Michelle Blackwell
Michelle Blackwell was born in San Francisco and raised by her grandparents in Concord, California. She put herself through college on the eleven-year program. She spent decades working in marketing and public relations before retiring to focus on writing fiction. Since 2018, she has written hundreds of news stories for the Fort Bragg Advocate, Mendocino Beacon and others as a freelance journalist. She is the host and producer of the KZYX radio show and podcast “Upwelling” and regularly contributes to the KZYX News program. Her fiction pieces have appeared in Writers of the Mendocino Coast, “Erosion” and “Borders” anthologies.
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 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 next book, Alpha Ding, was published in 2018. Bowe blends sardonic, self-deprecating comedy with disarming sincerity. Her third graphic novel: Journey to the Anthropocene was published in 2022. |
Notty Bumbo
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Notty Bumbo is a writer, artist, and poet living in Fort Bragg, California. He has been published in a number of small journals and presses, including the Amphigoric Sauce Factory, Words Without Walls, Poesis, Telling Our Stories Press, Peacock Journal, Calabash Cadence’ Taisgeadan, Word Fountain, Poetry South and others. His novella, Tyrian Dreams, is available through Kindle via Amazon Publishing. He is working on a new collection of poetry with hopes of publishing by 2022.
https://www.bumpintheroad.net |
Tansy Chapman
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.”
www.tansychapman.com
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.”
www.tansychapman.com
Priscilla Comen
Priscilla Comen wrote confession stories for Modern Romances sixty years ago. Now she writes creative non fiction, and memoir. She writes a weekly book review column for the Mendocino Beacon and the Fort Bragg Advocate News. She's in the California Writers Club, league of Women Voters, and Mendocino Community Library volunteers.
Molly Dwyer
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/
Website: http://www.mollydwyer.com/
Maureen Eppstein
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/
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 |
Earlene Gleisner
Earlene Gleisner is a retired Registered Nurse and an active Reiki Master with an abiding love of books and writing. Majoring in English and Psychology, her path was diverted to nursing in 1964 so her parents would be assured that she could earn a living wage. She and her family settled in Laytonville in the early 80’s. She has recently moved to Willits and loves traveling to the coast when possible.
During the 50 years as an RN, she continued her love of writing and has been published in two Canadian anthologies, a medical manual for physicians, and was a regular contributor of medical and news articles, plus personal essays to The Mendocino County Observer and Willits News. Through her publishing company, White Feather Press, she published Reiki In Everyday Living to complement her practice and teachings as a Reiki Master. This collection of 14 essays and 8 poems was translated into four languages and published in five countries.
Her first two novels, The Awakening and Every Second Chance live in boxes on a shelf. Through White Feather Press she self-published The Marriage Bundle and The Spirit Bundle. These are the first two novels of her Sacred Bundle Series which is a quadrangle of books telling a circular tale about relationships across time. These are the relationships we have with ourselves, each other, our spiritual paths, and with our Earth. The Women’s Bundle and The Earth Bundle are in the works. Short stories, a poetry chap book, a 10-year blog and newsletters continue to emerge. She is thrilled to have several writings accepted into the 2019 Noyo Review and the Writers of the Mendocino Coast anthologies of 2020 and 2021.
Her desire to inspire others to write their stories was the catalyst of her seminar ‘Writing for A Change” which she has taught in camp sites and conferences for the past twenty years. She recently presented this series of classes over KLLG 97.0 Willits Hometown Radio and will be presenting its six sessions at Willits Center for the Arts in 2021.
Website: www.standinginbalance.com
During the 50 years as an RN, she continued her love of writing and has been published in two Canadian anthologies, a medical manual for physicians, and was a regular contributor of medical and news articles, plus personal essays to The Mendocino County Observer and Willits News. Through her publishing company, White Feather Press, she published Reiki In Everyday Living to complement her practice and teachings as a Reiki Master. This collection of 14 essays and 8 poems was translated into four languages and published in five countries.
Her first two novels, The Awakening and Every Second Chance live in boxes on a shelf. Through White Feather Press she self-published The Marriage Bundle and The Spirit Bundle. These are the first two novels of her Sacred Bundle Series which is a quadrangle of books telling a circular tale about relationships across time. These are the relationships we have with ourselves, each other, our spiritual paths, and with our Earth. The Women’s Bundle and The Earth Bundle are in the works. Short stories, a poetry chap book, a 10-year blog and newsletters continue to emerge. She is thrilled to have several writings accepted into the 2019 Noyo Review and the Writers of the Mendocino Coast anthologies of 2020 and 2021.
Her desire to inspire others to write their stories was the catalyst of her seminar ‘Writing for A Change” which she has taught in camp sites and conferences for the past twenty years. She recently presented this series of classes over KLLG 97.0 Willits Hometown Radio and will be presenting its six sessions at Willits Center for the Arts in 2021.
Website: www.standinginbalance.com
Susanna Janssen Samples of Susanna's writing
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.
Author, Columnist, Foreign Language Educator
Wordstruck! The Fun and Fascination of Language
www.susannajanssen.com
www.facebook.com/SusannaJanssenAuthor
Author, Columnist, Foreign Language Educator
Wordstruck! The Fun and Fascination of Language
www.susannajanssen.com
www.facebook.com/SusannaJanssenAuthor
Marie Judson
A Northern California native, Marie Judson recently returned to Mendocino County where she wrote the first book of her fantasy trilogy, Braided Dimensions. Books 1 and 2 were finalists in the Next Generation Indie Book Awards in 2018 and 2019. For the past decade, she has been an active member of Redwood Writers in Sonoma County and served as their writing group coordinator. She's currently working on a science fiction novel, Elf Stone of the Neyna, a work she first conceived three decades ago when her two children were small. Marie holds Masters degrees in communication, psychology and education and is a special education teacher on the Mendocino coast. She’s served as editor for academic and spiritual journals, Mind, Culture and Activity and ReVision. Check out her blog at https://mariejudson.com/
Elizabeth Kirkpatrick-Vrenios Sample of Elizabeth's writing
Elizabeth Kirkpatrick-Vrenios is professor emerita from American University in Washington DC, having chaired the vocal and music departments. Vrenios’ solo recitals throughout the US, South America, Scandinavia, Japan and Europe have been acclaimed. Featured in Tupelo Press's 30/30 challenge, she has been published in such journals as Clementine, Cumberland River Review, The Feminine Collective, The Kentucky Review, Into the Void, Unsplendid, Edison Literary review, Passager, NILVX, Unsplendid and featured in such anthologies as The Poeming Pigeon, Love Notes from Humanity, Stories of Music, the American Journal of Poetry, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her chapbook Special Delivery, prize winner with Yellow Chair Press, was published in 2016, and her second chapbook released in April 2021, Empty the Ocean with a Thimble, by Word Tech Communications. As the artistic director of the Redwoods Opera in Mendocino, California, she has influenced and trained vocal students across the country.
Karen Lewis
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/
Susan Lundgren
Susan Lundgren has an undergraduate degree in English and a doctorate in Educational Psychology. She began her writing career in elementary school by publishing stories in the Aunt Elsie section of the Oakland Tribune, progressed to a high school summer internship with the Contra Costa Times, and wrote book reviews for Plexus when on sabbatical from her career as a college counselor and instructor. Since retiring to Mendocino in 2011, her stories have appeared in You’re Doing What? Older Women’s Tales of Achievement and Adventure, Art Ascent, All in a Day's Shopping, Short Takes: Secrets, Persimmon Tree, Redwood Coast Senior Center Gazette, California Writer’s Club Literary Review, and WMC anthologies.
www.SusanLundgrenWriter.com
www.SusanLundgrenWriter.com
Ericka Lutz
Ericka Lutz is a novelist, poet, nonfiction writer, and performer. Her publications include eight books plus many short stories, poems, essays, and columns. She’s received two fellowships to the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and was nominated for a 2021 Pushcart for poetry. The SF Chronicle called her novel, The Edge of Maybe, a “…delightful family drama [that] skewers all that we enlightened Bay Area folk hold dear, from organic food and green tea to yoga and husbands who cook risotto."
Lutz performed her full-length solo show, A Widow's To-Do List, throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. The SF Weekly called her “the holy grail” of storytelling. She was a founding editor of the online magazine Literary Mama and taught writing at U.C. Berkeley for 18 years. After a decade of near-solitude in the Sierra Nevada foothills, she now lives on the Mendocino coast where she writes, edits and coaches writers, walks on the beaches and bluffs, rehabs an old cottage, and cooks up a storm. She hangs her virtual hat at erickalutz.com.
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.
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
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/
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.
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Nancy Harris McLelland Read Nancy's writing, "Go Back" + links to published works
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
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 has appeared in
His web site is www.ronmorita.wordpress.com, and find him at www.facebook.com/RonMoritaStories. |
Lisa Norman
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).
Jonathan Pazer
Jonathan Pazer is a poet, artist and abstract photographer. He is a graduate of Syracuse University, with an MS in Education and a law degree from Union University’s Albany Law School. He began to show his photography in 2011 in New York’s Hudson Valley. He was a founding member in 2012 and then chairman of the Gardiner, New York, Artists’ Open Studio Tour. He showed his abstract photographs and his ekphrastic poetry on the tour until 2018.
In 2015 he became a founding artist and member on the Board of Directors of Roost Studios, Inc., a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit community art space, gallery and gift shop in the village of New Paltz, NY. Roost Studios Gallery showcased contemporary work of Hudson Valley artists, as well as providing space for: Calling All Poets, Tai Chi, Tango, and kids programs. His solo ekphrasis show at Roost, in 2016, during The Year of the Poem, included more than fifteen of his abstract images, displayed alongside a poem written for each. This show coincided with the release of his self-published book, Seven Dimensions of the Unseen, which documented the show’s images and their accompanying poems.
Jonathan became a member of CAPS, Calling All Poets, a Hudson Valley poetry organization that was hosted at Roost. He was later invited to contribute poems and images to Ekphrasis 2017 (Volume 1), a poetry collection published by CAPS.
Jonathan's complete biography is on this page.
In 2015 he became a founding artist and member on the Board of Directors of Roost Studios, Inc., a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit community art space, gallery and gift shop in the village of New Paltz, NY. Roost Studios Gallery showcased contemporary work of Hudson Valley artists, as well as providing space for: Calling All Poets, Tai Chi, Tango, and kids programs. His solo ekphrasis show at Roost, in 2016, during The Year of the Poem, included more than fifteen of his abstract images, displayed alongside a poem written for each. This show coincided with the release of his self-published book, Seven Dimensions of the Unseen, which documented the show’s images and their accompanying poems.
Jonathan became a member of CAPS, Calling All Poets, a Hudson Valley poetry organization that was hosted at Roost. He was later invited to contribute poems and images to Ekphrasis 2017 (Volume 1), a poetry collection published by CAPS.
Jonathan's complete biography is on this page.
Katy Pye
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.
Phillip Regan
Phillip Regan’s passion for bowling led to writing a weekly sports column for the Alameda Times-Star beginning at the age of twelve. As an adult he spent a combined ten years in radio as editor, writer, producer and news stringer for KCBS, KSRO, KALX, KRCB, and CBS News, culminating in sharing a team Peabody Award for the KCBS coverage of “Earthquake ’89.” His story “The People of People’s Park” was picked up for national distribution by Associated Press Radio News. In recent years he has assisted in editing stories for WMC anthologies, functions as a webmaster for several sites, and writes frequent articles for Bowling This Month.
Sallie Reynolds Writing Sample "Going to Target" and Publishing Credits
Two things hold me: the longing to communicate with beings not like me—as different as an oak tree or another human being. And my brain, which, at 82, is still developing. For 50 years, it was in a kind of automatic state. I’d do odd things - put my specs in the freezer or lose segments of a conversation, and wake up lost. In order to think, I needed a pencil in my hand. A moving pencil.
My family came to this country in the late 1600s—grabbed land from the original inhabitants and worked it with slaves. The consequences are never ending. Most of the men and women of my line are either disengaged or suicidal. As a child, the only person I could depend on was the granddaughter of slaves—she was solid and normal and I loved her completely. A book about her last years, Virginia Primitive, shows the primitive to be both myself and the sort of oversimplification of the fractured Southern imagination.
After college in the Midwest, I lived for years in New York, working as an editor and adjunct prof of English. And writing. My fiction centers around the long-lasting human effects of the Jim Crow era in rural Virginia. My non-fiction stars other species. At eight, I fell into the mystery and marvel of birds – those true aliens. And as an adult, joined the wildlife rehabilitation scene. At the age of 75, I got my falconry license, not to kill with birds, but because, without the skills their parents teach them, young hawks recovering from illness and injury often don’t survive to breed.
Today I live on a small farm in the Sierra foothills with my husband, a writer, painter, and mechanic. Together, we’ve learned to join while keeping our selves. I thank him for this gift. And look forward, now, to this new community of writers—bless you for taking me in!
Sallie Reynolds
Garden Valley, CA
salliereynolds@gmail.com
www.takethemoment.org
My family came to this country in the late 1600s—grabbed land from the original inhabitants and worked it with slaves. The consequences are never ending. Most of the men and women of my line are either disengaged or suicidal. As a child, the only person I could depend on was the granddaughter of slaves—she was solid and normal and I loved her completely. A book about her last years, Virginia Primitive, shows the primitive to be both myself and the sort of oversimplification of the fractured Southern imagination.
After college in the Midwest, I lived for years in New York, working as an editor and adjunct prof of English. And writing. My fiction centers around the long-lasting human effects of the Jim Crow era in rural Virginia. My non-fiction stars other species. At eight, I fell into the mystery and marvel of birds – those true aliens. And as an adult, joined the wildlife rehabilitation scene. At the age of 75, I got my falconry license, not to kill with birds, but because, without the skills their parents teach them, young hawks recovering from illness and injury often don’t survive to breed.
Today I live on a small farm in the Sierra foothills with my husband, a writer, painter, and mechanic. Together, we’ve learned to join while keeping our selves. I thank him for this gift. And look forward, now, to this new community of writers—bless you for taking me in!
Sallie Reynolds
Garden Valley, CA
salliereynolds@gmail.com
www.takethemoment.org
Ginny Rorby
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
Website: www.ginnyrorby.com
Steve Sapontzis
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
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 |
Nona Smith Opening to Stuffed, Emptying the Hoarder's Nest
photo 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
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
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
Website: www.normawatkins.com
windflower Read "For the World"
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.
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.
Mike Winn
Mike Winn is a Fort Bragg resident, by way of Boston and Sacramento. Now retired, he has written three novels—fiction and historical fiction—which he continues to the refine and workshop in a writers group. The Noyo River River and literary anthologies have published his short stories and essays.
Phil Zwerling
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
