Wild Writing Women Literary Salons
ARCHIVE 2004
2007 - 2006 - 2005 - 2004 - 2003 - 2002
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7 January 2004
Featured speaker: John Flinn, Travel Editor of the San Francisco Chronicle
Topic: What I want (and don't want) in travel stories for 2004
Hostess: Jacqueline Harmon Butler
Salon Report: Thank you Laurie King, of the Travel Writer's Calendar (email Laurie to subscribe to the newsletter) who provided this summary:
I can't capture John's wonderful sense of humor, but here are some of my notes:
- Flatter the editor all you want.
- As Arthur Frommer says, don't tell readers about YOUR trip; tell them about THEIR trip. The writer should be the tour guide rather than the protagonist. The most popular SF Chron travel section by far is Follow the Reader, which, John says, has had all literary merit, plot, epiphanies, etc. edited out -- it simply tells readers about places they can go (to have their own epiphanies). They get far fewer submissions for the Weekend Getaway section than for the cover story, so WG is a good way to break in.
- Read what John has written and send something in his own style; he likes it. Please do not send anything written in haiku.
- Queries, clips, cover letter not important; just snail-mail in a solid story with a darned good lede.
- If you have a good photo, especially of an obscure place, be sure to send it along -- don't simply mention that you have accompanying photography.
- Stories are getting shorter, along with readers' attention spans -- generally 1600-1700 words, plus an if-you-go box.
4 February 2004
Featured speaker: Amanda Jones
Hostess: Cathleen Miller
Amanda Jones is a writer and photographer living in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work has appeared in Travel & Leisure, Condé Nast Traveller, the Los Angeles Times, the London Sunday Times, the Sunday Observer, the San Francisco Chronicle, Food & Wine and Vogue Australia, among others. She has been published in several travel anthologies, including Salon.com's Wanderlust, and Lonely Planet's The Kindness of Strangers. She also does story development for National Geographic television. She is currently working on Potentia, a book.
Amanda has worked for Esprit and Vogue Australia, and was editor-in-chief of Antiques & Fine Art magazine.
She has covered stories in Angola, Australia, Bali, Botswana, Borneo, Brazil, Chile, Cook Islands, Dominican Republic, England, Ethiopia, Fiji, Guatemala, India, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Malaysia, Mexico, Mongolia, Morocco, Namibia, Nepal, New Zealand, Niger, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Russia, Samoa, South Africa, Spain, Tahiti, Thailand, Tanzania, Tonga, Turkey, United States, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, and Zanzibar.
Amanda was born and educated in Auckland, New Zealand.
Many thanks to Jacqueline Yau for the following recap of Amanda's talk:
In February, we were treated to the sage tones of the witty, erudite, practical, worldly, and did we say beautifully talented Amanda Jones. How do you begin a career in travel writing? Did Amanda start out magically as a travel writer? Giving hope to all of us newbie travel writers out there, Amanda actually didn't begin her celebrated career as an adventure travel writer and photographer extraordinaire until she turned thirty.
After graduating from university in New Zealand with a science degree, Amanda traveled far from home, like many a Kiwi and landed in San Francisco where she married and fell into working for Esprit. At the time, she fancied herself to be quite an urbanite and stylish to boot. Not wanting to settle down too soon, she and her husband moved to Sydney where she brazenly walked in and offered her services to Vogue Australia. Sure enough, they hired her and she continued her career in fashion but in time came to realize she wanted to expand her experiences and discovered adventure travel. [A turning point was when she realized that she wasn't willing to spend a couple months salary on a pink Chanel suit, like the other gals in her office.] She found she loved traveling on the edge, absorbing the experience and writing about it. She then took a photography class and that was it. She found her calling: photography + writing.
Amanda's tips on travel writing:
- Write as much as possible before sending anything off to an editor. Make sure it is your best work.
- Give up those stories that you've slaved over for a year. Sometimes the best material is the freshest material.
- Send stories out ONLY when it is perfect.
- Choose good reviewers.
- Spell the editor's name correctly when you submit your work.
- Fact check everything.
- Yank anything that you are queasy about from your story.
- Focus on the lede of a story. Get rid of a boring lede. If necessary, eliminate the first few paragraphs, if the most exciting sentence is in the third paragraph. Take the most attention grabbing part of the story and stick it up in the beginning.
- Read, read, read everything. Note descriptions you find beautiful and identify what about the passage pulls you in.
- Write, write, write.
3 March 2004
Featured speaker: Leonard Shlain, a Surgeon, author, educator, inventor, speaker, Marin-based author his work-in-progress is titled Leonardo's Brain.
Hostess: Pamela Michael
Leonard Shlain is the Chairman of Laparoscopic surgery at the California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco and is an Associate Professor of Surgery at UCSF. He is also the author of two critically acclaimed, award-winning books. Art & Physics: Parallel Visions in Space, Time, and Light, (Harper Collins) published in 1991, is presently used as a textbook in many art schools and universities. It has also been translated into foreign languages.
His recent work, The Alphabet vs. the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word & Image, was published by Viking in hardcover in 1998 and within weeks was on the national bestseller list. Penguin distributed his book internationally in 1999 and it is now available in paperback. The Washington Post called it “Bold and fascinating,” George Steiner in the London Observer wrote that it was “Provocative and Innovative.” The New York Times’ Idea Section discussed his thought provoking theory. David Gergen interviewed Dr. Shlain for The Jim Lehrer News Hour and Frank Stasio did the same for National NPR.
Dr. Shlain lectures widely both here and in Europe. He has been a keynote speaker for such diverse groups as the Smithsonian, Harvard University, Salk Institute, Phillips collection, Los Alamos National Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center, and the European Union’s Ministers of Culture. In 1999, he was a contributor to Academic Press’ Encyclopedia of Creativity edited by Steven Runco and Mark Pritzker.
Dr. Shlain has won several literary awards for his visionary work and also holds several patents on innovative surgical devices. His most recent work, Sex, Time and Power: How Women's Sexuality Shaped Human Evolution explores the reasons why Homo sapiens evolved so far away from other animals in several key attributes. He lives and writes in Mill Valley, California, where he's working on his next book titled Leonardo's Brain.
7 April 2004
Featured speaker: Susan Griffin
Hostess: Lisa Alpine
In April Lisa Alpine has invited acclaimed author Susan Griffinto be our guest. The author of twenty books, Susan Griffin has won dozens of awards for her work as a poet, feminist writer, essayist, playwright, and filmmaker. Her book A Chorus of Stones was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. The recipient of an Emmy, a MacArthur Grant, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, she is a frequent contributor to Ms. Magazine, the New York Times Book Review, and numerous other publications. Her most recent book, The Book of the Courtesans, A Catalogue of Their Virtues was a Bay Area best seller. At present, she is at work on a guidebook and a film with filmaker Vénus Amelie called The Courtesan's Guide to Paris. The Berkeley-based author takes private writing students and give workshops. She'll be giving us some insight about her writing process at the April 7th salon.
5 May 2004
Featured speaker: Mark Bittner
Hostess: Jacqueline Harmon Butler
Mark Bittner was born and raised in southwestern Washington State. His ambition as a teenager was to be a Great Novelist, but Mark was alarmed by the uniformly miserable fates of all the writers whom he loved. So he decided to pursue a career in music instead. After hitchhiking through Europe in search of experience, he moved to San Francisco determined to sink or swim as a poet-singer-songwriter. He sank. Completely bereft, he turned to spiritual seeking and ended up on the street where he spent the next 14 years. Ultimately his search led him to the wild parrot flock, which, in turn, led him back to writing, and his first book: The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill.
2 June 2004
Featured speaker: Kathi Kamen Goldmark
Hostess: Carla King
Kathi Kamen Goldmark is the author of And My Shoes Keep Walking Back to You, a novel published by Chronicle Books in 2002. She is the co-author of The Great Rock & Roll Joke Book, and Mid-Life Confidential: The Rock Bottom Remainders Tour America with Three Chords and an Attitude. Kathi is also the founder and a member of the all-author rock band the Rock Bottom Remainders, president and janitor of Don't Quit Your Day Job Records, and producer of the coast-to-coast radio show West Coast Live. She likes to think she is ready for anything.
7 July 2004
Featured speaker: Laurie Fox
Hostess: Cathleen Miller
Laurie Fox is the author of two works of fiction - The Lost Girls (Simon & Schuster), an adult meditation on the Peter Pan myth, and the autobiographical novel, My Sister from the Black Lagoon (Simon & Schuster). She is also the author of the "interactive" haiku poetry book, Sexy Hieroglyphics (Chronicle Books). In turn, Laurie has published two chapbooks, Sweeping Beauty: Notes on Cinderella and I Love Walt, and her poetry has been included in several literary journals. A graduate of UC Santa Cruz in Creative Writing and Theatre, Laurie has written and performed in many theatre and performance art works. A former bookseller of both new and antiquarian books, Laurie was a longtime creative writing teacher and freelance editor. For the past 17 years, she has worked in the publishing industry. A native of Los Angeles, Laurie lived for many years in the San Diego area and has lived in Berkeley, CA for the last 11 years with her husband, author and journalist D. Patrick Miller, and their two cats.
4 Aug 2004
Featured speaker: Suzanne LaFetra
Hostess: Pamela Michael
Our August guest Suzanne LaFetra is an emerging writer who will speak about breaking in to the business of writing. She is the published author of more than 60 articles in the last two years, all delivered with two toddlers underfoot, so she understands organization and focus. Her credits include the San Francisco Chronicle, KQED fm, Ladybug, Literary Mama, Diablo, the East Bay Monthly and San Francisco Chronicle Magazine (forthcoming). Her work has appeared in several anthologies, including the Rocking Chair Reader and the new Traveler's Tales collection, Whose Panties Are These. She also writes a weekly arts feature for the Knight Ridder Hills Newspapers in the East Bay. Suzanne lives in Berkeley with her family.
1 Sept 2004
Featured speaker: Mollie Katzen
Hostess: Lisa Alpine
Mollie Katzen, with over 5 million books in print, is listed by the New York Times as one of the best-selling cookbook authors of all time. Named by Health Magazine as one of the five "Women Who Changed the Way We Eat," and personally selected by the Dean as a founding member of the new Harvard School of Public Health Leadership Council, Ms. Katzen holds a charter seat at the Harvard School of Public Health Nutrition Roundtable and was an inaugural inductee to new Natural Health Hall of Fame. Largely credited with moving healthful gourmet food from the "fringe" to the center of American dinner plates, Ms. Katzen has now formed a partnership with Harvard University as a consultant to Harvard University Dining and advisor to their new, groundbreaking Food Literacy Initiative.
An award-winning illustrator and designer as well as an author and food/nutrition/cultural history scholar, Mollie Katzen is best known as the author of the timeless classic, Moosewood Cookbook, as well as the bestsellers The Enchanted Broccoli Forest, Still Life with Menu, Vegetable Heaven (winner of the International Cookbook Revue Award for Best Vegetarian Cookbook of the Year and a Top Finalist for the Julia Child Awards), and the award-winning children's cookbooks, Pretend Soup and Honest Pretzels (named a Notable Book by the American Librarians' Association). Since 1995, Mollie Katzen has also been the host of four highly-rated cooking series seen nationwide on public television. Ms. Katzen's newest work is a 400-recipe breakfast book, Mollie Katzen's Sunlight Café (Hyperion - September 2002), which was chosen by Book Magazine as one of the five best cookbooks of 2002.
More information about Mollie, and new recipes, can be found on her website at http://www.molliekatzen.com. Find out more about her books http://www.fpdirect.net.
6 Oct 2004
Featured speaker: Cara Black
Hostess: Jacqueline Harmon Butler
Cara Black lives in San Francisco with her husband (a bookseller) and son. She's a San Francisco Library Laureate, vice president of the local Sisters in Crime, and member of the Marais Historique Association. Murder in the Marais, her first Aimée Leduc Investigation, was nominated for an Anthony for Best First Novel and her third, Murder in the Sentier, was nominated for an Anthony for Best Novel 2003.
She's working on book 6 in the series and has to (sigh...) do more research in Paris! Visit her website at www.carablack.com
3 Nov 2004
Featured speaker: Pamela Feinsilber, Senior Editor at San Francisco Magazine.
Hostess: Carla King
Pamela Feinsilber is a longtime Bay Area magazine editor; she also consults on book proposals and fiction or nonfiction manuscripts on a project basis. She’s coached, organized, edited, infuriated, and occasionally inspired dozens of writers since she moved to the Bay Area in the early ’80s. They range from James Wolcott to Barry Gifford, from Po Bronson to Meredith Maran to uncertain first-timers. One of her longtime writers, Dana Gioia, is now head of the National Endowment for the Arts.
At San Francisco magazine, where she’s been a senior editor for five years, she develops feature stories on topics from the mysterious suicide of a prominent San Francisco art figure to the life of a family with a drug-addicted teen. Each month, she edits, and occasionally writes for, an eclectic Arts department. (Most recently, she wrote about author Tobias Wolff and did a Q&A with singer and actor Tom Waits.) She also writes a monthly book review for the magazine, Open Book, as well as occasional longer pieces. Because of her own background in writing, she likes to think of herself as a writer’s editor.
November Salon Report: were you there?
HOW TO WRITE A GREAT QUERY LETTER!
Pamela gave a great talk about writing a query letter that will catch an editors eye. In summary: it needs to convey that there's a STORY there. TALKING ABOUT YOUR IDEA TO FRIENDS may help you develop that story. Know what a NUT GRAF is. Use a SCENE in your query letter. It helps if you tell editors what DEPARTMENT you envision your story belonging in. HOW FRESH is the story? KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE. They don't have staff writers, but use almost 100% FREELANCE WRITERS. SELL THE IDEA before you send clips. A great place to BREAK IN is the front section or a department piece. (These are 250-500 word pieces.) SERVICE SELLS. (How-to.) Pamela has a coaching business for writers. Contact her at feinsilber@comcast.net to get your stories and books out of the computer and into the hands of an editor or agent. She will also be participating in our January writer's conference.
WHO ELSE WAS THERE?
Carla King, Wild Writing Women and motorcycle travel writer, hosted the event. Big news this month is that she's going to Fiji with sister Wild Writing Woman Lisa Alpine (who was home repairing her roof in the storm), to report on eco resorts and the giant clam scientific research center. Jacqueline Harmon Butler reported that she is off to Cancun tomorrow on a gastronomic tour of the area, then almost straight away off to New York on another jaunt. Cathleen Miller is on a panel at a writing conference in Pittsburg, which is about all she can squeeze in while she's working as a creative writing professor at San Jose State. (Wait til summer though, when we're likely to hear she's taken off to exotic far away places with all the other teachers.) Pamela Michael was home with bronchitis and severe post-election depression. Get better, Pam! But about 50 attended, congratulations for coming together despite (or because of) the weather and the news. Here is their information in no particular order. Thank you for coming, and we look forward to seeing you at our Holiday P