Women's National Book Association, San Francisco Chapter

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WNBA SF Chapter Board Members

Women’s National Book Association 
San Francisco Chapter

2025-2026 Board Members

EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

PRESIDENT 

BRENDA KNIGHT

Brenda Knight began her career at HarperCollins, working with luminaries Paolo Coelho, Marianne Williamson, and His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Knight was awarded IndieFab’s Publisher of the Year in 2014 by the ALA, American Library Association. She is the author of Wild Women and Books, Random Acts of Kindness, The Grateful Table, Be a Good in the World, and Women of the Beat Generation, which won an American Book Award. Brenda is the Associate Publisher and Director of Editorial Acquisition at Mango Publishing, the Women’s National Book Association, the San Francisco Chapter President, and an instructor at the annual San Francisco Writers Conference.

PAST PRESIDENT

ELISE MARIE COLLINS

Current WNBA-SF Chapter President, Elise Marie Collins has played major roles in the overall direction and strategy development of the chapter, leading teams to accomplish successful Pitch-O-Ramas, membership drives and mixers, and educational literary presentations. A yoga instructor, health coach, and author with a master’s degree in gerontology from USC, Elise became more in touch with how food and lifestyle affect us spiritually. This knowledge led her to author “An A-Z Guide to Healing Foods, A Shoppers Companion,” and “Chakra Tonics. Essential Elixirs for Mind, Body and Spirit,” published by Conari Press. As a gerontologist, she writes about how to be well and live a long life. Her latest book is “Super Ager: You Can Look Younger, Have More Energy, A Better Memory, and Live a Long and Healthy Life.”

 

CO-VICE PRESIDENT

ANNIQUA RANA

Anniqua Rana is a writer and educator committed to eliminating inequities around her.  She has done this in collaboration with the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office providing professional development and training to colleges in the Bay Area. She co-founded Aalimocracy.com a volunteer organization providing professional development to educational institutions in Pakistan. She has taught English, ESL, EFL, International Education, and Creative Writing at San Mateo Community Colleges, DeAnza College, University of San Francisco, Lahore University of Management Sciences, Pakistan, and Stanford University. Her debut novel, Wild Boar in the Cane Field was shortlisted for Pakistan’s UBL Literary Award 2020. To create a platform for writers she co-founded the blog Tillism.

 

SECRETARY

KAREN WANG-DIGGS 

Jia Ling Wang (Karen Wang Diggs) is a certified nutritionist, chef, and entrepreneur by day. By night, she reads, writes, and dreams. She is also a history hound keenly interested in the never-ending struggles of girls, women, and anyone who identifies as female. With a keen awareness of history’s patriarchal dominance and the suppression of female voices and achievements, Jia Ling is on a mission. Her sincere hope is that her writing serves as a source of inspiration and enrichment for everyone, contributing to greater gender equality, social justice, and harmony in these challenging times.

 

TREASURER

DUNCAN MACLEOD

Duncan MacLeod received his MBA from University of Southern California Marshall School of Business. In addition to his work as a personal bookkeeper and finance coach, he’s a writer, advocate, and publisher of financial self-help books, young adult and mental health fiction. He is the owner and publisher at a new press called Jim Dandy Publishing.

 

NETWORKING AMBASSADOR

DEBRA ECKERLING 

Goal Strategist Debra Eckerling is the award-winning author of Your Goal Guide and founder of the D*E*B METHOD® system of goal-setting simplified. Her new book 52 Secrets for Goal-Setting and Goal Getting published in February 2025. A speaker, consultant, and workshop leader, she offers personal and professional planning, event strategy, content development, and team-building for writers, consultants, entrepreneurs, executives, and companies. Debra has spoken on stages for TEDx, Innovation Women, SCORE LA, and more, and is the host of #GoalChatLive aka The DEB Show and the Taste Buds with Deb podcast.

 

EVENTS MANAGER

KAT NEFF

Kat Neff, Senior Publicist at Llewellyn Worldwide, the oldest and largest publisher in the mind/body/spirit genre, has over 20 years of experience in book publishing. She has helped countless authors achieve national and international media bookings by creating successful broadcast, online, and print media publicity. Kat is also a frequent speaker on various aspects of book publishing.  A long-time publishing professional, she has worked as Associate Editor and Marketing Manager at Cleis Press & Viva Editions, Insight Editions, and Red Wheel Weiser & Conari Press. 

 

 

EFFIE LEE MORRIS LECTURE & POETRY PROGRAMMING MANAGER

NICOLE HENARES 

From a family active in the civil rights movement, Nicole Henares has been a high school English teacher for over 20 years, and since 2013 has written as Aurelia Lorca-  a poet who has been motionless in the twist of time.   The title character of poet Federico Garcia Lorca’s last play, Dreams of My Cousin Aurelia, Aurelia Lorca was a character who lived in literature, and yet was supposed to receive a cathartic slap in the face to place her in the present.  However, her creator was murdered by at the start of the Guerra Civil in 1936, and he could not finish the play.  As Aurelia Lorca, Nicole Henares’s writing often reassembles narratives from histories which have been forgotten as a way to remember.

 

BOARD DEVELOPMENT AND DONATIONS CHAIR

MIERA RAO

Miera Rao writes fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. She has won awards for creative non-fiction and poetry. Her personal essay won a place in the Writer’s Digest competition and she was a recipient of the Effie Lee Morris Literary Award for Poetry. Her short stories have been published by the Sand Hill Review Press, in the award-winning Fault Zone anthology series, Paper Angel Press, and Flash Fiction Magazine. She tutors students in language, writing, and public speaking, and is a college essay coach.

 

 


BOARD MEMBERS

Membership Chair: 

Members at Large: 

Ellen McBarnette is a lifelong writer whose nonfiction work has been published as testimony, fact sheets, and opinion pieces for organizations that include the Sierra Club and the American Bar Association. A professional storyteller, she is a recent transplant from Washington, DC where she ran the Arlington Creative Nonfiction Writers Group. She now runs the Beta Readers and Writers Group and is an active participant in critique groups in the Bay. She lives in Hayward with her partner Ben and their cat Java.
 

B. Lynn GoodwinB. Lynn Goodwin is the owner of Writer Advice, www.writeradvice.com. She’s written You Want Me to Do WHAT? Journaling for Caregivers (Tate Publishing) and Talent (Eternal Press). Talent was short-listed for a Literary Lightbox Award and won a bronze medal in the Moonbeam Children’s Book Awards and was a finalist for a Sarton Women’s Book Award. Her latest book, Never Too Late: From Wannabe to Wife at 62 won a National Indie Excellence Award and was a finalist elsewhere. She is a reviewer and teacher at Story Circle Network, and she is a manuscript coach at Writer Advice.

 

 

Hannah Onstad is the founder of H2O Content Strategy, a consultancy that helps businesses develop their strategy for new products, web content delivery, book and video series, social media, presentations, and reports. She has experience developing media projects for international publishing houses, national museums, and local businesses. Her clients have included Oxford University Press (Asia), Pearson Education, and the Smithsonian Center for Learning and Digital Access. She is the former Associate Publisher of Peachpit, a division of Pearson Technology Group.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           Web Editor: Ellie  Bozmarova         
is a Bulgarian-American writer and mindfulness teacher based in San Francisco. Her work has appeared in Buniess Insider, PopSugar, SFGATE, The Common and many other outlets. Her writing has won the SFF-Nomadic Press Nonfiction Award, the WNBA-SF award, and was a semi-finalist for the U.S. Fulbright Creative Writing Fellowship. She has a BA from UC Berkeley, and MFA from Gousher College, and is currently querying her first novel. She is WNBA-SF’s newest board member and Booktalk Editor. 

Featured Member Interview Editor: 

Social Media/Member Outreach: 

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Mailing address:

WNBA-SF Chapter
4061 E. Castro Valley Blvd
Castro Valley, Ca 94552

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