Miera Rao’s haiku is currently on display in Washington DC’s business district. The 2025 Golden Haiku Contest had nearly 5,000 entries from sixty-six countries. Along with winners, selected haiku are posted on signage around the forty-four blocks and will remain until early May. Follow Miera at mierarao.com.

Conventional wisdom and recent guidance in traditional publishing hold that, in seeking representation for your work, you should send at least one hundred query letters. But where do you find a hundred or more agents to query?

On Thursday, April 10, from 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. at the San Mateo Public Library, member Megan E. McDonald will demystify the process of compiling a comprehensive agent target list. She will demonstrate essential tools, use her current projects as an example, and open the floor up to attendees who’d like to start to build their lists live.

Colleen Olle’s picture book Sophia and Sinclair Get Lost! is now available at Fireside Books & More, a new independent bookstore on Broadway in Redwood City.

Want to move past writing blocks, find your creative edge, and go deep into your imagination to produce your most powerful writing? Darlene Frank’s “Spark Your Creativity: A Writing Journey into the Deep Imagination” will help you open the door to your true writing voice. This five-week program starts April 26. More details at Darlene Frank Writing. 

Will your story meet readers’ expectations? In this free, one-hour Zoom session, discover how consistent world-building, hitting genre beats, and creating a main character to root for, can fulfill your story’s promise to readers and lead to a most satisfying ending.

Join developmental editor Eva Barrows and copy editor Lila LaBine for their Ask an Editor workshop on Wednesday, April 16, at 11 a.m. To register, visit www.evabarrows.com/workshops.

How do you promote your book? Preparation is key. It is never too early, and the more time you have, the more tactics you can employ to promote not just your book but you. Learn more from member and publicist Sarah Sherwood at Writing Helping Writers on Thursday, April 17, from 6:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at the Rinconada Library in Palo Alto.

David Harris’s short story “Notes from a Reunion” was published in On the Seawall, a literary journal based on Martha’s Vineyard. Former classmates at a twentieth high school reunion try to come to terms with the murder of a brilliant but troubled friend who pulled a gun on a driver while hitchhiking. Read more about David Harris. 

The Kindle version of Geri Spieler’s Revenge of the Sisters: A Tale of Retribution is on sale now for $4.99. The hard copy of this second of two Regina of Warsaw books launches June 3.

James Hanna’s novella Lights Out Lizzie won the humor category for the 2024 Book Excellence Awards. Equally tickled by Hanna’s novella, the 2024 Reader Views Awards declared Lights Out Lizzie a finalist in their humor category.

Ida Lewenstein hosted her second book festival in Tampa, Florida, on Sunday, March 30. Featured were all eleven of her books of rhyming poetry. Follow Ida at Rhyming with Ms. Ida.

Do you need an energizing, inspirational break from your everyday writing routine? On Sunday, March 30, from 10:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., join CWC member and co-founder of the Birth Your Truest Story Community Audrey Kalman for Riversong Retreat: Find Your Creative Flow, where you’ll write, share, contemplate, and take inspiration from the Petaluma River. Find out more and register at Riversong Retreat: Birth Your Truest Story.

Colleen Olle’s picture book Sophia and Sinclair Get Lost! was designated as a Finalist in the 2025 Feathered Quill Book Awards’ Children’s Picture Book category. In addition, her picture book won Silver in the Animal—Children’s & YA category.

In April, Bruce Neuburger will be joining co-authors Bernward Dörner and Max Strand on a book tour for Benno Neuburger published by Hentrich & Hentrich. Interest in the book about an anti-Nazi resister is being stoked by the rise of the right wing in German politics. He will also talk with German high school students in Munich and Laupheim about his previous book, Postcards to Hitler: A German Jew’s Defiance in a Time of Terror.

Follow Carol Park’s journey through images and poetry, illuminating her transformation from stuck and hiding toward agency and from whiteness to intercultural, artistic self. Her “Journey into Self and Writing” will include practical tips on writerly growth and publication. Dates for the events can be found at carolpark.us.

Kelsay Books, the publisher of Marianne Brems’s most recent poetry collection, has nominated Stepping Stones for the Eric Hoffer Book Award 2025 for the Small, Academic, and Independent Press categories.

James Hanna’s story “Lola Has Answered You” appears in Apocalypse Confidential, a new online journal that favors edginess. While his irreverent “Orville Baumgardner and Words to Live By” is featured in A Thin Slice of Anxiety, “The Land Fish” has been reprinted in Bewildering Stories. In this story, struggling writer Mason Trout pens a maudlin book to mock a critic. To his horror, the book becomes a bestseller.

At the October 2024 Writers Helping Writers, poet Kate Adams built a quatrain and had writers start with lines to create blank verse. What type of verse will she have us play with this month? On March 13, from 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. visit the San Mateo Public Library to receive poetic energy and play with poetry.