'll have the option of rolling it over to the 2013 San Francisco Writers Conference! http://www.sfwriters.org/pages.cfm?ID=102
UPCOMING WRITING EVENTS, CONTESTS & DEADLINES
November is National Novel Writing Month,or NaNoWriMo for short. Simply start writing a 50,000-word novel on November 1 and finish by midnight on November 30th. The hardest part (really) is NO EDITING...just keep writing. Want to officially join in? Go to: NaNoWriMo.org. FYI, oncle there you'll see Writer's Digest has a whole package of products that simplifies the process of writing a novel during NaNoWriMo..or any time!
November is Write Nonfiction in November month, too! This project is spearheaded by SFWC presenter Nina Amir and uses the acronym WNFIN. By going to Nina's blog and commenting on WNFIN you are considered a participant...and of course making a commitment like that makes it more likely you will actually complete your work of nonfiction in November, right? Nina is also offering free teleseminars for added inspiration! For details on the WNFIN challenge, go to: http://writenonfictioninnovember.com/
November 5, 10:00 am.-1:00 p.m. Nonfiction: News versus Research--A workshop that contrasts the role of the journalist with the role of the nonfiction writer. Dennis Evanosky, Co-publisher Alameda Sun & Local Historian. Independence Plaza, 703 Atlantic, Alameda (94501) $9 CWC members/$29 non-members. To Register send check to CWC-BB Attn: Workshops, PO Box 6447, Alameda, CA 94501. Include your e-mail address. Call Barbara Ruffner at 510-845-1617 with questions.
November 9, 6-7:30 pm at A Great Good Place for Books, 6120 La Salle in Montclair Village, Oakland, CA - Reading and discussion with Lori Hope, author of Help Me Live: 20 Things People with Cancer Want You to Know
November 12, 9 a.m.-2:30 p.m, How to Write a Short Book Fast! 4 Ways to Create & Publish a Manuscript in Record Time, Sunset Center-Chapman Room, Carmel-by-the-Sea, CA, Sponsored by California Writer's Club-Central Coast Writers, Pre-registration: Members $35, Nonmembers $45; At the door: Members $45, Nonmembers $55 (includes continental breakfast and lunch). www.centralcoastwriters.org
November 12 BAIPA meeting: Patricia V. Davis--The Author's Guide to Financing & Planning Your Own Book Tour. Fee for non-members. First Congregational Church. 8 N. San Pedro Road, San Rafael. http://www.baipa.org/future-meetings/
Tuesday, November 15, SFWC's own Michael Larsen and Elizabeth Pomada will give a talk on Eight Cs for Becoming a Successful Writer in Hyper-Connected World at 6PM at the Vacaville Public Library, 1 Town Square Place.
11/15/11 (postmark deadline).Bay Area Poets Coalition (BAPC) 32nd Annual Contest. Cash prizes in (3) line-length categories. Open to all. Rules: www.bayareapoetscoalition.org
November 19, 2011 Leigh Rubin, syndicated cartoonist of Rubes and author of The Wild and Twisted World of Rubes;California Writers Club-Sacramento Branch Luncheon Meeting, 11 a.m.-1 p.m., Tokyo Buffet, 7217 Greenback Lane, Citrus Heights, CA.
November 30th Deadline for Glimmer Train's Short Story Award for New Writers contest. First place wins $1,200 and publication in issue 86 of Glimmer Train Stories. See guidelines.
December 2, 2011 California Writers Club-Sacramento Branch Writers Network Meeting. Margie Yee Webb, Cat Mulan's Mindful Musings, on creating and publishing a gift book; 9-11 a.m., IHOP, 2216 Sunrise Blvd., Rancho Cordova, CA.
December 10 BAIPA meeting. Patti Sokol (Adobe Certified Expert) on Digital Publishing with Adobe's Creative Suite. Fee for non-members. First Congregational Church. 8 N. San Pedro Road, San Rafael. http://www.baipa.org/future-meetings/
Sunday, December 18 at 2-5pm Poets Laureate and Poets Laureate Emeritus from California will join to read their poetry...followed by holiday treats, opportunities to meet and speak with the Laureates! Firehouse Arts Center, 4444 Railroad Avenue, Pleasanton, California. $5 or Free with student ID.
January 2, 2012 Deadline to enter the Bharti Kirchner-SFWC Ethnic Writing Scholarship. http://www.sfwriters.org/pages.cfm?ID=102.
January 2, 2012 Deadline for the San Francisco Writers Conference Young Writers Scholarship entries. Please tell Bay Area high school students (who are also talented writers) about this opportunity to experience a day at the 2012 SFWC. http://www.sfwriters.org/pages.cfm?ID=102
January 4th... Deadline to enter the San Francisco Indie Publishing Contest sponsored by San Francisco Writers University and Author Solutions. This contest has over $30,000 in book publishing prizes! http://www.sfwriters.org/pages.cfm?ID=6
January 16, 2012 Deadline for The Alexis Masters Scholarship for Spiritual Writing. http://www.sfwriters.org/pages.cfm?ID=102
January 31, 2012. Deadline for entries. 2012 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. Two prizes of $5,000 each are given biennially for works of fiction and nonfiction. The awards, cosponsored by the Stanford University Libraries and the William Saroyan Foundation, are intended to "encourage new or emerging writers and honor the Saroyan legacy of originality, vitality, and stylistic innovation." $50 entry fee. saroyanprize.stanford.edu
February 16, 2011 Writing Intensive MASTER classes sponsored by San Francisco Writers University. In-depth sessions start the day before the San Francisco Writers Conference...with some of the most popular SFWC presenters. Open to non-attendees. Details and registration coming soon.
February 16-19, 2011 San Francisco Writers Conference at the InterContinental Mark Hopkins Hotel. Keynotes by Lisa See, Lolly Winston, Alan Rinzler. Once again...100 presenters, 50+ sessions--and accepting just 300 attendees this year. Seats are going fast! For all the juicy details go to: www.SFWriters.org
February 20, 2011 WRITING INTENSIVE MASTER classes sponsored by San Francisco Writers University. In-depth sessions follow the San Francisco Writers Conference... with some of the most popular SFWC presenters. Open to non-attendees. Details and registration coming soon.
NEWS, Postings, Tweets, Blogs and Websites!
Congratulations to Beth Lisick (who will be a 2012 SFWC presenter) for being awarded a grant from The Creative Work Fund to write a creative nonfiction book. Beth will collaborate with Creativity Explored and spend time observing and conversing with the developmentally disabled artists in the Creative Explored program to collect their advice and anecdotes on wide-ranging topics. The Creative Work Fund awarded 18 grants totaling $661,000 to Northern California artists and writers who partner with a nonprofit. To find out more go to www.creativeworkfund.org.
Bharti Kirshner (also a 2012 SFWC presenter AND scholarship benefactor) has won a 2011 Grants for Artist Projects (GAP) for her novel in progress--Godess of Fire. The GAP Program provides up to $1,500 to individual artists for projects in all artistic disciplines--including the literary arts--in the state of Washington. www.artisttrust.org.
In the last issue of the SFWC Newsletter we showcased some creative ideas for promoting books. Well, Margie Yee Webb, Cat Mulan's Mindful Musings and Cindy Sample, Dying for a Date and Dying for a Dance, tell us they are collaborating to promote their books which have a humor theme in common. Margie said, "Cindy's theme is humor and homicide, and mine is humor and wisdom!" They also share a 'gift' for thinking outside the box when it comes to promoting their books. On November 11, 2011 they will be signing books during Girl's Night Out at David Girard Vineyards, in Placerville, CA (free and open to the public) and November 26, 2011 they will be personalizing gifts (their books!) from 12 noon to 6 p.m. at Placerville News Company,
Joan Gelfand (a co-director of the SFWC Poetry Track) is one busy lady. "I have two essays in Women on Poetry: Writing, Publishing, Editing and Revising with a forward by Molly Peacock and my work appeared in two other national, high profile anthologies: "gape-seed," by Uphook Press (I hosted a Salon for the publishers when they were here in SF on tour) and "Broken Circles: A Gathering of Poems for Hunger" by Cave Moon Press. I am working with a musician and a producer to put on 3-4 events around the Bay Area to raise money for hunger and the SF Food Bank."
Please tell me the next generation library isn't going to be a glorified ATM machine! The Darien Library in Darien, Ct. will be the first public library on the East Coast to have an Espresso Book Machine on site. The EBM will be available for the print-on-demand purchase of millions of public-domain and out-of-print volumes and a broad variety of self-published and publisher backlist titles. The Darien Library will be the first public library on the East Coast to have an EBM on site. Okay, in the future libraries will give us access to so many more titles. But I will miss the smell of well-worn books and wet umbrellas.
Jeaninne Kato wrote to tell us: "I was a conference attendee in the years 2005, 2006, and 2008. I was a runner-up for the writing contest (creative non-fiction piece "Spanish Lessons") in 2008. Now, I can report that my children's book "Manuel's Murals" (an upper elementary multicultural literary picture book with top-notch illustrations) is being published by 3L Publishing. It will be out within the month."
If you attended the SFWC, took your writing to the next level and now have a success story like Jeannine's, send it to Barbara@sfwriters.org so I can include it in the next issue!
Follow us on TWITTER at: @SFWC
SFWC YouTube Channel http://www.youtube.com/user/SFWritersConference or SFWritersConference
San Francisco Writers Conference WEBSITE: www.SFWriters.org
San Francisco Writers University: www.SFWritersU.com (yes, .com not .org!) Take some free classes.
(Story continued from above)
SFWC Poetry: Not a Separate Parallel Universe
by Brad Henderson, UC Davis professor and co-director of the SFWC Poetry Track
As a professor in writing at the University of California, Davis, I know that two of the biggest hazards writers of sentences and paragraphs face are awkward, inexact phrasing, and extraneous language. From poetry, I also know the value of reading aloud: a sentence that sounds like a clunker usually is a clunker; and one that sounds good is usually catchy, potent, and clear. Yet too often after fast and furious drafting, prose writers forget to slow down and scrutinize their work on the level of sound and sense. Applying poetic techniques and standards to your prose will give it polish and finesse.
Although I have been writing and championing poetry for over three decades, being a poet is NOT my day job. I am an ex-corporate engineer who has made a second career out of teaching engineering and scientific communication. I am also a semi-professional drummer, novelist, memoirist, and essayist. However, poetry is the central artistic element that informs the accuracy and precision of all of my artistic crafts, as well as my professional life as a "literary engineer."
I just plain like writing poetry, too, because it is an excellent release for my astonishing (from my point of view) insights. I often find that poetry is the best vehicle when I write about my own private mythos, such as the magical times I had growing up as a city boy who summered on his grandfather's cattle ranch. The first poem I ever wrote was entitled, "The Wind," about a breezy, elusive girl I knew in high school who blew me off when I invited her to the prom. Yes, it was an excruciatingly saccharine and sentimental piece. Nevertheless, when my mother found it tacked to my bulletin board in my room, she had it transcribed in calligraphy and framed. To this day, she claims it's the only piece of contemporary poetry, including most all of my subsequent work, which she truly understands.
It's easy to be put off by this most subjective form of writing; and frankly, there's a lot of bad poetry out there. You might have found the poetry you studied in school arcane and dull (although maybe it was just poorly taught) and the poetry of the here-and-now to be obscure, inconsequential, and weird. In most cases it doesn't rhyme. But it is the philosophy of SFWC that poetry still has a place the writers' world of today; and that it is decidedly an asset.
So, if you are a novelist, memoirist, biographer, or essayist; or even a screen writer, young adult storyteller, illustrator, or how-to nonfiction specialist, I recommend you put some of the poetry offerings on your conference dance card. I will be teaching several sessions with my professorial colleague and dapper partner in rhyme, the indubitable, "Dr. Andy" Jones. I also highly recommend you take note of my co-director, Joan Gelfand, a full-time, award-winning, and extensively published poet, writer, coach/consultant. She does not wear cowboy boots. She is definitely prettier and more cosmopolitan than either Dr. Andy or I.
Joan will lead the line-up in this year's faculty talent show, affectionately known as the Café Ferlinghetti, on Saturday evening. She will demonstrate something all 21st century writers should incorporate into their web pages, platforms, and shticks: mixed media. Come hear Joan perform original verse backed with live music in the great San Francisco tradition. Along with more poetry, song, and drumming from Dr. Andy and me, the talent show will feature new faculty members on the poetry card, such as Drew Dellinger, author of Love Letters to the Milky Way, and leader/developer of the "Planetize the Movement" ecologic-cosmologic outreach initiative. Be prepared for other surprise guests and an open mic to follow. Though San Francisco offers an abundance of nightlife choices, the SFWC's exclusive Café Ferlinghetti offers an evening of west-coast beat-jazz cool, while also being free and conveniently hosted right there in the conference hotel. So along with your book manuscript, pack your beret and be prepared to snap: Man, yeah ... that's hip!
Brad Henderson and Andy Jones (both co-directors of the SFWC Poetry Track) have written a chapbook of poetry, Split Stock. Read one of Brad's poems at www.bradhenderson.net.
ADS IN THE SFWC NEWSLETTER
Got a service or product for writers? Want to flaunt your new book? Reach a targeted audience of 3000 writers and publishing professionals with an ad in the SFWC Newsletter. We can include a paragraph of copy (50 words) plus a photo or logo with a link to your website. The cost is $250 per issue for businesses and $100 for writers. We screen all advertisements. Contact Barbara at Barbara@SFWriters.org for details.
SEND US YOUR WRITING NEWS for the December SFWC NEWSLETTER by November 30th!
If you have a success story or writing-related news to share with us and/or our readers, please send it to us at Barbara@SFWriters.org. Event items should be free or low-cost and open to the public.
If you enjoy getting these emails let us know and please feel free to pass them along to your writer friends. Anyone can sign up for this free newsletter at www.sfwriters.org.
Happy Thanksgiving and Cheers from all of us!
Michael and Elizabeth, SFWC Co-directors 415 673-0939/ SFwriterscon@aol.com
Barbara Santos, Director of Marketing Barbara@sfwriters.org
Laurie McLean, Director of Finances & Contests; Dean of SFWU Laurie@agentsavant.com
Rich Santos, Director of Registrations & Website Registrations@SFWriters.org
Linda Lee, Director of Volunteers lindalee-sfwc@comcast.net
2012 SFWC SPONSORS & SUPPORTERS
Writers Digest, The Writer, John Wiley & Sons/Jossey Bass, Author Solutions, BookBaby.com, Smashwords, Book Expo America, Bookshop West Portal, The Writer, Joyce Turley, Harvey Pawl, The Review Review, UC Berkeley Extension, ExpertClick, Open Exchange, Berrett-Koehler, Stephanie Chandler, Antrim Group, www.SFWritersU.com, Alan Rinzler, Victoria Hudson, Kevin Smokler, Ann Seymour, VWTapes.com.
Contact Barbara at Barbara@SFWriters.org or Elizabeth at sfwriterscon@aol.com if you would like to be a sponsor or supporter of SFWC, too.
WEBSITE: www.SFWriters.org Telephone: 415-673-0939