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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.

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.

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.

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.

This class is open to the new, the curious and the comfortable short story writer. Prompts and freewrites will generate new and unexpected writing in a relaxed and supportive atmosphere. Freele's goal is to encourage turning ideas into stories. Students will read and discuss examples of stellar short fiction—primarily stories under 1000 words, fine-tune workshop pieces, and explore the craft of writing: plot, dialogue, point-of-view, description, setting, character, and voice. (Similar structure to the October class but using all new prompts, stories and craft discussions.)

Requirements: a sense of humor, a pen, and a few pieces of paper.

Stefanie Freele is the Sonoma County author of the short story collection, Feeding Strays, published by Lost Horse Press (2009). She will be the 2010-2011 Healdsburg Literary Laureate. Her recent and forthcoming work can be found in Glimmer Train, American Literary Review, Night Train, The Pedestal Magazine, Necessary Fiction, and Literary Mama She has an MFA from the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts: Whidbey Writers Workshop. After serving as the 2008 Writer In Residence for SmokeLong Quarterly, she joined their editorial staff. Stefanie is also the Fiction Editor for the Los Angeles Review.