San Francisco Chapter Winter 2014
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WNBA-SF Member Mixer January is International Creativity Month–a whole month dedicated to Creativity! Come, explore your creative self! Share and network. Snacks, wine and cheese. FREE Many will start the New Year making resolutions and creating lists of ambitions and goals to accomplish before the end of 2014. Sometimes the list will include vows to: lose weight, exercise regularly, write that book, contribute to savings, limit spending, work less & play more, spend time with the family… (fill in the resolution I’m missing). You get the point, these things are well and good, but will they really happen? Give yourself the gift of time to explore how to turn those lists from possibility into reality! Hosted by Mary Knippel. Join us for our first 2014 WNBA-SF Member Mixer on Sunday, Jan. 12, 2014, 2-4 p.m. Please RSVP using the form online and you will receive the exact address of the event: |
![]() Dear San Francisco Chapter WNBA Members, Welcome to our 2014 program year! We have some amazing opportunities planned, so mark your calendars and sign up online. Hope to see you all soon!
As you read event information or articles in the newsletter, click the link or READ MORE… That will take you to our website with more information about the event, article, interview, or program. Have a wonderful New Year from all of us! Kate Farrell, President |
San Francisco Writers Conference 2014Join us and help us promote WNBA at the Intercontinental Mark Hopkins Hotel, Mason & California, San Francisco!
WNBA current members are welcome to volunteer at our exhibit table during the regular conference program Friday 2/14 – Sunday 2/16. First come, first signed up. Volunteers will be able to attend some free sessions with the exhibitor’s badge.
The exhibit table space is small and we will display ONLY information about WNBA. Unfortunately, we are not able to display members’ books or members’ promotional items, such as: postcards, bookmarks, or business cards. Our focus will be sharing information about WNBA, our historic national organization, advocating for women in the community of the book and for women’s literacy since 1917.
WNBA Exhibitor’s Schedule:
Friday, February 14, 8:00 am – Noon and 2:00 – 5:00pm
Saturday, February 15, 8:00 am – Noon and 2:00 – 5:00 pm
Sunday, February 16, 8:00 am – 1:00 pm
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Advocating for Women —She Writes Press, Third-Way Publishing ModelThere is no question that women thrive in community, which is part of what drew me to She Writes in 2009, the year Kamy Wicoff founded this social networking site for women writers. How refreshing—a site where women writers were gathering, sharing, and engaging with one another about writing, publishing, and promotion. Three years later, in 2012, Kamy and I founded She Writes Press to serve this very community of women, to advocate for women writers by giving them a platform and a voice. Initially we referred to the press as a hybrid. Our process mirrors traditional publishing in many ways—in process, in the fact that we have traditional distribution—and yet because it’s an author-subsidized model, we are decidedly not a traditional press. It was our authors who came up with the term “partnership publishing” as most reflective of their experience, and later Kamy who described what we’re doing as a “third way”—neither traditional nor self-publishing, and also quite different from a lot of the existing hybrid models in that we are not a vanity or a subsidy publisher because of our rigorous vetting and editorial process. It’s been exciting and challenging to have a model that doesn’t fit into a mold, exciting because we get opportunities to dialogue about the ways in which publishing is changing, and challenging because so many people want to put a label on what we’re doing, to put us in one box or another. |
Pitch-O-Rama 2014 Meet the Agents, Editors, and Publishing Consultants SAVE THE DATE! We are thrilled to move the 11th Annual Pitch-O-Rama to the heart of the hip Mission District! Our new venue, the Women’s Building, is an appropriate site for WNBA during March, Women’s History Month. This is a rare opportunity to pitch to some of the best publishing professionals in an intimate, informal setting. Our lineup so far: Peter Beren, Amy Cloughley (Kimberly Cameron), Rachel Neumann (Parallax Press), Georgia Hughes, (New World), Brenda Knight (Viva Editons), Laurie McLean (Foreword Literary), Pooja Menon, (Kimberley Cameron), Alan Rinzler, Andy Ross, Brooke Warner (She Writes Press) The event includes a FREE pre-pitch session and mentoring throughout the morning in our Green Room, an adjacent classroom to the main event in the Audre Lorde Room. Immediately following a two-hour pitch session is a panel on a topic of keen interest to authors with member/author Rayme Waters, moderator, Marsha Toy Engstrom, Book Club expert, and a surprise author TBA. Space is limited. Cost: $65 members, $75 non-members. TO REGISTER, CLICK HERE! |
A monthly post on our WNBA website: Featured Member Interview Lana Dalberg,
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Meet Our Members
Visit our website at any time to connect with a fellow SF Chapter member. Our webmaster and past president, Linda Lee, customized our MEMBERSHIP DIRECTORY using her tech know-how. Welcome new members! We are thrilled to welcome you–new, talented, and diverse members–to SF Chapter! We hope to meet you at our upcoming events. Thanks for joining the ranks of our amazing members who are writers, readers, leaders in their field, all part of the “community of the book.” Here are just three of our active members, selected at random from the MEMBERSHIP DIRECTORY. Meg Waite Clayton is the New York Times bestselling author of four novels: The Wednesday Sisters, The Wednesday Daughters, The Four Ms. Bradwells, and the Bellwether Prize finalist The Language of Light. She’s written for The Los Angeles Times, San Jose Mercury News, Miami Herald, Writer’s Digest, Runner’s World, The Literary Review and public radio, and for Ms. and Forbes online. Come say hello on facebook (www.facebook.com/novelistmeg), twitter (@megwclayton) or at www.megwaiteclayton.com
Rebecca Martin, founder of California based dear jane Inc. a career services company, believes that people can succeed in navigating through corporate and business environments, as well as their career transitions if they can first identify what is right for them. She is dedicated to helping and coaching management and individuals, and is extremely passionate about the career management, human resources and training and development industries. Today, dear jane Inc. develops and delivers career management training classes, workshops, seminars, and coaching to Fortune 1000 companies as well as individuals throughout the United States.
Susanna Solomon gets her inspiration from the Sheriff’s Calls section of the newspaper The Point Reyes Light. Her stories have appeared in the online magazine Harlots Sauce Radio (three times) and fifteen of them have appeared in The Point Reyes Light. Her story “It’s Your Lucky Day” won the Mill Valley Literary Review’s winter short story contest. She’s been a featured reader at Quiet Lightning, Pints ‘N Prose, Writing Without Walls, Lip Service West, and Why There Are Words. Her short story collection, Point Reyes Sheriff’s Calls, is now published by Harper Davis Publishers. During the day, Susanna is a consulting electrical engineer, which means she designs electrical distribution systems for large buildings, deals with PG&E, contractors and architects. She’s been an engineer 25 years, and graduated Summa Cum Laude from San Francisco State in 1987. http://susannasolomon.com
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What Business Are You In? By Michael Larsen If you think you’re just in the writing or the publishing business, prepare for poverty and obscurity. If you want to be a successful writer in the Digital Age, you have to be in six businesses: 1. The content business. You have to create content of different kinds and lengths for different media. More than ever, social media makes content king, the king of hearts because it can make readers so passionate about your work they tell everyone they know to read it. So you’re only as good as your content. When you consistently produce effective content, you trump the king by being the ace, the ace of diamonds. 2. The entertainment business. Bestselling author John Naisbitt once said that communication is entertainment, and if you don’t understand that, you’re not going to communicate. Whether you want your work to be inspiring, enlightening, moving, or humorous, your work has to have maximum impact. Your readers are voting with their eyes and fingertips, and every word you write is an audition for the next word. Only your community of knowledgeable, representative readers can vouch for your judgment that every word is right, and that your work achieves your literary goals for it. 3. The communication business. Unless your work goes viral, assume it will take seven-to-ten mentions of it to convince readers who don’t know about you to try it. So you have to share your passion for the value of your work in as many ways and places, as often as you can, while you’re making fans who help you. 4. The technology business. Technology gives you astonishing power to produce, publish, and promote your work. It also forces you to reinvent yourself as a technophile, a lifelong learner about using technology to make every aspect of your work more effective. 5. The business of business. You have to be an entrepreneur, CEO of your own multimedia, multinational conglomerate. You have to balance yin and yang; think like merchant as well as an artist, balancing what you want to do with what you need to do to ensure your livelihood. You also have to be a contentpreneur by taking advantage of the growing opportunities you have for generating, promoting, and repurposing your work, and building your communities. 6. The community business. Other than writing, you don’t have to do any of this alone. In fact, you can’t run any of these businesses alone. You have to enlist the people you need to succeed: fans and professionals in these communities who will help you because they know, like, and trust you. You can maintain enduring win-win relationships with them by serving them as often and well as you can. Reciprocity is the queen of hearts. Another community we’re part of is the human family. Gaia sustains the global village on this gorgeous orb. We have to help maintain this miracle by making the effects of our actions on people, the planet, and profit the criteria for how we live. Filling the Screen This is the most amazing time to be writer. The greatest opportunity writers have is a blank screen. You will create your future with your fingertips. Writing and building relationships will be a great adventure. It will bring you fans who love your work, friendships with people around the world, and the fulfillment of your literary and publishing goals. And in case it isn’t obvious, you need these five communities no matter what business you’re in. The 11th San Francisco Writers Conference & Open Classes February 13-16, 2014 / www.sfwriters.org / sfwriterscon@aol.com / Mike’s blog: http://sfwriters.info/blog @SFWC / www.facebook.com/SanFranciscoWritersConference larsenpoma@aol.com / www.larsenpomada.com / 415-673-0939 /1029 Jones Street / San Francisco, 94109 |
![]() WNBA 2013-2015 BOARD President: Kate Farrell Vice President: Elena Martina Treasurer: Sherry Nadworny Secretary: Frances Caballo Membership Chair: Jane Glendinning Blog Managing Editor: Frances Caballo Featured Member Interview Editor: Catharine Bramkamp Social Media Manager: Frances Caballo Past President & Webmaster: Linda Lee |
Annual Membership 2013-2014The membership period runs from June 1st – May 31st Join after April 1, 2014 for a full year membership. Renewal Period is now Closed. |