Fall 2014 Newsletter

Lori Noack

November 1^st — Saturday, 2:00 – 4:00 pm
Temescal Branch Library 
Meeting Room, Oakland
Speaker: Lori Noack, Executive Director

Lori Noack will discuss how AWWP provides a platform for Afghan women to share the stories of their lives. From 10 writers in 2009 to more than 220 in 2014, over 1300 poems and journalistic essays are published on awwproject.org. Lori will share highlights of AWWP’s new projects.
To read more, click HERE.

WNBA Author Showcase: New Fall Books

Bookshop West Portal

Celebrating Member/Authors 
of San Francisco Chapter
Tuesday, November 4, 2014
7:00 — 9:00 pm

Bookshop West Portal,
80 West Portal Ave.
San Francisco 94127
Refreshments, Free and open to the public
Moderator: Joan Gelfand, WNBA Past President, author, The Long Blue Room. Joan will introduce five outstanding authors who write cutting edge fiction, non-fiction, memoir, and poetry.

 To read more, click HERE.

Julia Park Tracey

Julia Park Tracey is a busy author, active member of WNBA-SF Chapter, and was just honored as Poet Laureate for the town of Alameda. 

She is glad to part of a well-respected organization populated by strong, professional women. “I appreciate the women in this group for their mentoring, friendship and collective wisdom. WNBA is well known and commands respect. That always feels good when I talk about it.”

A question that we all may well ask is exactly how does one become a poet laureate? The poet, Mary Rudge, who served as Alameda’s Poet Laureate for ten years, passed away this year. Julia was simply encouraged to apply. “I was surprised to be selected. I am known for many other things besides poetry, but poetry is my first literary love. So I’m pretty chuffed about the title.”

To read more, click HERE.

BOOK DRIVE for AGES 0 – 5! Donate gently used or new children’s books for the Living Room. Now—through December!

We’re looking for classic children’s books: nursery rhymes, finger plays, folk and fairy tales, enduring stories, bilingual books in English and Spanish, and board books, all for early childhood, ages 0-5.

Women’s National Book Association, San Francisco Chapter sponsors a Book Drive to benefit the Living Room, Santa Rosa, a daytime drop-in center that provides a safe haven to ease the adversity of homelessness for women—part of the Living Room’s Mother and Child program.  SF Chapter has increased its visits to the Living Room from biweekly to weekly: every Monday at 10:00 am. 

To support this developing program, SF Chapter will donate 10% of its net income to purchasing books for the Living Room at deeply discounted prices. But we need your support to make this a real success! Bring donated books to each WNBA event. Thank you!

October 11, 2014, Saturday, 2:00 -4:00 pm
Books, Inc., Opera Plaza 601 Van Ness Ave., SF 94107

One of the best ever bookstore parties! Such a terrific turnout to hear a brilliant discussion among our author panelists moderated by Tracy Guzeman. Thank you to Books, Inc., to Litquake, to our fabulous volunteer team, and our NRGM sponsors. Most of all, thanks to those readers and writers who love books enough to share them at a party.

Co-sponsored by San Francisco Chapter & LITQUAKE
To read more, click HERE.

Begins: 8/14/2014, Ends: 1/15/2015

Flyer Click here for download.

We are seeking your best work for our national writing contest. Winning entries will be published in a special issue of The Bookwoman–the national newsletter of the WNBA. First place winners receive $250 cash prize. Second, third and honorable mentions will be published with the first place winners in the contest edition of The Bookwoman. Open to all writers 18 or older writing in English. Read previous winners on our website.

2014 Entry Fee: WNBA Members: $15 per entry
Non-Members: $20 per entry

All submissions and payments are through Submittable. Simultaneous submissions are acceptable, please inform the contest judge if work is accepted elsewhere. Previously published work accepted. If work is accepted elsewhere please contact the Contest Chair: joan@joangelfand.com.  To read more, click HERE.

Dystopian novels are now a vast genre and the outlandish made grittily real is often 

how we judge them—the more horror in a sense, the better.

Station Eleven sidesteps this mandate, delivering a story that is uplifting as it travels through multiple characters’ lives before and after the collapse of civilization as we know it. We recognize our world when a flu virus wipes out the majority of the population which in turn collapses the systems we rely on: access to transportation, electricity, the internet, and electronics of all sorts. This collapse bleeds out into a likely dystopian future where the surviving one percent of the population, after roving for years, finally settles. In Mandel’s words, “civilization in Year Twenty was an archipelago of small towns.”