Writers of the Mendocino Coast
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Aron Lee Bowe aka Sharon Bowers

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Aron Lee Bowe is an artist, illustrator and graphic designer. Her writing has appeared both online and in print publications. She won honorable mention for flash fiction in the Keats Literary Competition and was the first place winner of the Rosalie Fleming Memorial Humor Prize from the National League of American Pen Women. Visit her website at http://www.aronleebowe.com/

Her graphic novel, Amazed & Elated, Depressed & Deflated, won an Independent Publisher’s Silver Medal in 2016. Her humorous memoir is available at local bookstores and Amazon. Bowe blends sardonic, self-deprecating comedy with disarming sincerity. Six short stories explore heartache, hysterical laughter, alienation, boredom, stage fright and a mortifying personal history of underwear.

Tansy Chapman

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Tansy Chapman was born in England shortly before World War II. After receiving a BA degree in English literature at Leicester University, she continued with graduate studies at Oxford University and the London Institute of Medical Work. Her first job was as a medical social worker at the West Middlesex Hospital where she worked until, one Fall day, she felt a pull to travel to America.
     In February 1964, same year as the Beatles, she sailed on the QE1 ocean liner, arriving, seasick, on Cunard Pier in NYC, and then to Boston and a job on a rehab unit at the Mass General Hospital. A year later she was married to a surgeon-in- training, and spent two years in Texas while he served in the air force, and where their first child was born.

     In the bicentennial year, 1976, Tansy, now home and happily caring for three young children, became an American citizen. That same year, she felt a strong call to seminary, and enrolled part-time at the Episcopal Divinity in Cambridge, Mass. In  1983, after further discernment, she was ordained as an Episcopal priest, a vocation that had only recently been ‘allowed’ for women. A busy, rewarding parish ministry ensued for several years, plus volunteer work with Hospice. In 1994 Tansy began full time practice as Spiritual Director and retreat leader in the Boston area and Pennsylvania. She also helped co-found the Bethany House of Prayer, a spiritual life center, on the grounds of St Anne’s Convent in Arlington, Mass.
     In 2005, Tansy moved to beautiful Mendocino, California, to be close to her daughter, Jill Eldridge and family. Now a grandmother of six, Tansy has continued with part time church ministry, but also turned to another vocation: fiction writing.
     In June 2020, Wipf&Stock published Rose Gray. The story is about a young girl growing up in postwar England and how world war had affected the lives of everyone around her. Tansy, the book’s author, reflects how her own grandchildren, living in various parts of the globe, will now grow up in a post pandemic world, where everything has changed. Tansy has dedicated the novel to all six of them, “because they give me hope for the Future.”

Kelly Daoust

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I’m a new writer, still learning, always learning. I’ve been writing full time for the past four years. I have five self-published novels in my genre of Paranormal/Fantasy Romance/Erotica. I joke that I write "smut,” but honestly I’m quite proud of my erotic writing. I think I’ve found a second career, or rather, a way to spend time lost inside my mind. With thick sarcasm I say, “I’m only in it for the money.” 
     I’ve also done quite a bit of freelance/ghostwriting in the erotica/romance genre and have sold four, long running serial novels. I still write regular installments in these series under other writer’s names. 
     I have my books on Amazon Kindle in digital and print format and I’ve also produced three of my werewolf stories into audio books available on Audible/Amazon/ITunes. The initial sales are encouraging. 
     I am a retired teacher of natural horsemanship and equitation, and I’ve recently taken a new, part time training position after a five year departure from the horses. 
     I also pet and house-sit for a handful of good clients. I’ve lived on the coast since 1983 and I can’t imagine living anywhere else. I adore our community and climate. I often take my Corgi for walks on the beach and enjoy growing our own organic fruits and veggies. 

Molly Dwyer

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Molly’s debut novel, Requiem for the Author of Frankenstein, was nominated for the 2009 Northern California Book Award in Fiction; was Winner of the 2008 Independent Publishers Book of the Year Award, and the 2008 Indie Book Award for Historical Fiction. Molly teaches Critical Thinking at Mendocino College and runs private critique groups. Her second novel, The Appassionata, is set in 19th century Paris, and her third novel, Point of Departure, she describes as a “paranormal cosmological romance that’s sort of sci-fi and sort of autobiographical.”
Website: http://www.mollydwyer.com/



Maureen Eppstein

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Maureen Eppstein is a poet whose latest chapbook, Earthward, came out in fall 2014 from Finishing Line Press. Previous collections include Rogue Wave at Glass Beach (2009) and Quickening (2007), both published by March Street Press. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Crossing the boundary between the arts and the sciences, her poems have been included in a textbook on computer graphics and geometric modeling and used in a university-level geology course. She has also published memoir, most recently in CALYX Journal (2012). She is a former executive director of the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference. 

Website: http://www.maureen-eppstein.com/




Daniel Fiddler                Read Judges Comments on KOREA Shut-up and Eat Your C-rations

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Daniel Fiddler, a longtime visitor to the north coast, the award-winning southern California author and artist made the decision to make Fort Bragg his permanent home this fall, just in time to see his seventh book go into publication.
     Daniel is more than familiar with northern California, having attended Balboa high school in San Francisco and obtained his BFA degree from San Francisco Art Institute. A career as a graphic artist working in various creative jobs including package design, newspaper and print ads, as well as animation for TV, ended with his retirement from the University Of California Medical Center in San Francisco as a senior artist in the reprographics department.
     Daniel decided to seriously pursue his two lifelong dreams: working as a fine art painter, and becoming a serious writer.
     “Writing that first book helped get me through a very rough time in my life. I became a storyteller more than a writer. Writing humor came easy, I was hooked. I had to write more.”
     Daniel has written two memoirs, two children’s books he also illustrated, a book of haiku poetry, and a collection of short stories of the Orient.  His latest book, KOREA Shut-up and eat your C-rations, is a humorous look back at life as a draftee in the US army, and his tour-of-duty in Korea.
     He won Honorable Mention in the 84th Annual Writer's Digest Writing Competition  

Website: DanielFiddler.com

Doug Fortier                                                              

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In the ’60s, computers provided Doug his first taste of creative expression. Until retirement in 1997, he actively explored computer languages and hardware technology while working in small companies. For five years after retirement he developed painting skills and studied visual arts at Mendocino College. He's been writing since 2006, has won awards for short fiction in the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference, and appeared in multiple writing club anthologies.
Website:  www.dougfortier.com

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Watercolor Credit: Erin Dertner

Stacy Franco                                                              

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Stacy Franco, a perpetual student of life is breaking out into writing after many years contemplating the books growing inside of her.
    She was born in a river town once hailed as the "little Chicago." She quickly learned she had bigger dreams than this little town could offer or hold. After joining the Army, graduating from college with a BA in Communications, she spent many years traveling in the U.S. and caring for her children. 
     Stacy became a personal trainer and life coach as she felt the pull to give back and help people walking similar paths as she had. Once an obese woman, she became a mother and wife with no support and no one to help offer her the keys to her physical and spiritual transformation. She then went on to study for her MS in Sport and Health Sciences, one class short, and got a divorce. 
     Now remarried and relocated to California after a two year stint owning and operating a specialty bakery in the middle of Indiana, she is living a dream life. 
     Stacy, a 'jack of all trades' loves books, yoga, and the realm of spiritually beyond what is visible. Always trying to leave the rat race of humanity, she goes in search of delicious food and a campsite.

Jay Frankston

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Raised in Paris, Jay Frankston came to the US in 1942. He practiced law in New York for 20 years. In 1972, he gave up law and New York, and moved to California to become a college instructor. Nationally published, Jay’s books have been condensed in Reader’s Digest and translated into 15 languages. A Christmas Story, a true story, has been read by millions, and included in anthologies from Germany to Korea. El Sereno, his latest novel, is a short epic set in Spain with authentic historical background. It took ten years and two trips to Madrid to complete.
Website: http://wholeloafbooks.mcn.org/christmas/index.htm


- The Holocaust Memorial Library in mid-Manhattan has taken Jay's bronze “The Holocaust” into their permanent collection and it is now on exhibit in their main gallery.
- A stark black and white photo of a painting Jay's wife Monique’s father did in concentration camp (he died in Auschwitz) is also on exhibit at the Holocaust Memorial Library.

- April is the International Month of Remembrance of the victims of the Holocaust. In April, 2014 the California State Assembly passed a resolution honoring Monique and Mr. Frankston as survivors. They wanted them to come to Sacramento and accept the resolution in front of the whole Assembly. Since they could not make the trip, State Assemblyman Wes Chesbro came to Little River, took them to lunch, and gave them the framed Resolution.

Harriet Gleeson

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Harriet Gleeson is a transplant from Australia. She retired from Math/Science teaching to the Mendocino coast to, among other things, write poetry. She co-authored Wisdom Searches: Seeking the Feminine Presence of God  with Nancy Chinn, Pilgrim Press, 1999. Her poetry chapbook come down the stairs, published by Finishing Line Press, will be released in early December.​

Susanna Janssen                                                      Samples of Susanna's writing

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Susanna Janssen is a foreign language educator and newspaper columnist on everything about words, language, and culture. She is an Emeritus Professor of Spanish at Mendocino College and, prior to moving to Ukiah, taught at UC Davis and Sacramento City College. In her life as a writer, speaker, and teacher, she is a passionate advocate for the benefits of bilingualism at anywhere age for your brain, your career, your bank account, and your world view. Susanna continues to teach Spanish and Italian, coach language learners on skill development, organize group travel abroad, work as a volunteer translator at a medical clinic in Mexico, and develop learning resources to make foreign language acquisition practical, fun, and effective. She writes a light-hearted column for The Ukiah Daily Journal called A Word in Edgewise, on lexicon, linguistics, and travel lore.
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Susanna Janssen
Author, Columnist, Foreign Language Educator
Wordstruck! The Fun and Fascination of Language
www.susannajanssen.com
www.facebook.com/SusannaJanssenAuthor



Karen Lewis

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Karen K. Lewis lives near Albion between the forest and the sea. She holds an MFA from Antioch Los Angeles and has traveled widely. Karen leads workshops with California Poets in the Schools and is a former Director of the Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference. Her fiction, essays, and poetry appear in journals including Literary Mama, Minerva Rising, Weave, Six Words About Work, Iron Horse, and publications for youth. A poetry chapbook Peace Maps is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press (2020). https://www.wordjourneys.org/

Barbara Mackay

Barbara MacKay has been published in various haiku, tanka, and literary journals including American Tanka, Mariposa, Bryant Literary review, and Thema. She has placed 1st in several of the UkiaHaiku annual haiku contests as well as in the CA Quarterly monthly haiku/tanka contests.  Her poem Luke will appear in the forthcoming Finishing Line Press Horse anthology.

She earned a Master’s degree from the University of New Hampshire and taught English at the Manchester Campus of UNH.  A native of San Francisco, she has lived on the Mendocino Coast for 15 years.


Marinela Miclea

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Marinela Miclea is a fiction writer, journalist, and digital marketer. Her writing has appeared both online and in print publications - most recently in The Mendocino Beacon, Fort Bragg Advocate-News, and Prime Political. Visit her author website: https://marinelamiclea.com/

Marinela serves as Communications Director and is on the Steering Committee for Coast Women in Business, which fosters entrepreneurship and professional development on the Mendocino Coast. She also acts as advisor on digital marketing, SEO, eCommerce (e.g., Shopify), websites (e.g., WordPress), and social media for the West Business Development Center, which is affiliated with the U.S. Small Business Administration.

In her day job, she runs Mendo Digital - helping writers, other professionals, and small businesses reach more readers/customers with search engine optimization (SEO), keywords-integrated content, and social media. Visit her business website: https://mendo-digital.com/

Catherine Marshall

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Catherine Marshall's is a consultant to nonprofits and her first book, Field Building: Your Blueprint for Creating an Effective and Powerful Social Movement captured what she has learned about helping individuals and nonprofits make a difference in their communities. She also writes creative nonfiction and her memoir, The Easter Moose: One Family's Journey Adopting through Foster Care is scheduled for publication in May 2015. She serves on the advisory board of the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference and hosts her own writers' support group in Mendocino.

Nancy Harris McLelland         Read Nancy's writing, "Go Back" + links to published works

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Nancy Harris McLelland divides her time between a historic Finnish homestead near Mendocino, California and her high desert retreat in Tuscarora, Nevada.  After teaching language arts and literature for two decades at Mendocino College in Ukiah, California, she  has time to write; start a small business, Tuscarora Writers Retreats; and attend writing workshops, notably a poetry workshop with former Poet Laureate Billy Collins at the Key West Literary Conference.
McLelland served on the board of directors of the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference and was on the initial steering committee to establish the Writers of the Mendocino Coast.


See link:  Facebook Tuscarora Writers Retreats
Read Nancy's writing on her literary blog, Writing from Space:  Memoir, essays, and poetry from the wide, open spaces of northeastern Nevada


Ron Morita                             Read a sample of Ron's writing and his publishing credits

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Ron Morita grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and graduated from the University of California at Berkeley. He studied neurophysiology at UCLA’s Brain Research Institute (M.S. in physiology) because so much of what we consider ourselves to be is in the brain. Finding himself more practical than theoretical, he earned a Masters in biomedical engineering from Case Western Reserve and became an electrical engineer. 
     Ron has worked for iRobot Corporation, Medtronic, Teradyne, and Lockheed Martin. He designed electronics for a fire alarm control panel, a weather satellite, a sniper-locator robot, and a three-dimensional dental camera. 

     His short fiction appeared in 
  • The Chamber Four Literary Magazine, 
  • Vine Leaves Literary Journal, 
  • Red Earth Review, 
  • Star 82 Review, 
  • Penduline Literary Magazine, 
  • Cigale Literary Magazine, 
  • Sassafras Literary Magazine, 
  • Empty Sink Publishing,  
  • Arlington Literary Journal Issue 79 "The Bard"
    His award winning piece in The Noyo River Review is forthcoming. He has four unpublished novels: a workplace romance set in the robotics industry, an expose of the fire alarm industry, and two science fiction pieces about a world settled by star travelers. 
His web site is www.ronmorita.wordpress.com, and find him at www.facebook.com/RonMoritaStories. 

Lisa Norman

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Journalist/photographer, consummate storyteller, Lisa worked as reporter and sports editor (first woman) for the Fort Bragg Advocate-News and Mendocino Beacon. She holds degrees in English and Communications from the University of Pennsylvania. For the last decade she’s edited (and written for) the Real Estate Magazine, 26 stories a year—about Mendocino County. Her projects: memoir, cookbooks, illustrated children’s book, self-help/inspiration, and The Mendocino Review--Mendocino’s first journal of literature, music, and art, acquired in 2010. Go to Yelp for her review as a bodyworker. Google her for published stories, dance/theatre performances, and YouTube appearances (as gourmet and raw food chef).

Katy Pye

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Born and raised in a Northern California farming town, Katy's heart lived at summer camp in the redwoods. An “evolver,” she sold bearings-belts-and chains to farmers, owned a catering and cooking school business, earned a college degree at 42, and is a wife & mother. Retired Executive Director of a California Resource Conservation District, Katy moved to the Mendocino coast and built one form of environmentalism into another: Launched in April 2013, her debut novel, Elizabeth's Landing, has earned Writer's Digest's 2013 Self-Published e-book Awards FIRST Place in Fiction, Nautilus Book Awards SILVER in Young Adult Fiction, Next Generation Indie Book Awards GOLD for Children/Juvenile Fiction, and a Mom's Choice Awards GOLD in Young Adult Fiction. http://katypye.com. 

Ginny Rorby

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Ginny Rorby holds an undergraduate degree in Biology from the University of Miami, an MFA in Creative Writing from the Florida International University, and is the author of 5 novels for Young Adults, Dolphin Sky, (Putnam, ’96) and Hurt Go Happy, (Tor Books, ’06) which won the American Library Association’s Schneider Family Book Award, (2008) was nominated for six state reading awards and published in 7 languages. A new edition from Tor Teen will be published in October 2015. The Outside of a Horse (Dial Penguin,’10) was a Scholastic Book Fair selection, and Lost in the River of Grass (Lerner Books ‘11) won the 2013 Sunshine State Young Readers Award. How to Speak Dolphin (Scholastic Books ’15) will be published in May 2015, and has sold in the Netherlands and France. 
Website: www.ginnyrorby.com


Steve Sapontzis

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After studying at Rice University and the University of Paris, Steve received his Ph.D. in philosophy from Yale in 1971.  That same year, he began teaching philosophy at the California State University campus in Hayward and continued to do so until failing vision forced him to retire from teaching in 1997.  His philosophical specialties were Ethics, particularly animal rights and moral relativism, 20th century European philosophy, particularly French existentialism, and logic.  He published a book on animal rights, Morals, Reason, and Animals, with Temple University Press, edited another on vegetarianism, Food for Thought, The Debate over Eating Meat, for Prometheus Books, and wrote a third on moral relativism, Subjective Morals, published by University Press of America.  He contributed dozens of articles, both academic and popular, to a wide variety of journals and magazines.  He co-founded and for a decade co-edited the animal rights journal Between the Species.  With his wife, Jeanne Gocker, Steve co-founded and continues to direct Hayward Friends of Animals, a non-sheltering S.P.C.A., which sponsors Second Chance, Helping the Pets of People in Need.  Second Chance helps low-income dog owners living on the Mendocino Coast feed, care for, spay or neuter, and get veterinary care for their companion animals.  You can check out their website at www.SecondChanceFortBragg.org. His recent literary efforts have focused on the short story, several of which have appeared in publications of the California Writers Clubs and Writers of the Mendocino Coast.  You can find these and others of his stories at www.SteveSapontzis.com. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Sapontzis]

Marylyn Motherbear Scott

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Motherbear's poems and stories have appeared in journals, anthologies, and chapbooks. She has written, performed and had published, countless Circle Castings, Invocations and Rituals, as well as a large body of Vision Quests soon to be offered on C.D. Among publishings in periodical, journals and newspapers, she is also published in Edward Searl's anthology, Beyond Absence (2006), in Circle Round (1998) by Hill/Baker/Starhawk; in a hand-bound book The Dragonslayer's Daughter (2009) and in a poetry chapbook, Love's Journey. She wrote and produced Sadako's Dance of the Thousand Cranes, an original dance theatre performance piece staged in support of global nuclear disarmament and performed across the country, in Europe, Russia and Czechoslovakia. She has been featured at poetry readings in Ukiah, Point Arena, Mendocino, Sonoma County and Oakland, CA. Currently she is writing her memoir, Ohm, Sweet Mystery; and also working on a non-fiction book, In Your Own Rite. Marylyn also performs with Toby Lurie's Lost Coast Word Ensemble.

Donald Shephard                                                        Selected prose and poetry

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Donald Shephard has written two novels, one hundred or so short stories and an equal number of poems. His short story, "Never Surrender," was published in the anthology Let the Clock Run Wild. When he grows up he wants to be a humorous writer.
Website: DonaldShephard.com


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Nona Smith                                          Opening to Stuffed, Emptying the Hoarder's Nest

Picturephoto by Rosalie Winesuff
Nona Smith has been a social worker, a teacher, and the executive director of a Bay Area business improvement district before moving to Mendocino in 2007. Now she is an active member of the Mendocino Community Library and the current president of MCWC. Her memoir, STUFFED, Emptying the Hoarder's Nest was published in April 2014. 


Here's Norma Watkins' description:
"How much stuff can one being in the universe collect...and WHY?" asks a character in this treasure chest of a book. You won't believe how much. Stuffed will have you cleaning out closets and washing your hands. --Norma Watkins, author of The Last Resort: Taking the Mississippi Cure

Norma Watkins

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Norma Watkins is author of a memoir The Last Resort: Taking the Mississippi Cure, about civil rights, women wronged, good food and bad sex. She has a PhD in English, an M.F.A. in Creative writing, and teaches fiction and memoir at College of the Redwoods.
Website: www.normawatkins.com

windflower                                                                           Read "For the World"

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windflower, her wife and two border collies recently (August 2017) migrated to the Mendocino Coast from Sonoma County.  Upon leaving Sonoma County and her position as Organizational Development and Training Manager for the City of Santa Rosa, she recommitted to her writing life.  She still remembers carefully folding and placing the first poem she wrote, at the age of nine, in a flowered tan narrow-necked porcelain perfume bottle on her white French provincial dressing table.
​     windflower attended the University of Massachusetts in Amherst for her undergraduate (English) and graduate (M.Ed. in English) degrees. She co-founded the Feminist Arts Program at the University of Massachusetts Women’s Center where she published and edited, Chomo Uri, a women’s multi-arts magazine and produced the first National Women’s Poetry Festival in 1976. Her poetry has been published in several small journals.

                                                    windflower is also a photographer celebrating the poetry in nature.

Phil Zwerling                                                                           

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Dr. Philip Zwerling
Philip Zwerling, MFA. PhD., former Director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, and Associate Professor of Creative Writing there, has authored or edited five books: Nicaragua: A New Kind of Revolution, After School Theatre Programs for At Risk Teenagers, The CIA on Campus, The Theatre of Lee Blessing and Eyes on Havana: The Memoir of An American Spy Betrayed by the CIA. He and his wife, Clare, retired to Fort Bragg this past spring. More info at: http://www.philipzwerling.com

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