Amanda McTigue

A storyteller on the page and for the stage, Amanda McTigue’s debut novel, GOING TO SOLACE, was published in August, 2012 by Harper Davis. Already a favorite with book clubs, Amanda spends a lot of time in conversation with readers and writers through appearances both live and live-remote via Skype. Her works for the stage have been produced in venues ranging from Carnegie Hall to the Minnesota Opera. A member of the fourth class of undergraduate women at Yale, a stage director and a concept writer for international entertainment firms like Walt Disney Entertainment and Paramount, Amanda is one busy, happy writer.  She has a collection of short stories, tentatively titled ” This is Not Water” due in 2015, and a second novel, “Monkey Bottom”, in the works.

These days, she lives and writes in Sonoma County, California. You can keep up with her doings at

http://amandamctigue.com

Mary Mackey

Mary Mackey has a B.A. from Harvard and a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. Her published works include seven collections of poetry, including Sugar Zone, winner of the 2012 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award for Literary Excellence (Marsh Hawk Press 2011) and her latest collection Travelers With No Ticket Home (Marsh Hawk Press 2014). She is also the author of thirteen novels including Immersion (Shameless Hussy Press 1972) which has recently been re-published by the Authors Guild.

Mackey’s poems have been praised by Wendell Berry, Jane Hirshfield, Dennis Nurkse, Ron Hansen, Dennis Schmitz, and Marge Piercy for their beauty, precision, originality, and extraordinary range. Four times Garrison Keillor has featured her poetry on his program The Writer’s Almanac. Mackey’s works have been on The New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle bestseller lists, sold over a million and a half copies, and been translated into twelve foreign languages including Japanese, Hebrew, Greek, Russian, and Finnish. She is past president of the West Coast branch of PEN, a Fellow of the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Professor Emeritus of English at California State University, Sacramento. For the last twenty years she has been traveling to Brazil with her husband, Angus Wright, who writes about land reform and environmental issues.

At present she is working on The Village of Bones: Sabalah’s Tale, a prequel to her bestselling novel The Year The Horses Came, as well as new series of poems which combines Portuguese and English to evoke the lyrical space that lies at the conjunction of the two languages. You can learn more about her, read her blog interview series People Who Make Books Happen, get access to free resources for teachers and writers on her Educators Page, and sample her work at http://marymackey.com You can also connect with her on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/marymackeywriter and subscribe to her quarterly Newsletter at http://eepurl.com/CrLHT MMary’s literary papers are archived at the Sophia Smith Special Collections Library at Smith College, Northampton MA. Website: http://marymackey.com

Diane LeBow

Based in San Francisco, Diane LeBow, President emerita of the Bay Area Travel Writers, Inc., has published stories with Salon.com, Via Magazine, Travelers Tales and Seal Press anthologies, France: A Love Story: Women Write about the French Experience, Greece: A Love Story, Foreign Affairs: Erotic Travel Tales (Cleis Pres), B for Savvy Brides, Skirt Magazine, and many national newspapers and magazines, including regular columns with examiner.com.

Her story about her experiences working with women in Afghanistan is included in The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2010 (Travelers’ Tales). Diane’s many awards for her writing and photography including a 2011 Best Women’s Travel Writing Award and two time Solas Travelers’ Tales Gold Awards, BATW Planet Earth, and Writers’ Digest. She travels the globe and has spent time with peoples in many cultures, including Afghan women, Libyans, the Hopi, Amazon people, Tuvans, Mongolians, and Corsicans. She has scuba dived with sharks in the Red Sea and trained champion Morgan horses.

Diane gives popular lectures/slide shows both in the USA and abroad on her off the beaten track adventures, often focusing on women in various cultures. A pioneer of Women’s Studies, Diane earned her Ph.D. at UC, was a college professor for many years and since her retirement, teaches travel writing in various venues, including the SF State University Osher Lifelong Learning Program, Central Coast Writers Conference, and Books Inc.

Mary E. Knippel

Mary E. Knippel, Writer Unleashed at YourWritingMentor.com, transformational author and inspirational speaker, is fiercely committed to guiding women entrepreneurs and aspiring authors and speakers to leverage their impact through writing. Using the power of storytelling, she helps them gain clarity and confidence in the words and the way they connect with the world, to unleash from the stories that are have kept them silent, to reclaim their voices and share their unique message…because no one else can tell your individual story from the inside out. You matter and your story matters! You deserve to Live a Life Unleashed! As a journal writer since the age of 11, Mary knows the enormous power and healing capabilities of the written word. A two-time breast cancer survivor she used writing and other creative tools in her recovery and chronicles the results in her upcoming book, The Secret Artist, where she shares what she has learned to help you move from survive to thrive. Learn more about Mary’s virtual classes and workshops, receive free writing tips and techniques as well as what to do about writer’s block, or invite her to speak to your group, by visiting her website at  http://yourwritingmentor.com.

Tracy Guzeman

Tracy Guzeman received her degree in landscape architecture from Iowa State University. A Pushcart Prize nominee, and a featured author for the 2014 Twitter Fiction Festival, her work has been published in Vestal Review, Glimmer Train, and Gulf Coast, where her story, “Einstein,” received honorable mention for the Donald Barthelme Prize for Short Prose. Her work has been performed by Stories on Stage (Davis, CA) and The New Short Fiction Series (Los Angeles). Her first novel, The Gravity of Birds, was published by Simon & Schuster, with foreign rights sold to eleven countries. She is currently working on her second novel. Find out more at: www.tracyguzeman.com.

Jane Glendinning

Jane Glendinning is the Membership Chair for WNBA-SF Chapter,  On-Site Volunteer Coordinator for the SFWC, Volunteer Coordinator for the Writing for Change Conference, past secretary and immediate past speaker chair of CWC-Berkeley Branch.

She is currently working on a collection of short stories.

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Joan Gelfand

Joan Gelfand
Joan’s work has been published in national and international publications, including Kalliope, Levure Litteraire, The Toronto Quarterly, and The Chaffin Journal. Readings include Bowery Poetry Club, Southern Festival of Books, Litquake, The Oakland Museum and the NY Public Library. She has been featured on KPIX, NBC, cable TV and over 20 radio stations.

Joan’s forthcoming novel, “Fear to Shred,” is set in a Silicon Valley startup. The debut book is due out with Incanto Press in January, 2015.

Poetry collections: “The Long Blue Room,” Benicia Literary Arts, 2014, “A Dreamer’s Guide to Cities and Streams,” and “Seeking Center.” “Here and Abroad,” is an award winning chapbook of short fiction. “Transported,” can be found on itunes.
Joan blogs regularly for the Huffington Post and coaches writers.

Joan is the Poetry Editor for the “J,” the Development Chair of the Women’s National Book Association and a member of the National Book Critics Circle.  http://joangelfand.com

Betsy Graziani Fasbinder

In both her works of memoir and fiction, Betsy Graziani Fasbinder explores the unending complications of people living, working, and loving one another. As a practicing therapist for more than twenty years, she has been witness to the heartbreak, healing, and heroism of people from all walks of life. She strives to create stories that bring the emotional truths she’s experienced and observed to the pages in all of her writing. 

Betsy has been awarded the Floyd Salas Award for Fiction, and has been honored with a Jack London award and two East of Eden awards for both fiction and memoir pieces. Four of her works have been produced as Readers’ Theater in the historic Nevada Theater in Nevada City, California. She is the co-producer of The Women’s Writing Salon in Nevada County. Her first published novel, Fire & Water, was released by She Writes Press in 2013. She’s working now on a collection of memoir stories and a new novel set in California’s Wine Country, a great excuse for some wine tasting. Research, only for research. 

She is currently working on a collection of personal essays titled Filling Her Shoes: My Love Story of Inherited Motherhood . One of those stories, “Who Will This Be to Me” was one of the Readers’ Theater features. Betsy is also working on a new work of fiction about how different people are than how they first might seem, titled Opening Acts. 

Betsy lives nestled in the soft hills of Marin County, California with her husband, one son on the launch pad, and one out on his own in a neighboring town. Nested there among friends and writing tribe mates in the Bay Area and in the Sierras, she is so busy counting blessings that it’s hard to find time to write.  http://betsygrazianifasbinder.com

Kate Farrell

Kate Farrell, is a graduate of the School of Library and Information Studies, UC Berkeley. She has been a language arts classroom teacher (pre-school and grades kindergarten through 12th), author, librarian, university lecturer, and storyteller in Northern California since 1966. She founded the Word Weaving Project, funded by grants from Zellerbach Family Fund, San Francisco, 1979-1991. She is co-author of a monograph, Effects of Storytelling: An Ancient Art for Modern Classrooms, 1982; author of Word Weaving: A Teaching Sourcebook, 1984; producer and co-author of a training videotape, “Word Weaving: The Art of Storytelling,” 1983, distributed by the University of California, Berkeley; and author of the professional book, Storytelling: A Guide for Teachers, Scholastic, 1991. She is also senior author of Storytelling in Our Multicultural World, an oral language development program for early childhood education, published by Zaner-Bloser Educational Publishers, 1994.

Farrell edited the anthology, Wisdom Has a Voice: Every Daughter’s Memories of Mother, 2011. She is co-editor of award-winning anthology, Times They Were A-Changing: Women Remember the ’60s & 70s, published by She Writes Press, 2013.  http://www.timestheywereachanging.com/, and co-editor, Cry of the Nightbird: Writers Against Domestic Violence, to be released October 2014.

Currently she is a member of California Writers Club, Redwood Branch, Story Circle Network; Farrell is WNBA’s national Membership Chair and President of its San Francisco Chapter. Kate lives in Santa Rosa, California, and is the mother of a son who is traveling the world this year.