Writers Forum celebrates the launch of the anthology, The Write Spot: Musings and Ravings From a Pandemic Year.

Musings Authors will read excerpts, then we'll write, using prompts from Musings.

Zoom URL will be posted closer to the workshop date.

 

Thursday, June 24, 6:30 pm

Susan Bono, M.A. Dooley, and Nona Smith read excerpts. Then we'll write, using prompts from the anthology.

Susan Bono, a California-born teacher, freelance editor, and short-form memoirist, has facilitated writing workshops since 1993, helping hundreds of writers find and develop their voices. Her own work has appeared online, on stage, in anthologies, newspapers, and on the radio. She often writes about domestic life set in her small town of Petaluma. Susan is the author of What Have We Here: Essays about Keeping House and Finding Home, available on Amazon.

M.A. Dooley is an architect and writer from the Santa Cruz Mountains, Sonoma County, and the Sierra Nevadas. A graduate of UC Berkeley, B.A. Architecture, with a practice in Petaluma, Dooley has been published in Poems of a Modern Day Architect by ARCHHIVE Books, Farm Houses: The New Style by Harper Design, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Sunset Magazine.

Nona Smith discovered her love of writing at an early age when she took a journalism course in junior high. But it wasn’t until almost sixty years later, when she and her husband, Art, retired and moved to the Mendocino Coast, that she fully emersed herself in the writing community and felt comfortable calling herself a writer.

 

Wednesday, July 7, 6:30 pm

Brenda Bellinger and Kathy Guthormsen read excerpts. Then we'll write, using prompts from the anthology.

Brenda Bellinger’s writing has appeared in Small Farmer’s Journal, Mom Egg Review, Persimmon Tree, THEMA, the California Writers Club Literary Review and in various anthologies. She has been honored with first place awards for non-fiction and flash fiction at the Mendocino Coast and Central Coast Writers Conferences, respectively. Her first novel, Taking Root, a young adult story of betrayal and courage, is available on Amazon.

Kathy Guthormsen’s writing has been published in The Write Spot: Memories, The Write Spot: Possibilities, and The Write Spot: Writing as a Path to Healing. Kathy volunteers at the Bird Rescue Center in Santa Rosa, California, working with and presenting resident raptors as part of their education and outreach program. Her entertaining blog features essays, short stories, and fairy tales.

 

Saturday, July 17, 2 pm

Deb Fenwick and Susie Moses read excerpts. Then we'll write, using prompts from the anthology.

Deb Fenwick is a Chicago-born writer who currently lives in Oak Park, Illinois. After spending nearly thirty years working as an arts educator, school program specialist, youth advocate, and public school administrator, she now finds herself with ample time to read books by her heroes and write every story that was patiently waiting to be told.

Susie Moses is inspired by prompts provided by teachers of creative writing groups she is drawn to attend. She is astonished to sit back and observe her pen take off in directions she had not anticipated and to watch her brain latch on to thoughts she was unaware of having. She hopes someday to evolve to writing from her own prompts, but for now she embraces generative classes as steps on her path to writing independently.

 

Wednesday, July 21, 6 pm

Dave Seter and Karen Handyside Ely read excerpts. Then we'll write, using prompts from the anthology.

Dave Seter is the author of Don’t Sing to Me of Electric Fences, a poetry collection due out from Cherry Grove Collections in 2021. A civil engineer and poet, he writes about social and environmental issues, including the intersection of the built world and the natural world. Born in Chicago, he now lives in Sonoma County, California. He earned his undergraduate degree in civil engineering from Princeton University and his graduate degree in humanities from Dominican University of California, where he studied ecopoetics.

There are some who swear that Karen Handyside Ely was born with her nose firmly planted in a book. She is a life-long, voracious reader with an insatiable appetite for unusual words, lilting phrases, and absurd stories. Karen graduated from UC Davis with a B.A. in International Relations and Economics. After a brief stint as a credit analyst in San Francisco and New York City, and a 30-year career as a mom and “professional” volunteer in Scottsdale, AZ, Karen returned to her beloved hometown of Petaluma, CA.

 

Thursday, July 29, 6 pm

Patricia Morris and Cheryl Moore read excerpts. Then we'll write, using prompts from the anthology.

Patricia Morris dates her love of stories to sitting at the knee of her great aunt, a children’s librarian. After careers as diverse as trial lawyer and organization and leadership development consultant and coach, she is telling her own stories and exploring life beyond the workaday world.

Her writing has appeared in Rand McNally’s Vacation America, the Ultimate Road Atlas, and The Write Spot: Possibilities edited by Marlene Cullen.

Cheryl Moore has been interested in nature since reading Little Golden Books about trees and birds in childhood through receiving a degree in biology. She is lucky to have birds visit her feeders and a river nearby to walk where waterfowl abound. Seeing and writing about these miracles of nature bring her comfort during these trying times.

 

 

 

Writers Forum celebrates the launch of the anthology, The Write Spot: Musings and Ravings From a Pandemic Year.

Zoom URL will be posted closer to the workshop date.

 

Sunday, August 8, 2:00 pm

Julie Wilder-Sherman reads an excerpt. Diane Dupuis will lead us in an activity. Then we'll write, using prompts from the anthology.

Julie Wilder-Sherman began reading books at an early age, encouraged by her mother who would allow her to take books to bed when she was as young as two years old. Raised in a family of readers, writers, performers, musicians, and political activists, Julie followed her dream of singing professionally and met her husband, bassist Jeff Sherman, while singing on The Love Boat. Together they enjoy cooking, eating, reading, and traveling to all corners of the world. Julie remains politically active and helps to manage the Petaluma Postcard Pod supporting democratic candidates, issues, and policies.

Diane Dupuis will lead us in a short GROOVE activity. Diane is an energetic GROOVE movement instructor, leading groups every morning in a happy, carefree activity that is fun, fun, fun! Contact Diane for more information: dd828groove@gmail.com.

Saturday, August 21, 10:00 am

Lynn Levy and Christine Renaudin read excerpts. Then we'll write, using prompts from the anthology.

Lynn Levy has led a few different lives. Starting out as the clichéd, outcast, weird kid in school, she graduated to a collegiate rebirth that involved the novelty of having friends, plural, to being an audio engineer, where she felt excited to be working with cool musicians and cool technology and also terrified of being found out as an uncool fraud, to software engineer, which she found fun, logical, and totally absorbing, and lately, to technical writer, which she’s finding fresh and fantastic. The best part of her journey has been the husband and the friends she picked up along the way.

 

Christine Renaudin lives, writes, and paints in Petaluma, CA. She is also a dancer and performs occasionally in the Bay Area—last seen on Halloween, haunting the entrance of the de Young Memorial Museum with a pride of witches. She likes to mix art forms, see what comes out, and share.

Her contributions to the first volume of Marlene Cullen's The Write Spot series, Discoveries include "Harvest," "If Only," "Ink," "Marie Pie Time," and "Thursday Rains." The Write Spot to Jumpstart Your Writing: Discoveries is available on Amazon.