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Wednesday, June 6th at 5:30 pm

Host: Lisa Alpine
Guest: Margaret Dumas
Topic: What the fiction writer can do to make the most of her marketing and PR.

The writer’s work doesn’t end with getting published. After that comes what some consider the hardest part –making sure the book sells. Margaret Dumas, author of The Balance Thing and the popular San Francisco-based mystery series featuring Jack and Charlie Fairfax, will be speaking about what the fiction writer can do to make the most of her marketing and PR.

Margaret Dumas was Vice President of a major San Francisco software company before the high-tech crash forced her, and just about everyone she knew, to reevaluate. Her novel The Balance Thing comes from her experiences. It’s a novel for everyone who’s ever said “I’ve got to get a life.”

Dumas embraced the high-tech downturn as an opportunity to pursue her lifelong dream of writing fiction. She was shortlisted for the CWA Debut Dagger award for her first novel, Speak Now, which Publishers Weekly dubbed a “sparkling coup.” The sequel, How to Succeed In Murder, was released in May of 2006 to glowing reviews.

Dumas lives in the San Francisco Bay area, where she is currently at work on her next novel and still in search of the perfectly-balanced life.

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Host: Jacqueline Harmon Butler
Guests: Michael Larsen and Elisabeth Pomada
Topic: What a literary agent does and why it’s important to have one

They launched Michael Larsen-Elizabeth Pomada Literary Agents in San Francisco in 1972, and represent adult, book-length fiction and nonfiction. They are members of the Association of Author’s Representatives, and they’ve sold hundreds of books to more than a hundred publishers.

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Wednesday, April 4th at 5:30 pm

Host: Cathleen Miller
Guest: James D. Houston
Topic: A Writer's Sense of Place

Citing examples from his just-published eighth novel, BIRD OF ANOTHER HEAVEN (Knopf, March 2007), Santa Cruz author James D. Houston will discuss the role and spirit of place in fiction and in nonfiction. Set in northern California and in Hawai'i, this novel has been described by Karen Joy Fowler as "a fascinating account delivered with power, precision and generous imagination." Among his nonfiction works are FAREWELL TO MANZANAR, co-authored with his wife, Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, and IN THE RING OF FIRE: A Pacific Basin Journey, from which several pieces were reprinted in the Travelers' Tales series. He shares a Silver Medal from the Commonwealth Club as co-editor of the landmark collection, THE LITERATURE OF CALIFORNIA, Vol. I (U.C.Press 2000). A former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford, he recently held the Lurie Chair, as Distinguished Visiting Professor of Creative Writing, at San Jose State University. (For more, visit the author's website.)

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Wednesday, March 7th at 5:30 pm

Host: Suzanne LaFetra
Guest: Mark Trautwein
Topic: How to get a great 2 minute Perspectives on the air at KQED

After a career in journalism and government, Mark Trautwein landed at KQED, San Francisco's public radio station. Join the Wild Writing Women and Mark for a conversation about life in public radio, and how to get a great 2 minute Perspectives -- the station's public affairs commentary series -- on air.

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Wednesday, January 3, 2007

Topic: Jacqueline Harmon Butler will introduce the 6th edition of the Travel Writer’s Handbook, which she co-authored with Louise Purwin Zobel.