Co-Director<
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 2015
Pushcart prize.
She is a freelance writer for the Union Democrat newspaper in Sonora.
She has two poems in the new anthology, Wine, Cheese and Chocolate published by Manzanita Writers Press.
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Co-Director
Sally Kaplan |
Sally Kaplan and her husband David Vasser run Backcountry Pictures, a production company in Murphys, California (see bcpfilms.com). In addition to working in non-fiction film and television, Kaplan has written and/or directed prize-winning original short screenplays..
Her prose appears in the anthologies: Changing Course: Women's Inspiring Stories of Menopause, Midlife, and Moving Forward, and Wine, Cheese & Chocolate, published by Manzanita Press.
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Faculty
James Ragan
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James Ragan
James Ragan is an internationally recognized poet, playwright, screenwriter, and essayist. Translated into 15 languages and appearing in 30 anthologies, world-wide, he has authored 9 books of poetry including In the Talking Hours, Womb-Weary, The Hunger Wall, Lusions, Selected Poetry, Too Long a Solitude, The World Shouldering I, Joyful Mysteries, and co-edited Yevgeny Yevtushenko: Collected Poetry.
Honors include 3 Fulbright Professorships, 2 Honorary Ph.D's, the Emerson Poetry Prize, 9 Pushcart Prize nominations, a Poetry Society of America Citation, London's Troubadour Int. Poetry Prize finalist, and the Swan Foundation Humanitarian Award, among others.
Ragan's plays The Landlord and Commedia have been staged in the U.S., Moscow, Beijing, Athens, Prague, etc. He worked on staff during the making of The Godfather and in production on the Oscar winner The Deer Hunter, The Border and recently as story editor/consultant on the foreign films, Clownwise, winner of 8 Czech Lion nominations and Dom ("The House," Slovakia), winner of 7 European Academy Awards, including the East/West Kieslowski Award for Best Screenplay at the Cannes Film Festival.
He also collaborated on In the Field (2008), Heaven, Hell, Earth (2009) and on The Rising (Ireland 2017).
In 1996 BUZZ Magazine named Ragan one of the "100 Coolest People in Los Angeles: Those Who Make a Difference." He has a Ph.D. and for 25 years directed the Graduate Professional Writing Program at the University of Southern California and currently serves for 23 summers as Distinguished Visiting Professor of Poetry and Film at Charles University in Prague. He is the subject of the documentary, Flowers and Roots, (Arina Films, 2015), winner of the Remi Platinum Award at the 49th Houston Int. Film Festival (2016).
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Donna Levin
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Donna Levin
Donna Levin is the author of two novels, Extraordinary Means (William Morrow) and California Street (Simon and Schuster), as well as two books on the craft of writing, Get That Novel Started and Get That Novel Written. Her latest novel, There's More Than One Way Home will be published by Chickadee Prince Books on May 1st of this year.
Her papers are part of the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University and her novels are part of the "California novels" collection in the California State Library. Visit her at www.DonnaLevin.com
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Kathie Isaac-Luke
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Kathie Isaac-LukeKathie Isaac-Luke was editor of
caesura, the journal of Poetry Center San Jose, for five
years. Her poetry collection, Chrysalides, published by Dragonfly Press, was selected as runner-up at the 2014 Los Angeles Book Festival. Kathie's short story, "The
Collection," was recently published by the Dragonfly Press Ezine, DNA, and was nominated for a 2015 Pushcart prize. She is a
freelance writer for the Union Democrat newspaper in Sonora.
She has two poems in the new anthology, Wine, Cheese and Chocolate published by Manzanita Writers Press.
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Sally Kaplan
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Sally Kaplan
Sally Kaplan moved from Los Angeles to Calaveras country in 2010. She and her husband David Vasser run Backcountry Pictures, a production company in Murphys, California (see bcpfilms.com).
In addition to working in non-fiction film and television, Kaplan has written and/or directed prize-winning original screenplays. Her script Crossroads developed into a short film at the American Film Institute's Directing Workshop for Women; Dybbuks and Chicken Soup screened in numerous film festivals and Man on the Plane received accolades from screen-writing contests.
Her prose appears in the anthologies: Changing Course: Women's Inspiring Stories of Menopause, Midlife, and Moving Forward, and Wine, Cheese & Chocolate, published by Manzanita Press. With a degree in dance and creative writing from Hampshire College, Kaplan has taught courses at NYU, UCLA, University of Colorado.
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Kevin Arnold
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Kevin Arnold
Kevin Arnold is a poet, teacher, and fiction writer from Portola Valley, CA. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from San Jose State University, 2007. Kevin served as President, Poetry Center San Jose, 2000-2012. In the last year, he's published in Slippery Elm, Fresh Hot read, Wine, Cheese and Chocolate, the Willow Glen Poetry Project and as had three stories in Fault Line.
His novel, The Sureness of Horses, is being serialized on a literary website called USREPRESENTED, where he writes a weekly column called "Kevin's Much-Loved Poems. Based on a story extracted from one of his novel, the San Franciso/Peninsula California's Writers' Club named him Writer of the Year, 2014-2015
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Robert Balmanno
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Robert Balmanno
Robert Balmanno has been writing fiction for 40 years, since the golden age of the typewriter. He has published the first three of a four-book "Dystopian novel series" September Snow, Runes of Iona, and Embers of the Earth.
Balmanno earned his bachelor's degree in Political Science from the University of California, Santa Barbara and did post-graduate work at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland and the University of London, King's College.
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Embers of
the Earth
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Kathy Boyd-Fellure
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Kathy Boyd Fellure's debut novel, The Language of the Lake, releases summer 2017, the first book in the, On the Water's Edge ~ Tahoe Trilogy. Novels, Lake Cottage Book Haven, and Azure Shores, release in 2018 and 2019.
Kathy's agent is shopping a fourth completed book ~ Across the Pond, in NYC.
Author of four Tahoe-themed children's illustrated storybooks, Kathy has two new children's books releasing in 2018 and 2019.
Northern California Publishers & Authors (NCPA) asked Fellure to judge the 2016 all-genre book awards, presented on April 23, 2017.
Kathy wrote, produced, and hosted the cable show, "Authors, Writers, Books, and Beyond," for TSPN TV, 2012-2015. (Links are available on Youtube.)
For the past decade she has sponsored an annual literary read through her group, Amador Fiction Writers.
Fellure's writing and photography have been published in two anthologies, The Sacramento Bee, Sierra Lodestar, Center Voice Magazine, and other media.
Kathy, a native of Sacramento, currently lives in the Amador Gold County of California with her family, including three stand-up comedian dogs.
http://www.kathyboydfellure.com/
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Sarah Armstrong Garner
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Sarah Armstrong-Garner
Sarah Armstrong-Garner lives in Northern California with her husband and three children.
Not only is she an author, screenwriter, and photographer, she also shoots indie films with her husband. Sinking is her debut novel.
You can visit SarahArmstrongGarner.com to learn more about her and her upcoming releases.
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Tom Johnson
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Tom Johnson
Tom Johnson's 35-year career in journalism has taken him from
the classroom to the newsroom and back. He began using computers to tease
meaning out of data while a Ph.D. candidate in the early '70s and studying the
impact of technology on urban spaces.
By the early '80s he was writing about
dedicated word processing systems (think $13,000 in 1978 dollars) and
covering the early stages of personal computing in Silicon Valley for TIME and
Popular Science. He worked for Time Magazine in El Salvador in the mid-'80s,
was the start-up editor of MacWeek, and a deputy editor of the St. Louis
Post-Dispatch.
His areas of interest are analytic journalism, dynamic simulation models
of publishing systems, complexity theory, the application of Geographic
Information Systems in journalism and the impact of the digital revolution on
journalism and journalism education. He often teaches and lectures in Latin
America and is the founder and co-director of the Institute for Analytic
Journalism, Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Websites: www.indiepubwest.com
and www.jtjohnson.com E-mail:
tom@jtjohnson.com
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Tom Johnson's
Latest book
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Erika Mailman
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Erika Mailman
Erika Mailman is the author of historical novels Woman of Ill Fame (Heyday), and The Witch's Trinity (Crown), which was a Bram Stoker finalist and a San Francisco Chronicle Notable Book.
Under the pen name Lynn Carthage, Erika writes Y.A. fiction, with Haunted: The Arnaud Legacy and Betrayed (Kensington) as the first two books in a trilogy. Erika holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Arizona, and teaches novel writing online. She has been a Yaddo fellow and a juror for the Shirley Jackson Awards.
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Antoinette May |
Antoinette May
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Antoinette May's third novel, The Determined Heart: the Tale of Mary Shelley and Her Frankenstein was published in October by the Lake Union Publishing Division of Amazon Press. Her first novel, Pilate's Wife, published in 2007 by William Morrow, has been translated into 18 languages. The Sacred Well, her second William Morrow novel, was chosen best of 2009 by the San Francisco Book Festival.
Antoinette's non-fiction includes Adventures of a Psychic which spent 44 weeks on the New York Times best seller list. She was the recipient of La Pluma de Plata, an award conferred by the Mexican Government for the best travel article on their country. She writes weekly columns for the San Francisco Chronicle and SF Gate and is a frequent contributor to the Sierra Lodestar. Antoinette's articles have appeared in Cosmopolitan, Self, Country Living, San Francisco and Sacramento magazines.
Visit antoinette's website http://www.antoinettemay.com/
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Indigo Moor
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Indigo MoorIndigo Moor, current Poet Laureate of Sacramento, CA, is also a playwright and author. His second book of poetry, Through the Stonecutter's Window, won Northwestern University Press's Cave Canem prize. His first book, Tap-Root, was published as part of Main Street Rag's Editor's Select Poetry Series. His third book, In the Room of Thirsts & Hungers, is due for publication in July 2017.
Three of his short plays, Harvest, Shuffling, and The Red and Yellow Quartet debuted at the 60 Million Plus Theatre’s Spring Playwright’s festival. His full-length stageplay, Live! at the Excelsior, was a finalist for the Images Theatre
Playwright Award and is being made into a full length film.
A graduate of the Stonecoast MFA Program—where he studied poetry, fiction, and scriptwriting—Indigo is also a graduate member of the Artist's Residency Institute for Teaching Artists and former Vice President of the Sacramento Poetry Center. Winner of the 2005
Vesle Fenstermaker Prize for Emerging Writers and the 2008 Jack Kerouac Poetry contest, a few of Indigo's other honors include: 2009 Pushcart Prize nominee and finalist finishes for the T.S. Eliot Prize, Crab Orchard First Book Prize, Saturnalia First Book
Award, Naomi Long Madgett Book Award, and WordWorks Prize.
Indigo’s works have appeared in Missouri Review, Arkansas Review, Suisun Valley Review, Xavier Review, LA Review, Mochila Review, Boston University’s The Comment, the Pushcart Prize nominated Out of the Blue
Artists Unite, Poetry Now, Black Nature: Four Centuries of African-American Nature Poetry, Cave Canem Anthologies VIII and IX, The Ringing Ear, the NCPS 2006 Anthology, Blue Moon Literary & Arts Review, Breathe 101:
Contemporary Odes, and Gathering Ground and many others.
Indigo teaches workshops throughout the Bay area and the greater Sacramento Valley region.
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Monika Rose
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Monika RoseMonika Rose, at home in the foothills of Calaveras County, founded Manzanita Writers Press, a nonprofit literary publisher housed in the Manzanita Arts Emporium, a new art center in Angels Camp. She is published in several anthologies and literary magazines, and her book of poems, River by the Glass, by GlenHill Publications, is available from Amazon and Small Press Distribution as a print and eBook.
She has edited anthologies such as the recently released A Taste of Literary Elegance: Wine, Cheese & Chocolate, and the ongoing Manzanita series of literary prose and poetry, Wild Edges. With a Masters Degree in English, she teaches courses in writing and literature at Delta College as an Adjunct Associate Professor. Monika is currently writing a novel while editing other writers' books, readying them for publication. Contact her at www.manzapress.com or her website ~ you can also email her at
mrose209@gmail.com.
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Lucy Sanna
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Lucy Sanna
Lucy Sanna's historical novel, The Cherry Harvest (HarperCollins 2015), was named Book Club Book of the summer by the Wisconsin State Journal and the Midwest Independent Booksellers Association's Book Club Pick for July. For this and previous works, Lucy has been featured on national television and radio, including CBS, NBC, NPR, and FOX. Her books have been recognized by national press, including the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Examiner, Wisconsin Journal, San Jose Mercury-News, Playboy Magazine and Men's World Magazine.
Lucy is a sought-after speaker and workshop leader at writers' conferences, including San Francisco's Litquake, the Wisconsin Book Fest, the Chicago Tribune's Book Fest, the Chicago Tribune's Printers Row, the University of Wisconsin's Writers Institute, the University of Wisconsin's Write-by-the-Lake Retreat, and the Sterling North Book & Film Festival. Since 1999, Lucy has served on the Executive Planning Board for the National Kidney Foundation's annual San Francisco's Authors Luncheon, the premier authors' event of the San Francisco Bay Area. She has also served on the Board of the California Writers Club, San Francisco Peninsula Branch. She divides her time between Madison, WI and the SF Bay Area.
Lucy's website: www.lucysanna.com
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Amy Smith
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Amy SmithAmy Elizabeth Smith, originally from
Pennsylvania, teaches creative and professional writing at the
University of the Pacific in Stockton, CA. Her recent memoir,
All Roads Lead to Austen: A Yearlong Journey
with Jane, recounts a year traveling in six Latin American
countries learning Spanish and holding reading groups on Jane
Austen; it was praised by Booklist, Publishers Weekly, and Kirkus. She is currently at work on a mystery series set in Buenos Aires.
You can visit her website at allroadsleadtoausten.com.
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| CONFERENCE SCHEDULE
Friday, May 5th
- 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, and other conference participants will be featured. This
is an open mic reading and open to the public as well. Bring your own work to share.
Saturday, May 6th
- 8:30 to 9:00 a.m. Registration (for those not registered
Friday) at Hotel Leger, 8304 Main St.
- 9:00 a.m. Introduction: Meet the Gold Rush Writers and learn
their secrets. (Lucy Sanna: 5 Habits of a Successful Author)
- 10:15 a.m. to 11:45 a.m Workshops.
- 11:45 to 1:15 p.m. Lunch on your own, explore Mokelumne Hill.
- 1:15 pm to 1:30 p.m. Talk: Lucy Sanna: Accessing Creativity 101.
- 1:30 to 5:00 p.m. Workshops.
- 5:00 to 6:00 p.m. Networking, Book signing/sales, No-host bar.
- 6 p.m. Dinner at the Hotel Leger. Featured Speaker: James Ragan. Poetry, a Life of Living Out Loud
- 8:15 p.m. Open Mic. This is a casual, laid-back event with
no critiquing, just fun. Each reader is limited to 500 words-about 2
double-spaced pages. Everyone is invited to share.
Sunday, May 7th
- 9:30 a.m. Inspirational talk. Kevin Arnold: Carving Out Time to Write
- 10:00 to noon. Workshops.
- Noon Brunch. Afternoon speaker: Donna Levin on: ACTUALLY, YOU HAVE PLENTY OF TIME TO WRITE:
How to Set Priorities, Create a Fertile Environment in Which to Work, and Ensure That Friends and Family Support You.
Workshop Schedule
Saturday 10:15 to 11:45
Saturday, 1:30 to 3:00 p.m.-choose one:
Saturday, 3:15 to 5:00 p.m. -Choose one:
Sunday, 10:00 a.m. to 12 noon -Choose one:
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Pricing: Friday's picnic supper, Saturday dinner and Sunday brunch included.
- $155 --Conference returnees before April 1st
- $165 --Early bird registration before April 1st
- $185 --Thereafter
Click Here
for Registration Form
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Copyright © 2017 Gold Rush Writers | | | |
