Future Speakers

September 20, 2008.  Alan Rinzler, executive editor at Jossey-Bass of John Wiley & Sons publishers, will be our speaker. Rinzler, with a 40+ year history as an editor, offers us the opportunity to submit three manuscripts in advance for him to critique.

Submission guidelines:  electronic submission, the first twenty-five pages of your finished manuscript, a chapter-by chapter-synopsis, your covering letter.   Please submit between August 1 and August 15 to AL Levenson at ( ).  In the subject line write:  CWC, Ms for Sept Program.

Three manuscripts will be selected for discussion during the program.  Although membership in CWC is not required for submission, members’ submissions will be given preference.

October 18, 2008.   David Henry Sterry, Beth Lisick , and, Alan Black on the topic “The Art Of The Memoir:  Writing, Reading, & Selling Your Life Story”

Find out what it takes to write, read, and sell your life story from writers who've actually done just that.    Listen as memoirists read from their own work, then discuss the process of writing a memoir.  Making a narrative of events of your own life, dealing with issues of privacy and family, figuring out how to navigate the stormy seas of the publishing world, and bringing your story to life as you read it before an audience will be among the topics addressed by this panel of three memoirists.  This will be followed by a Q&A session. 

David Henry Sterry, Master Of Ceremonies: A True Story Of Sex, Drugs, Rollerskates & Chippendales (Canongate/Grove Atlantic, 2008)

Beth Lisick, Helping Me Help Myself: 1 Skeptic, 10 Self-Help Gurus, And A Year On The Brink Of The Comfort Zone  (HarperCollins, 2008)

Alan Black, Kick The Balls: An Offensive Suburban Odyssey  (Hudson Street Press, 2008)

November 15, 2008:   Patrick Miller of Fearless Literary Services has had his own self-publishing business for ten years. His revised edition of Understanding a Course in Miracles was recently published. Currently, Miller, writer and editor, is president of the Northern California Chapter of American Society of Journalists and Authors.

December 2008:  To be scheduled

2009

We hesitate to finalize our program schedule too far in advance, preferring to stay flexible as new opportunities and options present themselves.  Have expressions of interest and availability for the following:

Thomas Larson, author of Memoir and the Memoirist

David Jenkins, author of Dream Replay, with a program on the topic of "Dream Your Way Through Writer’s Block"

Amanita Rosenbush, now completing her book about writing book proposals, will do a program on query letters and will critique three letters submitted beforehand.

Komenar Publishing will host an event for multiple local authors.

                                                 —Al Levenson

"It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission" —Grace Hopper

 

Grace Hopper was a pioneering computer scientist. She claimed to have found the first actual computer bug, a deceased moth whose remains had impeded a vital component in the Mark II, an early computer.