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Sign up for these workshops via PayPal!

If you would rather mail us your reservations, you can use this this form This will open a PDF file for you to print off.

Sign up for these workshops via PayPal!

If you would rather mail us your reservations, you can use this this form This will open a PDF file for you to print off.

• Friday, Saturday, Sunday workshops, panels and other sessions
• The 2010 SFWC Anthology: More Bridges (published by iUniverse/AuthorSolutions!)
• Ask a Pro (formerly Speed Dating For Editors) - Asking questions of and pitching books to New York and California editors
• Speed Dating for Agents - Pitching books one-on-one to New York and California agents ($50 option for registered attendees)
• Pitch contests, Open mic readings, Gala party, networking opps galore
• Our San Francisco Writers Conference Writing Contest
• Attendees can receive free feedback on their work from freelance book editors
• Read Reverend Felicity Wright's invocation from the 2009 SFWC.
• Registration fee includes three days of sessions, meals, a gala party and more! Click here for more information.
• $50 per person group discount for 5+ people

The Amy Rennert Agency specializes in books that matter. Amy has spent more than 20 years in the publishing business, pursuing her passion for the written word. The agency represents a select group of quality fiction and nonfiction writers--many of them award-winners--and dozens of agency books have been New York Times and national bestsellers.

Amy Rennert is the former editor in chief of two national magazines and she is on the faculty of the Stanford Publishing Course.

For more information: Please visit Marlene Cullen's website: www.thewritespot.us or contact Marlene at mcullen@comcast.net

Our speaker will be Joe Quirk. In high school, Joe Quirk was known for four things: getting detention for being a smart-ass, getting A’s in biology, being horny, and having a name like Quirk. He decided to combine these four talents in his second book, which has something to do with sperm. Now he gets paid to be a smart-ass biologist, and nobody gives him a wedgie.

Joe Quirk is launching a campaign to get the science of relationships out of the science aisle and into the relationships aisle of the book store. He lectures about the biology of relationships to anyone who can’t give him detention. In some photographs it looks like he has a sperm burrowing into his head.

Quirk is also a bestselling novelist. He is the author of The Ultimate Rush, an action thriller about rollerblading. He just finished his second novel, Exult, about hang gliders who live out the Icarus myth.

Ever prolific, Joe also completed his second smart-ass science book, Tools Are From Men, Talk Is From Women; Why Your Partner’s Brain is Weird.

Our speaker will be Hal Zina Bennett. Hal's interest in creativity, human consciousness, metaphysics, and the ancient wisdom traditions began as a teenager, following a coma and near-death experience that left him temporarily blind, during which time he was initiated into the reality of the inner world. Studies in ancient spiritual traditions over the next 20 years helped him to validate insights he'd had during his encounters with his own death and his visions of the world beyond.

In addition to being a prolific author, Hal has helped over 200 authors develop their own work, several of them bestsellers. Look on the acknowledgment pages of your favorite books and you just might find him prominently mentioned there. His seminars on writing and spirituality are legendary.

Jean Hegland is the author of three books. Her first novel, Into the Forest, has been translated into a dozen languages, and selected for a number of campus- and community-wide reading programs. Most recently, it was chosen by Santa Rosa Junior College to be the English Department's Work of Literary Merit for spring semesters 2010 and 2011. Of her second novel, Windfalls, the Midwest Book Review says it is "a profound look at motherhood," and Publishers Weekly calls it "a good prospect for reading groups."

Excerpts from her book of non-fiction, The Life Within: Celebration of Pregnancy, have been published as a college English textbook, a high school science textbook, and a book about journal-keeping for pregnant women.

Jean is a frequent presenter at writing conferences, and often teaches creative writing courses at Santa Rosa Junior College. She lives in the woods west of Healdsburg.

The idea that we each have a distinct and compelling story to tell is the essence of memoir. Readers are hungry for accounts of triumph over personal crisis. How did you survive what happened, and what did you learn from it? In this workshop you’ll identify the tale you have to tell and how to tell it. You’ll also learn to think in terms of pivotal events, which become the scenes, how and when to let the background come in. We will learn to pay homage to the details.

Clara Rosemarda writes and teaches memoir in Santa Rosa, California. Her work as a counselor, writing coach, and workshop leader has taken her to places such as the hills of Umbria, Halibut Cove, Alaska, Taos, New Mexico, and into past experiences that seem as real when she’s writing as they were the first time, only now they come in slow motion and have greater depth. Her essays and poems have been published in Tiny Lights, The Dickens, and other literary journals. She is co-editor and co-author of the anthology, STEEPED: IN THE WORLD OF TEA.

Teresa LeYung Ryan has been helping writers since her mother-daughter novel Love Made of Heart was published. As a manuscript consultant and writing-career coach, she helps her clients identify themes and archetypes, polish their manuscripts, and map out their careers. Her website www.LoveMadeOfHeart.com offers resources for readers and writers. As a community spirit, Teresa LeYung Ryan uses her mother-daughter novel Love Made of Heart to:
• shed light on stigmas suffered by immigrants
• advocate compassion for mental illness
• help survivors of family violence find their own voices

Love Made of Heart (an immigrant daughter's journey to self-forgiveness) is:
• recommended by the California School Library Association and the California Reading Association
• used in Advanced Composition/English-as-a-Second-Language classes
• archived at the San Francisco History Center

For more information: Please visit Marlene Cullen's website: www.thewritespot.us or contact Marlene at mcullen@comcast.net

Our speaker will be Cara Black who is consumed by two things: murder and Paris. Every one of the San Francisco writer's mystery novels takes place in the City of Light, each in one of the city's very different neighborhoods. Her latest, Murder in the Latin Quarter, came out this spring, and she has already gone back to Paris to scout out her next mystery.

Marta Acosta lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. She was a feral reader, roaming the stacks of the public library. She received a degree in English Literature and Creative Writing from Stanford University and has written for the San Francisco Chronicle, the Contra Costa Times, and Spaces Magazine. Marta lives with her husband and son and their crazy dog. An avid gardener, she likes independent films, funny novels, loud music and lively conversations. She’s always happy to hear from readers, even the ones who point out typos.

CAROLYN JEWEL has been writing stories ever since she could scribble. Now that she's grown up (mostly) she writes historical and paranormal romance because she loves history and imagining the lives of people who lived in years past, and because she's fascinated by the loves and travails of the not-exactly-human in any time period.

B. LYNN GOODWIN is a teacher, editor, freelance writer, published in numerous anthologies, newspapers and ezines. She is the author of You Want Me To Do What? – Journaling for Caregivers (Tate Publishing), and owner of Writer Advice, www.writeradvice.com