Gold Rush Writers
   
The 2012 Gold Rush Writers Conference will be held May 4, 5, 6.
Featured Speakers and Work Shop Leaders: Cara Black, award winning mystery writer, and acclaimed debut novelist Michael David Lukas.


Historic Hotel Leger
8304 Main Street
Mokelumne Hill CA  95245
(209) 286-1401
Accommodations      Maps

Email Antoinette:

Hotel Leger
About Us 		Registration

Conference Schedule

Workshop List

Included Activities

Faculty

Come join the seventh annual Gold Rush Writers Conference, May 4, 5, & 6, at the historic Leger Hotel in picturesque Mokelumne Hill where writing professionals will guide you to a publishing bonanza through a series of panels, specialty talks, workshops and celebrity lectures.

Go one-on-one with successful poets, novelists, biographers, memoirists and short story writers.
The conference includes a picnic supper in a Victorian garden Friday evening, Saturday dinner and Sunday brunch.

Cara Black
Featured Speaker and Workshop Leader
Cara Black, a San Francisco Library Laureate and three-time Anthony award-winning nominee for her mystery series, Leduc Investigations, set in Paris. Her most recent novel, Murder at Lanterne Rouge debuted in March.
She will be the keynote speaker and conduct a workshop.
Michael David Lucas
Brunch Headliner
Michael David Lukas's lyrical novel, The Oracle of Stamboul, is set in a mystical, exotic world in which a gifted girl charms a sultan and changes the course of an empire's history. Michael is the brunch headliner and will teach a workshop in magical realism.
Click here for pricing details.
Registration & list of events

Founder
Antoinette May
Antoinette May
Antoinette May 		Antoinette May's second novel, The Sacred Well, published by HarperCollins was chosen best novel of 2009 by the San Francisco Book Festival and continues to garner critical acclaim. Antoinette turned to fiction with Pilate's Wife, a tale of the Roman Empire. The novel, published in November 2007 by William Morrow, has been translated into 18 languages. She is currently at work on a new novel.

Antoinette's non-fiction includes the New York Times best seller, Adventures of a Psychic, a biography of psychic Sylvia Browne. Antoinette was the 1997 recipient of La Pluma de Plata, an award conferred by the Mexican Government for the best travel article on their country.

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Pilate's Wife

novel Pilate's Wife

Sacred Well

Latest novel Sacred Well

Co-Directors
Kathy Isaac-Luke
Kathie Isaac-Luke 		Kathie Isaac-Luke's poetry collection, Chrysalides, was recently published by Dragonfly Press. Editor of caesura, the journal of Poetry Center San Jose for five years, she is a freelance writer for the Union Democrat. Kathie's short story, "The Collection," was nominated for a 2010 Pushcart prize. Ginger Griffin
Ginger Bennett Griffin 		Ginger Bennett Griffin, a clinical hypnotherapist for more than thirty years, has recently completed a book, Affirming Your Life, in which she incorporates her vast experience in accessing creativity, dream analysis, affirmations, and creating personal mission statements.

                Faculty
Cara Black
Helen Bonner

Cara Black

Cara Black is the author of the best-selling Aimée Leduc series, all of which are available in the Soho Crime imprint. US Today said of Cara's work that “No contemporary writer of noir mysteries evokes the spirit of Paris more than Cara Black in her atmospheric series starring P.I. Aimée Leduc.... Fearless, risk-taking Aimée is constantly running, hiding, fighting and risking her life—all while dressed in vintage Chanel and Dior and Louboutin heels.” Booklist says: “A delightfully unbuttoned Audrey Hepburn for the twenty-first century.” Cara lives in San Francisco with her husband and son and visits Paris frequently.

Murder at the Lanterne Rouge which debuted in March is the 12th book in Cara Black’s nationally bestselling and award nominated Parisian crime series starring P.I. Aimée Leduc. This time Aimée’s longtime business partner René has found love in Meizi Wu, a woman Aimée instinctively doesn’t trust. And when the body of a young science prodigy is found shrink-wrapped in an alleyway with Meizi’s photo in his wallet, Aimée finds herself enwrapped in the investigation of a lifetime.

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Murder at the Lanterne Rouge

Murder at the Lanterne Rouge

Murder in Passy

Murder in Passy

Michael David Lukas
Michael Lukas

Michael David Lukas

Michael David Lukas, author of the bestselling novel The Oracle of Stamboul (HarperCollins, 2011), has been a Fulbright Scholar in Turkey, a night-shift proofreader in Tel Aviv, and a waiter at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference in Vermont. A graduate of Brown University and the University of Maryland, he is a recipient of scholarships from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Summer Writers' Institute, Squaw Valley Community of Writers, and Elizabeth George Foundation.

His writing has appeared in VQR, Slate, National Geographic Traveler, and Georgia Review. He lives in Oakland, California, less than a mile from where he was born. When he’s not writing he teaches creative writing to third and fourth graders at Thornhill Elementary School.

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The Oracle of Stamboul

The Oracle of Stamboul

Helen Bonner
Helen Bonner

Helen Bonner

Helen Bonner, PhD, Writing and Communications, is founder of Starthistle Press Publishing. She is author of a breakthrough novel, Cry Dance, and her second novel, The Dolphin Papers, has just come out on Amazon.

Her memoir, The Laid Daughter, is a classic, and First Love Last is sure to follow. Dr. Bonner taught creative writing at Ohio University and Minnesota State University. Her short story, Roadside Trinity, won several Best Short Story awards and her screenplay, The Jeannette Rankin Story, has been optioned.

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Dolphin Papers

Dolophin Papers

The Laid Daughter

The Laid Daughter

Cry Dance

Cry Dance

First Love Last

First Love Last

Kevin Arnold
Kevin Arnold

Kevin Arnold

Kevin Arnold, one of the founding faculty of the Gold Rush Writers Conference, has published 50 poems and short stories in such literary magazines as the Seattle Review, the California Poetry Journal, The Beloit Fiction Journal, and a book of poetry. One of his short stories, excerpted from his novel, Good with People, won first place at the 2009 San Francisco Book Festival.  He's marketing that novel and another, White Man's Blues.

Kevin received a Master of Fine Arts in Fiction from San Jose State University.  He is the long-term president of Poetry Center San Jose, with headquarters in the historic home of California poet Edwin Markham. PCSJ is the parent organization to California Poets Festival and the national literary journal caesura.  See more at http://www.redroom.com/author/kevin-arnold.

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Gillian Bagwell
Gillian Bagwell

Gillian Bagwell

Gillian Bagwell grew up in Berkeley, California, and began her professional life as an actress, studying at the University of California Berkeley and the Drama Studio London at Berkeley before relocating to Los Angeles to pursue a career in film and television. She moved into directing and producing theatre, founding The Pasadena Shakespeare Company, where she served as artistic director for nine years, producing thirty-seven critically acclaimed productions.

She united her life-long love of books, British history, and theatre in writing her first novel, The Darling Strumpet, based on the life of Nell Gwynn. Her second novel, The September Queen, is the first fictional account of the perilous and romantic odyssey of Jane Lane, an ordinary English girl who risked her life to help the young Charles II escape after the disastrous Battle of Worcester in 1651 by disguising him as her servant. Gillian recently returned to Berkeley and is at work on her third novel, about the formidable four-times widowed Tudor dynast Bess of Hardwick. Visit Gillian's website, www.gillianbagwell.com, for further information about her books and upcoming events, and links to her blogs, articles, and videos of sites in Nell Gwynn's London

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The Darling Strumpet

The Darling Strumpet

The September Queen

The September Queen

Lou Gonzalez
Kevin Arnold

Lou Gonzalez

Lou Gonzalez writes technical books and novels. To publish his technical book, Creating Your eBook, he combined his engineering and programming degrees, and his experience in computer design, with his work in converting over 15 manuscripts into Kindle and Nook eBooks. In addition, Lou teaches creative writing, lectures about novel structure and eBooks, and for the last nine years has been the moderator for a Barnes & Noble writing workshop.
For his Eric Sandoval mystery novels, he draws on his ethnic background in the Mexican-American community in Los Angeles to present the challenges and opportunities that America offers to all its citizens. His novels center on accomplishment, danger, drug lords, and political corruption in Los Angeles. He's traveled and worked in Europe, the Near East, and throughout South America.

Lou brings to his writing a rich technical work experience in design of spy satellites and software programming. In addition to working for major aerospace and software companies, he founded his own software company. His company, which he managed for more than fifteen years, designed software for the Fortune 500 companies and for the US and NATO military.

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Creating Your E-Book

Creating Your ebook

Philip Shafer
Kevin Arnold

Philip Shafer

Sixty is the new forty. Philip Shafer wrote technical documents and political literature, but had always yearned to write stories. One day, without quite verbalizing the question in his own mind, (What's stopping me?) he started writing The result was a multi-generational saga. Thus far, My Own Back Yard Publishing (M.O.B.Y.) has published eight of Philip's novels with one more due later this year.

The series is a saga covering more than 60 years and spanning three continents. From the jungles of Vietnam, to the sunny beaches of La Jolla, to the boulevards of Paris, the novels radiate the thrill of high stakes espionage. Philip knows his way around the "man-woman" thing too, and writes with stunning sensuality.

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Shepard's Secrets
Shepard's Secrets
Empire and Resistaqnce
Empire and Resistancer 		Merchants of Flesh
Merchants of Flesh
Their Weight in Gold
Worth Their Weight in Gold 		The Scars of War
The Scars of Warh
Tonkin Gold
Tonkin Gold
John Engell
John Engell

John Engell

John Engell is Chair of the Department of English & Comparative Literature at San Jose State University where he teaches American Literature, film, and creative writing.
He has published poetry, literary criticism, a play and theatre reviews. His short stories have appeared in a number of journals including the Chattahoochee Review, South Dakota Review, South Carolina Review and the Carolina Quarterly.
He is currently completing revisions on his first novel.

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Kathie Isaac-Luke
Kathy Isaac-Luke

Kathie Isaac-Luke

Kathie Isaac-Luke was editor of caesura, the journal of Poetry Center San Jose, for five years. Her poetry collection, Chrysalides, was recently published by Dragonfly Press, and was nominated for the 2011 Independent Publisher Book Award in Poetry. Kathie's short story, "The Collection," was nominated for a 2010 Pushcart prize. She is a freelance writer for The Union Democrat newspaper in Sonora.

Chrysalides

Chrysali8des

Monika Rose
Bill LeBlond

Monika Rose

Monika Rose has just published a poetry collection, River by the Glass. She edits Manzanita: Poetry and Prose of the Mother Lode and Sierra. She is founding director of Manzanita Writers Press, a literary press of the foothill region, and facilitates Writers Unlimited, a writers collective that critiques serious work in preparation for publication.
Monika's work has been published in various poetry venues including Tule Review, Poetry Now, Rattlesnake Review, Interview series with BL Kennedy, Squaw Review, The Journal, Mindprint Review, and other literary magazines. Her work is included in Shadows of Light, an anthology of poetry and photography of the Sierra. She is preparing an historical novel based on her parent's World War II stories.

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River by the Glass

River by the Glass

Wild Edges
Wild Edges

Lucy Sanna
Lucy Sanna
Lucy Sanna 		Lucy Sanna, author of both fiction and nonfiction, has found success in venues ranging from poetry and short stories to scientific feature articles and self-help books. With an education in English literature, a nose for research and a passion for sensual detail, Lucy easily moves through time, place, and voice, bringing both creative fancy and authenticity to her work.

Lucy's two self-help books (Random House, 1995 & 1996) have been published in six languages and continue to hold their place on bookstore shelves today. She has been featured on national television and radio, including CBS, NBC, NPR, and FOX, and her books have been recognized by national press, including the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Examiner, Playboy Magazine, and Men's World Magazine, to name a few.

In 2010 Lucy received a residency grant to Vermont Studio Center, where she finished her debut novel, JAZZ DANCING. A number of agents have now requested review of JAZZ DANCING, and Lucy is currently working on her next novel.

Since 1999, Lucy has served on the Strategic Planning Committee for the National Kidney Foundation's annual San Francisco Authors Luncheon, founded by Amy Tan and Ann Getty. Lucy has also served on the Board of the California Writers Club, San Francisco Peninsula Branch.

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How to Romance the Man You Love

How to Romance the Man You Love

How to Romance the Woman You Love

How to Romance the Woman You Love

CONFERENCE SCHEDULE

Friday, May 4th

  • 6:00 p.m. Registration and poolside picnic at Charles and Antoinette (May) Herndon's home, 8437 Center St., Mokelumne Hill, Ca.
  • 7:30 p.m. Poetry Reading at Mokelumne Hill Library. Work by Monika Rose, Kathy Isaac Luke, John Engell, Helen Bonner and Kevin Arnold. These are open mic readings. Bring your own work to share.

Saturday, May 5th


Sunday, May 6th
  • 10 a.m. Taking It Home. How will you shape your writing life? Join Lucy Sanna in bringing it all together to help you visualize a creative future.
  • 10:30 to noon. Workshops.
  • Noon Brunch. Talk by Michael David Lukas, From Inspiration to Completion
Workshop Schedule

Saturday 10:15 to noon

Saturday, 1:15 to 3:30 p.m.

Saturday, 3:45 to 5:15 p.m.

Sunday, 10:30 a.m..

Click Here for Registration Form
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Copyright © 2012 Gold Rush Writers