Friday, January ? , 2022
12 pm – 1:00 pm /PDT
Lunch ‘n’ Learn
FREE Virtual Event!
How to Get a Global Readership:
Search Engine Optimization
Readers from Alaska to Australia are waiting to read the blog post you’ve just written, but they don’t know how to find it. Show them how to find your blog and become followers. Join Selma and Anniqua, co-founders of Tillism.com, to cover the basics of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and see how they have increased the readership of their blog. In this introductory workshop, you will find out how to use focused keywords and other SEO strategies to your advantage.
Dr. Anniqua Rana’s debut novel, Wild Boar in the Cane Field was shortlisted for Pakistan’s UBL Literary Award 2020. She co-founded the blog Tillism – Magical Words from around the World with Selma Tufail. She blogs for The Express Tribune. Her writings on gender, education, and books have appeared in TNS, Naya Daur TV, International Education, Ravi Magazine, Bangalore Review, Fourteen Hills, The Noyo River Review, Delay Fiction, Listening to the Voices: Multi-ethnic Women in Education, and other publications. She travels, writes, and lives between California and Pakistan.
Selma Tufail, an artist, has always navigated through the worlds of literature, art, and education. Life’s journeys have taken her around the world where she has taught, written, and created art — in Spain, Qatar, the U.A.E. the U.S, and Pakistan. She was awarded the Order of Civil Merit, the highest civilian award of Spain. The author and illustrator of Con Yanci: When Chickens Fly and Other Tales, a children’s storybook. An excerpt from a memoir she is co-writing with Anniqua Rana was performed at: Play on Words, San José’s literary performance series at the San José Museum of Art. Her writing on gender, art and mysticism have appeared in The Dollhouse, Pakistan Daily Times, The Express Tribune, and Article in Shards of Silence – An Anthology, The Arabia Review: TESOL Arabia, UAE among others.
Building a platform for promoting a book is vital to its success, but the most important element of your writer’s platform is 
Lucille Lang Day is the author of seven full-length poetry collections and four poetry chapbooks. Her most recent collection is Birds of San Pancho and Other Poems of Place (Blue Light Press, November 2020). She has also co-edited two anthologies, Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California and Red Indian Road West: Native American Poetry from California, and has published two children’s books and a memoir, Married at Fourteen: A True Story. Her many honors include the Blue Light Poetry Prize, two PEN Oakland/ Josephine Miles Literary Awards, the Joseph Henry Jackson Award, and eleven Pushcart Prize nominations. She is the founder and publisher of Scarlet Tanager Books. 
Award winning poet and Pushcart Prize nominee Sheryl J. Bize-Boutte is an Oakland multidisciplinary writer of prose/poetry, autobiographical and fictional short stories. Her writing has been variously described as “rich in vivid imagery,” “incredible,” and “great contributions to literature.” Her first novel, “Betrayal on the Bayou,” was published in June 2020 and a poetry collection she has written with her daughter Dr. Angela M. Boutte, titled “No Poetry No Peace,” was published in August 2020. She has served as a poetry judge for the Bay Area Poets Coalition, the long-term emcee and co-curator for the
Dr. Jeanne Powell holds degrees from WSU in Michigan and USF in California. She is a published poet and essayist, with four books
Athena Kashyap grew up in India and went to the U.S. for her higher education. She received her BA in Critical Social Thought and History from Mount Holyoke College, her MA in English from the University of California at Davis, and her MFA in Poetry from San Francisco State University. She currently lives in San Francisco where she teaches English at City College of San Francisco. Athena has written two collections of poetry, Sita’s Choice (2019) and Crossing Black Waters (2012), both published by Stephen F. Austin State University Press in Texas. Her poems have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, All Roads Lead You Home, The Missing Slate, Forum, The Fourth River among other journals. Her work has also been anthologized both in the U.S. and India and has been translated into other languages.
Iris Jamahl Dunkle is an award-winning poet, literary biographer, and essayist. She has published four poetry books, including West: Fire: Archive, The Center for Literary Publishing, 2021 and the biography Charmian Kittredge London: Trailblazer, Author, Adventurer. Dunkle teaches at Napa Valley College and is Poetry Director at the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference.
The author of three poetry collections, a chapbook of short fiction and You Can Be a Winning Writer, a book for writers, Joan Gelfand’s work appears in national and international journals including Rattle, PANK! The Los Angeles Review of Books, Prairie Schooner, Kalliope, California Quarterly, the Toronto Review, Marsh Hawk Review and Levure Litteraire. Her chapbook of short fiction won the Cervena Barva Fiction Award. President Emeritus of the Women’s National Book Association, a member of the National Book Critics Circle and California Writers Club, Joan coaches writers. Joan’s novel, Extreme, set in a Silicon Valley startup, was published by Blue Light Press in July, 2020.
About the Book: One of the biggest reasons goals fail is that people often don’t put enough thought into what they really want before diving in. Your Goal Guide by Debra 
Shelley Golden is an International Personal Branding Image Consultant with over 20 years of experience. Shelley is passionate about helping create your unique style to boost your confidence and attract the people you want into your life by creating a powerful unique personal brand through your clothing and overall image.