Alyssa Lauren Stone is a Bay Area-based writer, certified reiki master, yoga teacher, and ex-Silicon Valley / NYC tech sales executive. Her work has appeared in Newsweek, HuffPost, Business Insider, and Hearst Digital’s Shondaland. She is currently working on a memoir about her spiritual quest and personal transformation.

You can find out more information about her at: https://www.alyssalaurenstone.com.

Ana McCracken, received her MFA in creative writing from Iowa State University and is the founder and president of the Ames Writers Collective, an organization committed to building and uplifting communities through the art of writing and storytelling. Her essays and poetry are published in several anthologies including Nothing But the Truth So Help Me God, The Joy of Adoption, and TelePoem Booth® Iowa. She teaches at OLLI-ISU and leads writing workshops and community outreach programs based in the Amherst Arts & Writers Method. Ana is currently seeking representation for her memoir, Redacted—A Memoir of Adoption. Visit www.anamccracken.com or www.ameswriterscollective.org.

Anne Marie Wenzel was born in San Francisco and graduated from San Francisco State University, where she is Lecturer Emerita of Economics. She has studied poetry and creative writing through Left Margin Lit and graduated from Stanford Continuing Studies’ Online Certificate Program in Novel Writing. Her poetry is published in Humble Pie and the forthcoming 2022 Literary Review. She lives on the San Francisco Peninsula where she is at work on an historical novel set in early 20th century Northern California.

Audrey Kalman is the author of the novels The Last Storyteller, What Remains Unsaid, and Dance of Souls, as well as the collection Tiny Shoes Dancing and Other Stories (shortlisted for the 2019 International Rubery Book Award). Her short fiction and poetry have appeared in more than a dozen print and online journals. She co-teaches the Birth Your Truest Story workshop series, offers editing and coaching services for writers, and is at work on another novel.

Brad Hoge’s 2nd book of poetry, N = R* fp x ne x fl x fi x fc x L (The Drake Equation) was recently published by VRÆYDA Press. His first book, Nebular Hypothesis, was published by Cawing Crow Press in 2016. He has four chapbooks in print and his fifth, A Human Lifetime, is upcoming from Finishing Line Press. His poetry appears in numerous anthologies and journals, most recently in The California Literary Review, Shot Glass, Fault Zone: Reverse, and Consilience. He was the Managing Editor for Dark Matter Journal.

I’m a former farm and factory worker and cab driver, ESL, and video arts teacher, now retired. My book Lettuce Wars: Ten Years of Work and Struggle in the Fields of California was published by Monthly Review Press in 2013 and the Spanish translation Guerras de Lechuga by Köehler / Cafe Con Leche books in 2016. A new book, Postcards to Hitler is due out in March of 2024 from Monthly Review Press. I’ve written articles on social justice issues that have appeared in Counter Punch and other publications. I’m currently working on a book of short stories and collaborating on a book on acts of German Jewish resistance in the early 1940s.

Born and raised in Seattle, Washington, Carol Ann Lapeyrouse earned a BA in Sociology from Washington State University and an MBA from Cal State LA. She retired in 2019 from a 25-year career in technical writing, where she worked for a large software development corporation and a small semiconductor equipment manufacturer in Silicon Valley.

Currently working on a trauma memoir, she also writes about mental health and publishes memoirs and personal essays on Medium.com. She lives on the San Francisco Bay Peninsula with her husband and cat, Sweet Girl. For more information about Carol Ann, visit carolannlapeyrouse.com.

Carol Reade is a widely cited academic author writing on the intersection of culture, societal conflict and employee behavior in multinational companies. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin, Sophia University in Tokyo, and the London School of Economics, she is currently a professor of international management at San José State University’s Lucas College of Business.

Carol has published a collection of stories, Kaisha Culture, based on her experiences working for a Japanese bank in Tokyo, and is developing stories from her family history which she intends to publish in some form, perhaps as memoir or historical fiction.

Carole Bumpus is a historical novelist and culinary/travel memoirist. Her historical novel, A Cup of Redemption (2014) started her career in the literary world, followed by Recipes for Redemption: A Companion Cookbook to A Cup of Redemption (2015) which introduced her to the culinary world. Her next three books, part of her Savoring the Olde Ways series, include Searching for Family and Traditions at the French Table, Book One (2019), Book Two (2020), and A September to Remember: Searching for Culinary Pleasures at the Italian Table (2021). She has received numerous gold, silver, and bronze medals in both national and international awards contests for each of these books. Three of her short stories appear in the SF Peninsula anthology, Fault Zone. She is presently working on her sixth book on Provençe due for release in Spring 2023.

Carole is Past President of the CWC SF Peninsula branch, served on the CWC State Board since 2012, and been Chair of the CWC NorCal Group since 2015. She also has managed the CWC booth at the San Francisco Writers Conference since 2011 and the CWC booth for the BABF for the past seven years.

Born, raised, and educated in Chicago, Carolyn L. Curtis has written for periodicals as diverse as Fremontia (California Native Plant Society), The Fruit Gardener (California Rare Fruit Growers), and Green Prints (back issues for Autumn 2020 and 2021). This is Napa Valley (bicycling column), and Ampersand (college newspaper supplement; winetasting article). She has appeared in Fault Zone.

In 1984 she wrote The Modem Connections Bible. During 24 years in high tech, she wrote over 225 manuals and translated technical documents and texts for California Bach Society programs from the German. An activist since the sixties, she wrote numerous flyers, volunteer guides, and reports. She lives in Palo Alto.

Cheryl Ray is a California native and lives with her husband, Bob, and their Border Terrier, Charlie. She writes creative nonfiction and dabbles in writing short fiction. Her published magazine articles include Sail, Latitudes & Attitudes, Writers’ Journal, and Spirited Voices. Her essays have been published in The Girl’s Book of Friendship, Elements of English–a 10th-grade textbook, and the IPA award winning anthology Fault Zone. Together with her husband, they have sailed 30,000 nautical miles in both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. Cheryl enjoys writing classes to gain skills and discipline. When not writing or reading, Cheryl enjoys exercise: body-sculpt, spinning, yoga and walking Charlie.

Chris Knoblaugh teaches English enrichment classes for elementary students at AoPS Academy in Santa Clara. She retired from teaching middle school for SJUSD after 20 years. Chris has a B.A. in English Literature with High College Honors, a B.S. in Biology, and an M.A. in Teaching with Reading Specialization. Her novels and stories incorporate myths, cryptids, regional traditions, and historical settings. She has published two books, has a serialized story, Hammurabi’s Hand, on Kindle Vella, and is writing more YA books.

Colleen Olle’s prose has appeared in several venues. Her essay “Writerly Fingerprints: Syntax as Style” appeared in The Writer’s Chronicle. Her short stories have been published in Unfortunately, Literary Magazine, Running Wild Anthology of Stories: Volume 5, and Fault Zone: Reverse. She is the author of the children’s picture book, Sophia and Sinclair Get Lost! and, with her husband, co-author of the children’s picture book Sophia and Sinclair Go on an Adventure! She earned an MFA in fiction from the Bennington College Writing Seminars and at the University of Michigan won a Hopwood Award for underclassman essay writing. Her passions and pastimes, including clarinet, French, travel, butterflies, and baking, influence and nurture her literary fiction.

Darlene Frank is a writer, editor, and creativity coach who helps people create their most powerful writing. She is editor and publisher of “Spirited Voices,” an online magazine featuring work from her unique Writing and Creativity Breakthrough program. Darlene has helped authors write and publish books about autism, food and travel, grief, adoption, sexual violence, yoga, dance, and more. A decades-long member of CWC, she has served on the SF Peninsula chapter Board as Parliamentarian and Vice President and received the Louise Boggess award in 2017. Darlene’s creative nonfiction appears in 12 anthologies, including Fault Zone; Times They Were A-Changing: Women Remember the ‘60s and ‘70s; and Wide Awake Every Week: 365 Aha! Moments. In another life Darlene was an award-winning technical and instructional writer and author of two business books. Read more on her website.

Experience and imagination fuel my stories that are exclusively told by the characters through action and dialog. I think older writers make the best authors since they’ve accumulated sufficient of both—I qualify and it’s one of the reasons the CWC is a great place for networking. I write because I enjoy it—the one place I’m completely in charge, and who wouldn’t like that? Occasionally a character I meet on a new page I’ve written disagrees with a direction I’ve taken. He doesn’t last long. I seldom have problems with the women there.

All of my books (The Arkansas Rose, What Price Charlie’s Soul, Abducted, and The Mortician and Other Love Stories) are available on Amazon.

David Harris began writing fiction several years ago following a career as a Reuters journalist, corporate communications manager and speechwriter for technology, financial services and energy companies. He has been a board member of the San Francisco Peninsula branch of the California  Writers Club since 2022. 

His short stories have appeared in Idle Ink, Litbreak Magazine, Roi Faineant, Fault Zone: Detachment, The Concho River Review and Calliope, and been longlisted for The Dillydoun Review 2022 Short Story Prize. His most recent works have been accepted for publication in Valparaiso Review, On the Sea Wall and The Opiate.

David Hirzel’s books include nonfiction narratives based on polar exploration, works on leadership and decision-making with co-author Brad Borkan, and poetry. These can all be viewed on his author page on amazon.com, or his publishing website for Terra NovaPress, specializing in polar and seafaring nonfiction.

When not writing from Sky Ranch overlooking the Pacific, he can be found at the drafting table of his architectural design firm or sailing his (and Alice’s) gaff-rigged catboat on San Pablo Bay.

I spent a technical career in a succession of specialties: low-temperature physics, then weapon theory, followed by solar buildings research, and finally remedies for buried pollutants. For me, publication other than op-eds meant technical articles! Over the decades, I often wrote my musings as essays or poems. After retirement, I began learning to write while composing a literary mystery. Like scientific research, writing is a lifetime exercise in discovery. I'm now writing nonfiction, examining American social angst as an emergent consequence of multiple complex systems.

Doug Baird is an event producer, stage manager, and graphic designer in San Francisco, where his company, Doug Baird Productions, has managed events for nonprofit, corporate, and theatrical projects for over 25 years. Doug was a photography instructor at City College of San Francisco for 10 years and has presented workshops at festivals and art colleges in Europe. In 2004 he co-founded Performance Showcase and continues to be producer and artistic director, featuring the work of Bay Area artists in contemporary music, dance, opera, and spoken word. His award-winning science fiction/fantasy stories entered at the CWC literary stage, Open Road and EVA, also appear in the anthologies Carry the Light and Fault Zone.

Elise Frances Miller’s collection, The Berkeley Girl: Rendezvous in London, a Novella and other Stories of the 1960s (2017, Sand Hill Review Press), includes a sequel to her novel, The Berkeley Girl, in Paris 1968 (SHRP, 2016), an Independent Press Awards’ 2017 Distinguished Favorite in Historical Fiction. Her memoir, “My People’s Park,” won the 2nd prize for prose in The Times They Were A-Changing: Women Remember the ‘60s and ‘70s. Several stories appear in The Best of Sand Hill Review (2012), the Fault Zone series, and The Sand Hill Review. Follow her blog and updates..

Eva Barrows is a developmental editor and 2023-2025 VP of the California Writers Club San Francisco Peninsula branch. She edits nonfiction and fiction books spanning self-development, memoirs, and historical fiction. Eva enjoys mapping the story arch, identifying plot holes, coming up with solutions, suggesting character development fixes, and filling in sensory details.

In 2007, Eva founded Imitation Fruit Literary Journal because she enjoys working with short story writers, poets, and artists on their fun and upbeat content. She holds a BA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University and is currently writing a historical fiction novel about the silent film industry in 1912 Niles, California. Learn about her writing and editing services at www.evabarrows.com.

Evelyn’s first published book, Between Inca Walls, about falling in love while serving in the Peace Corps, was awarded the 2021 Peace Corps Experience prize, a first place Hearten Award from Chanticleer International Book Awards, and numerous five-star ratings by Readers Favorite and others. Her second memoir, Love in Any Language, has garnered similar acclaim. Her writing has appeared in the California Writers Club Literary Review, World View Magazine, The Delta Kappa Gamma Bulletin, the Tri-City Voice, Dispatches, Conscious Connection and Clever Magazine, to name a few.  Her awards, essays, and interviews can be found on her website.

Born in San Francisco, George Rodriguez graduated from Mission High School, served in the California National Guard, became a journeyman letter pressman, then retired from his post as a retail clerk after 32 years with Safeway. He is also a Licensed Tax Preparer and was an editor of a Senior Newsletter. George is also a rhythm guitarist.

He has authored Because I Believe, Sally Grocery Cart, Sally Grocery Cart Paris Escapade, Sally Grocery Cart Mexico Adventure.

In addition to being our president, Geri is a journalist and investigative reporter who has written for the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Forbes, as a Research Director for Gartner, a global technology advising company. and a regular contributor to Truthdig.com, an award-winning investigative reporting website. Her published works include Taking Aim at the President: The Remarkable Story of the Woman Who Shot at Gerald For and San Francisco Values: Common Ground for Getting America Back on Track .

Geri is president of the SF Peninsula branch of California Writers Club, a member of the Society of Professional Journalists, the Authors Guild, Women’s National Book Association, the Internet Society, and Book Critics Circle.

Grete Rachel Howland (she/they) is the author of the hybrid memoir How to Leave the Church, out now from Apocryphile Press. Her writing has also appeared in Tiny Buddha, Across the Margin, The Phoenix, and Offerings. Grete has lived up and down the West Coast and now finds herself—to her great delight—back in the Bay Area. She worked for many years as a middle school English teacher before transitioning into higher ed, where she works today as an academic advisor. When not writing, Grete loves to paddleboard, sunbathe with a book, run for miles, and roam slowly through museums.

Heather Folsom writes poetry, essays, and surreal fiction. She's been published in Modern Haiku and is a featured reader at Coastside Poetry and a selected reader at LitCamp's Lit Nights and Bay Area Book Festival event.

When not trying to get published, Heather writes product requirements documents, over-edited presentations, and way too much email as part of her job at Google.

Heather also blogs on gardening, writing, work, and more on her own blog.

Ida J. Lewenstein is a retired English as a Second Language (ESL) instructor of some 22 years who wears several hats. She has written poems, chants and rhymes to reinforce in a fun way the structures she was teaching, and some of these have worked their way into imaginative story poems that have been published in books – seven in all, with more to come. She has also published poems about conservation and environmental causes. Many of her poems have been published in Fault Zone publications. Two of her most popular children’s books are Poor Old Goat and Rain Rain.

Dr. Jac Fitz-enz or Dr. Jac, as he is known worldwide, is the father of human capital analytics. He’s published 14 books and over 450 articles. Two of his books, Human Value Management (1990) and The ROI of Human Capital (2000) won national Book of the Year Awards. His current work can be seen on drjacanalytics.com and on drjacbooks.com. An international consultant working in 46 countries, he authored Rough Waters, a semi-biographical novel covering his naval intelligence service, in 2014. In August, 2016, he published Undaunted Lovers, first in a series of adventure.

James Hanna is a retired probation officer and a former fiction editor. Due to his criminal justice background, the criminal element appears in much of his writing. James’ work has appeared in over thirty journals, including Sixfold, Crack the Spine, and The Literary Review. His books, all of which have won awards, are available on Amazon.

Janet Lipkin Bein is a retired Technical Writer. She writes mostly short stories and memoir. She has published a number of travel adventure articles in the online magazine, Tango Diva. She has also published a few articles in the Palo Alto Weekly, and most recently a short graphic story in Berkeley’s literary magazine, Ursa Minor.

Dr. Jeanne is a published poet, essayist, and performer. She posts her film reviews. Dr. Powell is also a freelance writing consultant. She performs her writing at venues such as Yerba Buena Gardens, MoAD, Bird & Beckett Books, Tenderloin Museum, Mechanics Institute Library, Folio Books, SF Public libraries, Joyce Gordon Art Gallery, and Petaluma Poetry Walk.

For ten years Dr. Jeanne hosted Celebration of the Word, a popular open mic in SF. She founded Meridien PressWorks and has published 20 writers. She currently facilitates a weekly reading series at the Mechanics Institute Library.

Taurean Horn Press published four poetry books: My Own Silence, Word Dancing, Two Seasons, and Deeply Notched Leaves. Regent Press published Carousel, a collection of her essays. Her poems appear in several local anthologies. She holds degrees from Wayne State University and the University of San Francisco.

Jeannine Gerkman wears many hats—Author, Poet, Realtor, and Volunteer to name a few. She and her husband moved to the Bay Area from the Northwest over 30 years ago and built their home in the Belmont hills.

Jeannine has written over 60 poems, some of them award-winning. Her debut children’s picture book, Spring, has been described as “a superb choice for a calm, nighttime lap read or a unit on the seasons for lower elementary school classes” – Kirkus Reviews.

A Realtor since 1997, she enjoys helping folks market and sell their homes in the Bay Area, focusing on Belmont.

Jo Carpignano began writing poetry and fiction in 2001 after retiring from a forty year career in education. She has won prizes in fiction, poetry and memoir and has won state and national awards for several of her poems. Her work frequently appears in various anthologies — e.g. Carry the Light and Fault Zone. Jo’s first publication was a biography of her Italian mother, Madeline’s Story (2005). She published a book of poetry, Paper Wings and Other Things (2015). Having had many interesting experiences in education, Jo’s new novel, Nadine in the Tenderloin (2022), a young adult novel, describes the trials of a disadvantaged child in public schools with a fierce determination to succeed. Jo is completing another memoir about her Italian immigrant family and continues to enjoy writing in any genre and on any subject that captures her interest.

Josie Brown has published novels with HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster (fiction); and non-fiction books with St. Martin's Press and Penguin. Independently published works include The Housewife Assassin’s Handbook (23-novel series; two million copies of this series are in readers’ hands). It, and Secret Lives of Husbands and Wives, were optioned for television.

As a journalist, Josie interviewed Kenneth Branagh, Jackie Collins, Brenda Blethyn, Debbie Reynolds, Maya Angelou, John Woo, and Costa-Gavras. She hosts the Author Provocateur podcast on Apple, having interviewed 80+ authors on creative process.

As a librettist, Pride and Prejudice - The Musical, created with Emmy Award-winning composer/lyricist Rita Abrams, won San Francisco Bay Area Critics Circle’s award for "Best Original Music."

Karen Sundback was a winner of the 2020 Bay Area Book Festival Writing Contest. She has had seven of her stories published in juried anthologies, including one in the statewide CWC Literary Review, one in the CWC SF Peninsula Fault Zone Strike Slip Anthology, and an honorary mention in Fault Zone Uplift Anthology. In 2019, she was named CWC SF Peninsula Writer of the Year. She has won five prizes in local writing contests. Her earliest first prize was CWC South Bay contest Who is the Best Storyteller in the South Bay? In her career, she has always drifted towards writing. So while her earliest working years were spent teaching chemistry, she retired as a project manager and grant writer at San José State University.

Born in San Francisco, Kate Adams is a writer living in Mountain View, California.

Previous work has appeared in Centennial Review, Zzyzzyva, and the Sand Hill Review. Her work has won awards from the Massachusetts Artists’ Foundation, in poetry and in fiction. Learn more about her and read her poetry at Mad Manor Press. She has come to enjoy the technical and artistic challenges of writing in sonnet forms. She is currently serving as the editor-in-chief of Fault Zone, the anthology published by the Peninsula branch of the California Writers’ Club.

Poets of influence include Matthew Arnold, Wallace Stevens, and Gjertrude Schnackenberg.

Katherine Russell Becker has been telling stories on television for decades, winning Emmy, Telly, New York, and Chicago Film Festival awards for programs she directed or produced. Her debut novel Playing God is set in the colorful San Francisco Bay Area she is proud to call home. She has written about what she knows first-hand: the world of broadcast TV, the pain of infertility, and playing competitive poker. She knows from personal experience that sometimes, the best thing to do is to fold your cards and let it go.

Korie Pelka has a background in directing theater which served her well during her twenty-five-year career as a communication professional in Silicon Valley. In 2015, she left the corporate world to travel and discover her own voice in a new stage of life she calls her 3rd Act. Today, she is a certified coach, consultant and writer.

Her stories have been published in Fault Zone: Slip Strike, Fault Zone: Reverse, California Literary Review, and Spirited Voices. She has won multiple Literary Stage awards at the San Mateo Country Fair including California Writer of the Year and performed original stories at Bay Area Generations, a literary salon, and Women’s Journeys, a reader’s theater event. She was honored to be the recipient the Louise Boggess award for service to the California Writers Club-San Francisco Peninsula Branch and is currently working on a self-help memoir chronicling her journey as a 3rd Act Gypsy.

Larisa A. White (née Larisa Naples) writes to celebrate Nature, to advocate ecological stewardship, and to explore the ways in which people relate –– or fail to relate –– across nations and cultures, landscapes and species. Her past projects have ranged from award-winning screenplays for animated films ("Bee Mine" / Logline: Bee meets girl.) to acclaimed academic studies ("World Druidry" / exploring how modern Druids relate to their local landscapes). At present, she is developing the eco-fiction series, "Tales of the Primordial Mountain," as well as a collection of poems celebrating California ecology. She is an active member of the Authors Guild, and currently serves as Ambassador for the Authors Guild - SF Bay Area Chapter.

Lawrence Sherman Cohn is a Bay Area-based poet and fiction writer. He drove out from New England in 1979 leaving his high-school teaching position in Massachusetts only to become a business executive in Silicon Valley. As an educator, he organized a poetry workshop for senior citizens and high school students.

Lawrence regards writing as a vital part of his life. His interest in how poetry and short stories contribute to important ideas to uplift our existence has always been his purpose. He started writing poetry and short stories in elementary school and felt compelled to write poems on the back pages of exams.

Lawrence started his publishing career when his poem was included in Littack Magazine (William Oxley-Ed) as part of the Vitalist Poetry genre in Oxford, England. His short story can be found in the IPA award-winning anthology Fault Zone: Detachment. Other poems are included in the anthologies Phases and Clarendon House Poetica 13 & 14. In 2024, Lawrence’s short story and a poem were republished in CWC’s “Best of the Best”. Also in 2024, three of Lawrence’s ekphrastic poems were published in Visions and Verse (CWC-Redwood Writers).

Lisa Meltzer Penn is past president of the San Francisco Peninsula branch of the CWC. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is Founding Editor of the Fault Zone anthologies and has authored multiple short stories published there. She has written for Traveler’s Tales: Spain; The Sand Hill Review; Fabula Argentea; TMI Project’s Alone Together series; Migozine; San Mateo County Library’s Story Café; and “Toro Torero” in Traveler’s Tales, 2002; and others. In 2021 she won Best of Show in the literary contests at the San Mateo County Fair, as well as the prestigious CWC Jack London Service Award. She is a Past President of our branch of the CWC and a Louise Boggess Award recipient.

Luanne Oleas was born in Steinbeck's Salinas Valley, where her husband worked as an ag pilot. It became the setting for her novel, Flying Blind: A Cropduster’s Story. Her other published novel, A Primrose in November, is a family saga set in England and France. She is working on her third book, the story of a widow who reinvents herself on reality TV after winning the lottery. She and her husband currently live in Silicon Valley with their cat, Blackberry.

Lucy Ann Murray is a freelance writer who has had 127 articles published in a variety of national and local newspapers, magazines and 17 anthologies — e.g., The Ultimate Cat Lover: The Best Experts' Advice for a Happy, Healthy Cat with Stories and Photos of Fabulous Felines — plus eight issues of Fault Zone. The genres encompass humor, essay, biography, history, travel, poetry, and fiction. She has won several writing awards, including two Best of Show prizes from the San Mateo County Fair. She has been a correspondent for a Chicago-based Italian American magazine for over two decades.

Marianne Brems is a writer of trade books, textbooks, short stories, and poetry. She has an MA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University and is a retired Community College English-as-a-Second-Language instructor. She is a San Mateo County Fair Literary Stage winner 2021 and has been featured in San Mateo County Library’s Story Café. Her two poetry chapbooks are Sliver of Change (Finishing Line Press, 2020) and Unsung Offerings (Finishing Line Press, 2021). Her third chapbook, In Its Own Time, is forthcoming in 2022. Her poems have also appeared in numerous literary journals including The Pangolin Review, Nightingale & Sparrow, The Sunlight Press, The Tiny Seed Literary Journal, and Green Ink Poetry.

Marjorie Bicknell Johnson taught high school mathematics in Santa Clara for 30 years. During that time, she served as secretary and treasurer of the Fibonacci Association, which publishes the academic journal, The Fibonacci Quarterly, writing & publishing 89+ peer-reviewed articles on the Fibonacci sequence. She has been on the FQ Editorial Board since 1963.

On retirement, she pursued her lifelong dreams of learning to fly, traveling the world, and writing novels. She started by travelling to Mexico and taking creative writing classes to learn how to write a good story.

While visiting Mayan ruins with archeologists, Marjorie learned that the Maya had a complete system of writing. When the Spaniards burned Mayan libraries during the Spanish Inquisition, the skill of reading Mayan glyphs was lost for several centuries until the 1990s. Marjorie had found that “really good story,” the basis for Jaguar Princess: The Last Maya Shaman and the sequel, Lost Jade of the Maya.

California Writers Club has helped her to hone her writing skills and put her in touch with like-minded souls.

Marla Bluestone is the pen name of the author of (to date) five self-published speculative fiction novels. Each of them explores what may be in store for human civilization. Neither utopian nor dystopian, each follows characters living in a conceivable future. With one exception, each of her novels is set in a different location and culture. The exception is Book Two of a trilogy, for which the third book is still gestating. As a retired neurodevelopmentally specialized occupational therapist, she subtly includes in each story the interdependent nature of environment and personality, for readers to infer what they will. Check out her website: www.MarlaBluestone.com.

Martha Clark Scala grew up in New England and has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area since the 1980s. She is the author of Assembling a Life: Claiming the Artist in My Father (and Myself), a book-length memoir/collage of poems, prose and photographs. As collage artist, poet and writer, Martha's work explores the anguish of grief and celebrates the delight of creativity. Since 2007, she has written “Out on a Limb,” a monthly blog focused on cultivating joy. Martha is currently working on a memoir about the marvels in the messes.

Mary Beth’s memoir, From Junkie to Judge: One Woman’s Triumph Over Trauma and Addiction, describes the child abuse that led to teenage methamphetamine addiction, the chaos of that addiction, and her early recovery. Plus, how she became a judge!

Mary Beth published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, “I Beat Addiction without God,” and another in the Philadelphia Inquirer, She was a federal judge and supports Safehouse. Here’s why. Mary Beth’s memoir writing has been published in Memoir Magazine, Awakenings, The Noyo River Review, The Fault Zone, Carry the Light, and Ravens Perch.

Mary E Knippel, Book Mentor, International speaker and Workshop Facilitator, is fiercely committed to guiding you to develop and promote your book into an expression of your unique voice. Check out her Amazon author profile. Mary mentors women to craft their transformational stories into a book to leave a legacy, or grow their business. With 35-years as a journalist, she has a knack for getting get the story out of your head and onto the page. She is currently looking for authors for the collaboration book series, “In Her Own Words.”

Mary Miller Chiao is the author of Death on the Funeral Yacht, A 1950s San Francisco Mystery and the biography of Sarah Brown, Daughter of Abolitionist John Brown. Her fiction appeared in The California Writers Club Literary Review, Good Old Days, WritersTalk, and Carry the Light. She has won literary competitions at the San Mateo County Fair and the American League of American Pen Women. Her award-winning historical research has been honored by the Pioneers of Santa Clara County. Adirondack Life Magazine published her memoir of summers in the Adirondacks in the 1950s. https://MaryMillerChiao.com or MaryMillerChiao@gmail.com.

Megan E. McDonald is a 2016 recipient of a Stanford Online Writing Certificate in Fiction. She was named Literary Stage Exhibitor of the Year at the San Mateo County Fair in 2018, and also placed in that contest's poetry and fiction divisions in 2019. She has read personal essays at literary salon Bay Area Generations, delivered a Perspectives segment on KQED Radio, and was selected as a semi-finalist for the pilot episode of writing reality show America’s Next Great Author. Her work has appeared in Fault Zone: Reverse and Phases, the Redwood Writers’ anthology. She is querying with her chick lit novel DIRTY and blogs at www.meganemcdonald.com.

Michael Stickle is currently the North American Brand Editor for Time Out. His magazine journalism has been published in Time Out, The New York Times, Bon Appetit, Condé Nast Traveler, Martha Stewart Weddings, Men’s Health, Women’s Health, Better Homes and Gardens, and more. He won a writing Emmy for his digital sitcom, Floaters, which was also a Sundance Producers Guild selection. Many moons ago, he taught writing and literature as a graduate student at Rutgers University.

Mickie Winkler is an irreverent writer of short humor, the author of Politics, Police, and Other Earthling Antics (2020) and former Mayor of Menlo Park CA. Her life in politics inspires her humor. Her State, California, is especially inspirational.

Winkler failed to do what most incumbents do: get reelected. She launched her writing career with Amazon and was frequently published in the product-review sections. Needing to supplement her negative income as a writer, she decided to attend law school, and will graduate in 2028—if her application is accepted!

Miera Rao writes fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. She has won awards for creative non-fiction and poetry. She was the recipient of the Women’s National Book Association – SF Chapter’s 2022 Effie Lee Morris Literary Award for Poetry. Her short stories have been published by the Sand Hill Review Press, in the award-winning Fault Zone anthology series, and Flash Fiction Magazine. Her poetry and articles have appeared in the Mercury News, India Currents, The Society of Classical Poets, Live & Thrive CA, The Asahi Shimbun, among others. She tutors students in language, writing, and public speaking, and is a college essay coach.

Nanci wrote her prize-winning novel, Tears and Trombones, after teaching and writing college textbooks for several years. She has recently completed the pilot for a streaming series converting the novel into eight episodes for TV. She also has published short stories and poetry in the CWC Literary Review, The Fault Zone, the CWC Sacramento Anthology, Carry the Light Anthology, Your Daily Poem, Gold Country Writers Anthology, October Hill Magazine, and many online magazines. She is currently working on a memoir and, as always, poetry.

Nanci is also an artist and photographer. Samples of her art and writing can be found at: nancileewoody.com or bookcompanion.com.

Pat Obuchowski is a best-selling and award-winning non-fiction author. She has published four books including Gutsy Women Win: How to Get Gutsy and Get Going. Currently, she is focusing her creativity on poetry and has had several of her poems published. She recently was a finalist in the 2023 San Francisco Writer’s Conference contest. Pat especially loves the patterns of Haiku as demonstrated here:

A Haiku to Life

Once upon a time

I was asleep in my life.

Now, I just take naps.

I primarily write non-fiction. My focus is the possible future social impacts of technology. I am also attempting my first novel which combines historical fiction and vampires. My interest in tech and history and the future comes from a long career in Silicon Valley that took many twists and turns.

Several of my non-fiction pieces have been published in the online journal, ExO Insights, where he has also published essays such as “Get Past Global Warming: The Future Needs Global Cooling.”

All of my essays are posted on my own site, FutureResolve.

Reena Kapoor grew up all over India as an “army brat” and that wandering sensibility is reflected in her debut poetry collection Arrivals & Departures. Reena’s poetry and short fiction have appeared in The Bluebird Word, Discretionary Love, Flash Fiction Forum, Ariel Chart, 433 Magazine, Literary Yard, Tiny Seed, Potato Soup, Visible, and India Currents. Four plays by Reena were produced by EnActe Arts in 2021, and a new one is coming in September 2023. Reena has also been a Citizen Historian with The 1947 Partition Archive collecting oral histories from witnesses of India’s Partition, for over a decade. Reena actively blogs on Substack.

Richard E. McCallum’s stories appear in the club’s Fault Zone Anthologies, the Literary Review, and the High Desert anthology, Survival: Tales of the Pandemic. Richard’s contribution helped win the 2021 Fault Zone: Reverse, a gold medal award with the Independent Press 2022. In addition, the Montana lifestyle magazine Distinctly Montana recently published one of his short stories.

Mr. McCallum holds a B.S in Film/TV from Montana State University, spent six years in the U.S Navy as a Combat Cameraman, and obtained a M.A from USC Cinema. The USC Library published his master thesis screenplay: Red, Black, and Blue. He worked for thirty years in the film industry in Los Angeles and in the SF Bay area.

His collection of work is self-published on Amazon’s Kindle Vella, an episodic platform.

Scott Norton spent his career at the University of California Press, where he began in 1992 as a freelance copyeditor and retired in 2020 as director of editing, design, and production. He is the author of Developmental Editing, Second Edition (Chicago, 2023), the only long-form treatment of its subject, and a contributor to Beth Luey, ed., Revising Your Dissertation (California, 2004) and Peter Ginna, ed., What Editors Do (Chicago, 2017). After turning fifty, he embarked on a long-deferred journey into magic-realist fiction and has self-published two novels, The Gift of Ubiquity (2018) and The Auricles (2023).

An architect by profession, Sheena was comfortable sketching. The thought of writing was equivalent to scaling Mount Everest barefoot in the coldest December. During the course of her writing journey, Sheena has been published, awarded, and even snagged a Pushcart Prize nomination.

Through her writing, Sheena travels to the locales, flavors the cuisine, and participates in the cultural aspects of India with which she is unfamiliar.

She has a Bachelor's of Architecture (India), a Master's in Landscape Architecture (Texas A & M University), a Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in Writing (UC Berkeley Extension), and a Novel Writing Certificate (Stanford Continuing Studies).

Springer Teich lives in San Francisco and has had a long life as an entrepreneur. Currently, she is the owner of a small BnB in Pacific Heights and is active in her community. She decided to explore writing. Her focus is on the soul, the afterlife, parallel universes, and the unknown realms.

My name is Steve Latner. I started writing about 10 years ago. I enjoy writing crime fiction with wonderfully flawed characters. A writing group urged me to expand on a short story about a young, alcoholic taxi driver. The result was my first novel, This Taxi For Hire. I've since written a sequel, I Love You to Death. I just finished another book in the crime fiction genre. The title of this latest book is, Nice Guy Bob. I've received wonderful help and support from members of CWC. My books are available on Amazon.

Sue, a native San Franciscan, writes from her first-generation childhood experiences growing up in the suburbs. She brings a poignant sense of humor to her short stories, memoir and poems. Her work has been published in the Fault Zone series and Carry the Light anthologies. Sue performed in CWC’s first Readers' Theater: Women's Journeys and the San Mateo County Library’s Story Café. She’s won numerous awards from the San Mateo County Fair including CWC’s 2013 Writer of the Year and Best of Show for Memoir in 2016 and 2018. She served as Co-Director for the Literary Arts Dept. at the San Mateo County Fair.

Pursuing a lifelong dream of writing, Tim’s first novel, The Flower of Canaan, will be published by Addison and Highsmith in 2025. His short story “Spaceman,” featuring events in his life, appeared in Fault Zone: Reverse and was nominated for a Pushcart prize. His work has appeared in “Spirited Voices.” In 2023 he was awarded the annual Louise Boggess Award for outstanding contributions to our branch and the Jack London Award for service to his writing community. Tim led development of information systems at Stanford, and consulted with universities and innovative tech firms. In 1991 he published Islands Apart: Chronicles of Family Healing (memoir out of print).

I’m a writer, living on the coast, a few miles south of San Francisco. I write short fiction and memoir. My stories enevitably end up around the surf, rising tides, and robots. I’m fascinated with aritifical intelligence and the intersection of religions. I’ve written, mostly first drafts, connected stories built around a ficticious company called Domestic Alliance. It’s a conglomerate that manufactures and supports androids who proivde for the well being, protection and tranquility for its customers. My goal for 2022 is to have a story submitted to and published by the Fault Zone anthology.

Vanessa MacLaren-Wray writes speculative fiction about people—human and otherwise—connecting in this complex universe. She’s the author of the Patchwork Universe series: All That Was Asked, Shadows of Insurrection, and Flames of Attrition. She writes for the Truck Stop at the Center of the Galaxy consortium and guest-hosts for Small Publishing in a Big Universe. Vanessa is an active member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association and the Women’s National Book Association. When not arguing with her cats, she works on new stories, her email journal Messages from the Oort Cloud, and her website, Cometary Tales.