All Central Coast Writers branch members are
strongly encouraged to provide a short (~200 word) biographical
blurb for publication here. This information helps us all get
to know one another and helps identify members with like interests
or backgrounds to foster the formation of specific interest
groups within our organization. If you have a favorite photo,
(No driver's license photos, please!), send us a copy of that
too. If you'd like to have a new picture taken, please let us
know and we can make arrangements for that also.
Anita
Alan is the author of Big
Sur Inn: The Deetjen Legacy, winner of the 2008 Lowell Thomas
Travel Journalism Bronze Award (Society of American Travel
Writers) and 2007 Gold Medal for Best Non-Fiction in the
West Pacific Region (Independent Publisher). Her fiction,
non-fiction, and photographic work appeared in Cricket Magazine,
Ladybug, The Monterey County Herald, The Carmel Pine Cone,
Monterey County Magazine, Sur Magazine, Instructor, The
Avalon Bay News, The Denver Post, and Norway Magazine. Alan
writes for the Travel section of Norwegian American Weekly.
She was editorial writer, reporter, columnist, and photographer
for The
Big Sur Gazette and The Coast Gazette. While teaching
for Carmel Schools she served as a reading, language arts,
and graphics
consultant for Hampton Brown, Harcourt, Silver Burdett, and Houghton Mifflin. Alan studied at The New School University in New York City, and received her BA from University of Southern California, and MA from Monterey Institute of International Studies. She was a California Semi-Finalist for NASA's Teacher in Space Mission. Alan received the Lighthouse for Literacy Award from the Monterey County Reading Association and the Teacher Recognition Award for Excellence in Environmental Education from the Rancho San Carlos Education Foundation. In 2002, she left teaching to devote full time to writing. Alan served as Hospitality Chair for Central Coast Writers from 2003-08. She is at work on a memoir about the glory days of domestic and international travel—based on her decade of experiences with Trans World Airlines. In July 2011, Alan completed an illustrated chapbook of prose poems, CHARMED, that recalls adventures brought to mind by a gold bracelet of charms collected from around the world.
For more information on her book, travel, and slide presentations,
www.anitaalan.com
Andrei Aleinikov (Dr.
Andy) – Guinness
World Record holder in publishing. A Russian native and
now a U.S. citizen, Dr. Aleinikov started early (at age
four) reciting his poetry to audiences in Russia. His
poetry was first published when he reached 11. As an adult
he had successful careers in education, military, and
science. The latter resulted in two dissertations completed,
new science offered, and over 40 academic works published
(poetry excluding) in Russian.
He came to America and succeeded in being the first Russian
colonel to graduate from the USAF Air War College, Maxwell
AFB, Montgomery, AL in 1993. After graduating, he became
a Professor at Troy University in Alabama, where he was
named Professor of the Year in 1999 and 2003. Here he
originated the Genius Education Methodology (labeled “the
GEM of Education” by media). What teachers called
“miracles” was a well-developed
methodology of transforming an ordinary mind into a genius
thinker mind. He “sculptured” successful Idea
Learners™ from hopeless and doomed to fail children.
His students got the top prizes and awards. Publishers
demanded a book.
MegaCreativity: Five Steps to Thinking Like a Genius
was published by F&W Publications (Walking Stick Press)
in 2002, Cincinnati, Ohio and then republished by John
Wiley & Sons in Singapore. In Asia, the book became
a best seller. He is also known for his project “Instant
Author.” One of the books titled Making the Impossible
Possible that was written in 4 minutes and 30 seconds
and published from scratch in 15 hours 46 minutes in South
Africa set a Guinness World Record. Now his books and
articles (over 120) are published in 8 languages in 13
countries. The most popular ones are in self-help genre.
As a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow, he lectured for
American universities and received numerous awards for
his innovative teaching. His Genius Education Methodology
spread to Singapore, Thailand, and South Africa. He “fathered”
8 new sciences, including Geniusology – the science
of genius, and discovered 11 new laws of conservation
(www.lawsofconservation.com).
In 2006 Dr. Aleinikov moved to Monterey and now works
for the Defense Language Institute (DLI) developing Russian
language curriculum.
Howard Birnbergis president of Birnberg & Associates,
a management consulting and association management firm.
He is presently serving as an instructor in project management
at the University of California-Berkeley Extension. For
six years, he served as an instructor on project management
in the Office of Executive Education at the Harvard University,
Graduate School of Design and also as an adjunct assistant
professor at Michigan State University, College of Human
Ecology. Mr. Birnberg formerly served as a lecturer on
project management for the University of Wisconsin, Department
of Engineering Professional Development for nearly twenty
years. He has also lectured at the University of Illinois-Chicago,
Northwestern University, University of Texas-El Paso,
University of Kansas and Andrews University.
He is the author of Project Management for Designers
and Facilities Managers (J. Ross Publishing, 2008),
Project Management for Building Designers and Owners
(CRC Press, 1998), Project Management for Small Design
Firms (McGraw-Hill, 1992) and as general editor of
New Directions in Architectural and Engineering Practice
(McGraw-Hill, 1992). His research and articles regularly
appear in professional journals. His novel, The Genius
Gene will be published in the United Kingdom by Book
Guild Publishing (Brighton) in July 2010. He has completed
two additional novels, The Clone and The Genesis,
both pending publication.
Mr. Birnberg holds a Bachelor of Science in Architecture
degree from the Ohio State University and a Masters in
Business Administration from Washington University in
St. Louis. He is the founder of the Inner-City Education
(ICE) program in Chicago. The not-for-profit ICE program
provides educational scholarships for urban students who
participate in organized ice hockey programs. He is a
member of the Oriental Institute in Chicago and has a
long standing interest in archaeology, the development
of early civilizations and in genetics. Mr. Birnberg has
traveled extensively throughout Europe, Asia, North America,
Africa and South America.
Please Google “Howard Birnberg” for more information.
Mari Lynch Dehmler
is a native of rural central Illinois and moved to the
Monterey Bay in 1976. She is the owner of Fine Wordworking,
a writing and editorial services business established
in Monterey in 1981. She serves local and nationwide clients,
including authors, publishers, educators, nonprofit organizations,
large corporations, small businesses, individual professionals,
and others. In addition to ghost writing and collaborating,
Mari writes under her own byline for books, magazines,
newsletters, newspapers, and radio.
Martin
Dodd, a founding member
of CCW, lives in Corral de Tierra. Following his retirement
from thirty-five years in community service, he joined the
Thunderbird Writers Group in 2002 at age 67. His work has
appeared in numerous print and on-line publications, much
of which can be accessed through: http://sites.google.com/site/martinhdodd.
He has received various awards and recognition in local,
national, and international contests, including those of
CCW, East of Eden Writers’ Conference (2008), Glimmer
Train, and Writers Digest. A super short film “Happy
Anniversary,” written by him, is currently entered
in several festivals. You can contact Martin at gopumps@aol.com
Jerry
Gervase: My column "Central
Coasting" is now in its ninth year, appearing every Sunday
in the Monterey County Herald, a 35,000 plus daily newspaper.
I have "ghosted" two books, and currently "ghosting" a third
book about a major local business for the offspring of the
company's founders. I served as a staff writer for the nationally
distributed ARTWORKS MAGAZINE for three years. My feature
articles have appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle and
the San Francisco Examiner, as well as the Oakland Tribune,
and the Contra Costa Times. Recently I completed my third
screen play and have a fourth in the works. I continue to
be a regular contributor to an East Coast Magazine, The
Uptight Suburbanite, as association that has lasted fifteen
years. Visit my new Web site: http://jerrygervase.com/
Laurie
Gibson deeply believes in
the written word. A professional book editor and proofreader
for a dozen years, she's also written more than 200 articles
for newspapers, newsletters, Web sites, and magazines. Her
education includes a Bachelor's degree in English, numerous
undergraduate and graduate courses in journalism, and a
specialized certificate in copyediting. As an editor, she
works with both experienced and first-time authors to help
improve their writing and enhance their ability to connect
with readers.
A native of New York City, Walter
Gourlay moved to the Monterey
Peninsula after retiring from teaching at Michigan State
University. He has a doctorate in Chinese history from Harvard
and has done considerable academic writing. Before his teaching
career, he was a freelance writer for men’s adventure
magazines. For some time he worked in public relations,
and managed a concert hall in New York. He has now returned
to writing fiction. He is a founding member of the Fiction
Writers of Monterey Peninsula, FWOMP, a member of the Monterey
Peninsula Writers Workshop and an active member of the local
chapter of the National Writers Union serving on the Steering
Committee and as an elected delegate of the local to the
National Writers Union. Walter writes a monthly "Profiles"
for the Carmel Residents Association Newsletter. FWOMP's
first collected work, Monterey Shorts, contains his
short story, Reunion. The "Pebbles” writing group
in Carmel,
of which he is also a member, has recently published
five of his short stories in their latest collection, The
Barmaid, The Bean Counter and the Bungee Jumper. An
earlier collection, Pebbles, includes two of his
short stories. He’s now writing his wartime memoirs
and researching a historical novel set in New York City,
Java, and Japan during the Napoleonic Wars. Walter lives
in Carmel, California.
Born in Arroyo Grande, California, Harold
Grice's main occupation
as a youth was MISCHIEF. Moving often, his family finally
settled on a ranch in Huasa Valley, an isolated place southeast
of Arroyo Grande. Milking cows, slopping hogs, hunting,
fishing, and riding and breaking horses were Harold's life
as he attended a one room classroom through the eighth grade.
Arroyo Grande High, San Luis Obispo and Bend, Oregon, were
the venues of his high school education. Opting for discharge
after serving three years in the Marine Corps in the Pacific,
Harold worked for the Fire Guard, California Division of
Highways and Neill Engineers, Carmel. In 1970, he founded
Grice Engineering, Inc. in Salinas. Harold married Ramona
Johnson nee Zezetiheine and they have lived in their home
on Torero Drive in Salinas for some thirty odd years. Grice
is always free with his thoughts including, but not limited
to, the "Philosophy of Success for the Entrepreneur," which
identifies character requirements needed for success in
something about which you have limited knowledge. These
include: Ego, greed, tenacity, ignorance... and a big
dose of luck.
Harold has already penned his epitaph: "Here lies Harold
E. Grice, what he did was very nice. While he was having
all this fun, he left his better works undone." We hope
not!
Arlen Grossman has been writing the "What's Your QQ?" quotation quiz every week in the Monterey Herald since 2007. It appears in the Sunday Leisure section. He also does a radio quiz segment every Tuesday morning during the 9 o'clock hour on KRXA 540AM's "The Morning Show." Arlen recently began an interactive quotation quiz website www.quotationquotient.com, and a political blog www.thebigpicturereport.com. He is a former journalism student, and has written numerous articles and letters for newspapers and magazines Arlen retired from teaching disabled adults in 2010, and is devoting his newfound time to writing and blogging.
He lives in Del Rey Oaks with his wife, two teenage children, and assorted pets. When he wins his first Pulitzer or Nobel Prize in Literature, he promises to buy dinner for everyone in the CCW.
Larry Grouse has always been an editor, probably because it guarantees that he can publish his own writings. Poplars at Washburn High School in Minneapolis; Manuscript at Carleton College; the New Physician and NW Medicine at the University of Washington where he received his MD and PhD degrees, and as Director of Scientific Affairs at the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) he created the column A Piece of My Mind, and as the column editor he worked with hundreds of physicians and other writers seeking creative expression for their deeply felt experiences in medicine. For 11 years he was the Vice President for Programming and Medical Affairs of the Lifetime Television Network where he wrote more than 250 scripts for medical programs and
supervised the ongoing production of more than 50 producers and writers. Since 1992 he has been the Executive Director of international health initiatives founded by the World Health Organization and the US National Institutes of Health. His books Cable Hell, You Can't Print That! and Travels in Medicine are available on Amazon. His son Eric who is a Chief Corporate Counsel at Amazon working on the Kindle properties helped him submit the digital copies of his books when he couldn't figure out how to do it himself.
Dick
Guthrie was born into an Army
family and spent his younger years moving around the United
States and Europe. When he enlisted in the Army at age seventeen
years , two months, it was for the express purpose of getting
the draft out of the way so he could go on to college and
into a money-making job -- and live happily ever after.
He found he liked the service, though, and went to West
Point and was commissioned a second Lieutenant of Infantry
in 1963. In 1974 he bought a small house on the Monterey
Peninsula where his wife and two children lived while he
served a year in Korea. After thirty-four years in uniform
he retired and took a position as General Administrative
Manager with Southern Peru Copper Corp. After five and a
half years in Peru he and his wife moved to the house on
the Monterey Peninsula.
He has published several magazine articles and currently
is working on Memoirs of Company command in Vietnam. The
wartime story of 1967-68 is supplemented with the account
of a return trip he made to Binh Dinh Province in 1998 along
with his former Senior Company Medic and First Platoon Leader.
Deanne
E. Gwinn
Deanne has resided on California's Central Coast for
the past thirty years. After a long spell of entering
poetry contests, she turned to fiction and penned the
Translight Trilogy (copyright registrations for first
versions 1990/91). In 2006 she participated in the East
of Eden Conference and was awarded first place for poetry.
A collection of her poetry, Treeology, contains poems
from various phases of life, starting with fifth-grade
experiments with rhyme and meter, advancing through the
Sturm und Drang of adolescence and young adult, into the
senior years. The collection is available on Amazon.com.
Her novels The Senders of Shaula, and the three parts
of the Translight Trilogy are also available on Amazon
in both paperback and Kindle formats.
A fourth generation Pagrovian,
Patricia Hamiltonis descended from the Reverend Sylvanus
G. Gale, Methodist minister in the Pacific Grove Retreat,
1890-93. Her daughter, son-in-law and two grandchildren
live in San Luis Obispo, California.
After a career as a controller with an international
restaurant corporation, Hamilton began writing and publishing
interior landscape contractor books in 1982.
In 1994, she enrolled in UC Santa Cruz, completed her
degree in Philosophy at the University of Lancaster, England,
then lived in Spain where she taught English in Elche,
near Valencia. She wrote and published two books abroad:
“Peace Consciousness in Northern Ireland and Findhorn,
Scotland,” a UCSC President's Fellowship, and "I
Can't Be Bothered," about her mates in Lancaster.
She has just completed a healthful travel guide to California,
and enjoys spending time with her grandchildren. Local
authors interested in self-publishing can reach her for
a free consult at 649-6640 or at her office at 591 Lighthouse
Ave #20, Pacific Grove.
Dr. Pat Hanson
is a veteran health and human sexuality educator, public
speaker, and writer born in 1945, on the cusp of the wave
of 78 million baby-boomers approaching 65. She has two
sons. Her eldest, 29, is currently a ski instructor in
the Sierra Nevada mountains, and gave her two grandchildren
now ages eight and ten. Pat's youngest, 27, a graduate
of a U.S. military academy is now serving in the Middle
East. She is proud to report she's a healthy survivor
of the if-it-feels-good-do-it 60s and the AIDies, been
married three times, and calls herself bi-coastal. She
lives in Monterey, California, with her significant equal
and third husband of sixteen years.
Finally at 65, she's given up doing anything else but
fine-tuning her own voice to get it out there. Formerly
co-chair of Local 7 of the National Writers Union, Pat
is currently the sexuality and relationships columnist
for the new magazine: Crone:
Women Coming of Age. She has dozens of publications
in academic journals and magazines. She was a
consulting author on the first edition of Charlotte
Kasl's A Guidebook to 16-Step Empowerment Groups,
and worked with her on its 2009 revision, Yes You Can!,
as well as two videos: Beyond Recovery and Healing
from Trauma with Love & Empowerment. Pat's short fiction,
If the Tubs Could Talk, appears in Monterey
Shorts, Thunderbird Press 2002 & 2004. Featuring ten
other fiction writers, it was distributed through local
and national channels, selling close to 6,000 copies.
She has a chapter on The Secrets to Successful Sexuality
in Everything You Need to Know to Succeed After College,
Equality Press 1993.
In September 2010, she won 3rd place (of 70 entrants)
in the San Francisco Lit-quake "Pitch-a-looza" contest,
the prize for which put her book proposal for Invisible
Grandparenting: Leave a Legacy of Love Whether You can
be There or Not, in the hands of a NYC agent.
Ken
Jonesmoved to the Monterey
Peninsula after retiring from the Boeing Company in March
of 2001. Southern Californian natives, he and his wife felt
a growing attraction to the Central Coast that finally became
too powerful to resist. Ken holds a Bachelors of Science
in Personnel Management and Industrial Relations from Northern
Arizona University. His working career involved some technical
and business writing, but he began writing for pleasure
in the mid 80's, focusing primarily on short story fiction.
Ken's short-short stories have received Honorable Mention
in the Coast Weekly's annual 101 Word Short Story Contests
in. In 2003, the Weekly's first
prize ($101) went to Ken's Holiday Dinners. He is
a co-author of Monterey Shorts, (Thunderbird Publication,
2001), and Monterey Shorts 2, (FWOMP Publications,
2005), collections of short stories set on the Monterey Peninsula, by the Fiction Writers of the Monterey Peninsula, (FWOMP).
He is also, on and off, working on
a novel length mystery that builds on the primary character
from his story Borscht in The Bay published in Monterey
Shorts, and Canned Hunt from Monterey Shorts
2. Five of Ken's stories are contained in The Barmaid,
The Bean Counter and the Bungee Jumper, a collection
of short stories and poetry produced in November '03 by
the Pebbles Writing Group of Carmel. Ken and his wife Anne
have one daughter, Nora, and two grandsons, Alejandro, and Santiago. Ken and Anne live in Pacific
Grove with their deaf, one-eyed (or in the more sensitive
words of her loving Veterinarian, "sound challenged
and monocular") cat, Lucky. Ken is a past president
and vice president. He currently serves the branch as its
Webmaster.
Carol Brown Kauffmann
is a native of Atlanta, Georgia. She graduated from college
with a major in Psychology. In 1978, she co-founded a
school supply manufacturing company which received Sam
Walton's "Wal-Mart Vendor of the Year" award.
She has served on numerous civic boards and is Chair
of the Mary Brown Fund of Atlanta, a philanthropic family
foundation. From 1994-98, she interviewed Holocaust survivors
as part of Stephen Spielberg's Shoah Foundation.
Carol co-authored Juvenile Digest in 1975 an Passport
to Education in 1994. She wrote for "Peachtree Papers" magazine
from 1982-1998. As its editor in 1978-88, she redesigned
the magazine and won an international Public Relations Award.
She currently writes fiction and non-fiction from her home
in Pebble Beach, California. Carol is married and has a
blended family, which includes four grandsons and a cat
named Charlie, all frequent subjects of her writing.
Branch President and Central Board Representative,
Joyce Krieg,
is the author of the Shauna J. Bogart
Talk Radio Mystery Series: Murder Off Mike, Slip Cue,
and Riding Gain, all from St. Martin’s Minotaur.
Murder Off Mike was the winner of the St. Martin’s
Press “best first traditional mystery” contest and was nominated
for an Agatha award. A native of Dayton, Ohio, Joyce grew
up in the South Bay area “before it became Silicon Valley.”
She attended San Jose State and was a member of the editorial
board of Spartan Daily back when it was an unusual
day not to have some sort of demonstration happening on
Seventh Street. After careers as a daily newspaper reporter,
television announcer, radio reporter and newscaster, Joyce
settled in as promotion director for Sacramento’s KFBK News/Talk
1530. The latter experience served her well as background
material when she started to write a mystery about a crime-fighting,
mystery-solving talk radio host. While at KFBK,
Joyce was part of the management team that discovered
Rush Limbaugh and launched his career, which she calls “my
greatest claim to fame or shame.” Joyce now lives in Pacific
Grove, where her full-time job is serving as head of staff
to a purebred Abyssinian cat known as Amberjack.
Barbara
Lazarony
Barbara Lazarony, aka Blaze, is a fire-starter and mentor to women who want to light up the world. She is committed to helping professional women discover who they are and what they want to manifest in their lives.
Barbara excelled for twenty years in the fast-paced world of a Fortune 100 company, where she created a 'wildly successful' career as a Senior Director. She managed customer service, as well as over 200 million dollars of expenses in thirty-seven retail locations throughout the United States. In 2003, she found herself face to face with thyroid cancer. Using her illness as a catalyst, she "blazed" her own brilliant path to recovery and wholeness.
An avid poet and journal writer; Barbara transferred her diverse skills from the corporate environment to serve as an Executive Director for a non-profit dedicated to using writing to heal. So began the journey of merging her professional skills with her more creative gifts. She is a Journal to the Self Instructor and is in the final stages of completing her Certificate in Journal Facilitation from the Therapeutic Writing Institute. Barbara is also the author of two books of poetry, a Co-Editor at All Things Healing, and leads writing workshops on creative self-expression, healing, and transformation.
Following her growing desire to mentor and empower others, Barbara earned coaching certificates from Martha Beck and from the Institute for Transpersonal Psychology. As a guest lecturer for the Ernst & Young Leadership Seminar at California State University, Northridge, she uses her intuitive, creative, and sassy teaching style to help people discover their essence, outline their values, and create a vision for their future as leaders in the world.
Barbara is passionate about coaching professional women to break free from the thoughts and actions that keep them stuck and overwhelmed. She uses coaching and creativity to help them become the person they've always wanted to be, inspiring them to step into their own personal fire. She empowers women to light up the world by reconnecting to their unique brilliant passion, purpose, and power.
Ixchel
Susan Leighhas been a published
writer for almost twenty years. Her editorials, articles,
and columns have been published in magazines and newspapers
both in the U.S. and abroad. Her book launch in 2001 took
place in London, England and she is currently finishing
up her first novel.
Since a teenager, Ixchel has explored her heart's desires
and interests in alchemy, aromatherapy, physics, metaphysics,
shamanism, spirituality, anthropology, vibrational medicines,
and the natural world. Her travels have taken her to Europe,
India, Philippines, North Africa, Mexico and throughout
the United States. Years of study around the world in
holistic therapies and with indigenous peoples is integrated
into her life and reflected in her work, writing, and
philosophy...“My heart and my life are committed
to Love and Transformation and to guiding myself and others
to make the many changes which enrich all Life.”
Ixchel has been one of the pioneers of aromatherapy and
complementary wellness therapies in the United States
and Europe.
In the autumn of 2001, Ixchel's book Aromatic Alchemy
~ Recipes for Transformation was published (Boston,
MA: Mansion Publishing, 2001) and she was a contributing
author to The World of Aromatherapy (Berkeley,
CA: Frog, Ltd. 1996). Ixchel is the creator of Vibrational
AromaTherapyTM, a system of complementary healing
which uses essential oils and Nature’s Vibrational
Medicines for overall well being. In 1997 she authored
a training manual of the same name that was published
by Quality of Life Associates, Boston.
Ixchel says, “These days, my creative energy is
focused on my writing. It’s what excites me...It’s
my passion.” Her writing now takes her into the genre
of fiction. In the summer of 1999 she wrote a memoir called
“Musings in a Vibrational World” that was published
in a magazine called Aromatic Thymes. It is an
introduction to her novels: journeys of suspense through
the senses, shifting back and forth from the present to
different periods of history.
Kemberlee
Lugo-Shortlandwas born and
raised raised in Carmel. In 1997, she couldn't pass up the
opportunity to spend six months in Ireland, where she met
a man who eventually became her husband. Upon permanently
relocating to Ireland, Kemberlee established an Irish travel
consultancy, building a reputation as one of Ireland's foremost
Irish travel experts.
Kemberlee has had the opportunity to study Ireland's
history and culture first hand, and has even picked up
a cúpla focal . . . a few Irish words. Because
of her knowledge of Ireland, she has had the privilege
of working with some of the romance industry’s top
authors who have set their stories in Ireland, including
Deb Stover for "Mulligan Stew" and "Mulligan
Magic."
Over the years, Kemberlee’s love of Ireland has
inspired a number of Irish set stories, including Moondance
and The Power of Love. Her stories Tutti-Frutti
Blues and Dude Looks Like A Lady are set in
mid-1980s Carmel, at a time when eating ice cream on the
street and wearing high heels without a permit were against
the law! These stories were in an anthology about quirky
laws called No Law Against Love, the stories of
which are based around some of the world's craziest laws.
A Piece of My Heart is Kemberlee’s first
published novel, and she invites readers to also look
for the short story sequel, Constant Craving.
Kemberlee loves hearing from her readers, so stop by
her website for excerpts, reviews, awards, and order information.
Don't forget to drop her an e-mail: www.kemberlee.com
Kemberlee also publishes articles for writers on her
blog, Hearticles: Articles with Heart: www.hearticles.blogspot.com
Kemberlee is also now writing erotica under the pen name
Scarlett Valentine and runs a separate site at: www.scarlett-valentine.com
Founding Branch President Patricia
Matuszewskigrew up
on a ranch in southwestern Washington State. Since then,
she has lived in Mexico, Russia, Turkey, Princeton, NJ
and Washington, DC. She and her husband Daniel first came
to the Monterey Peninsula when he studied, and later taught
Russian, at the Defense Language Institute. They live
in Seaside Highlands.
The Matusezewskis have two sons, Erik, a journalist,
and Ian, who is currently teaching in Spain. Pat has been
a high school history teacher, lecturer and administrator
at Princeton University, and grant writer for The National
Geographic Society.
Although most of her publications have been in education
and history, her short story, The
Haint in the Hills, was a winner of The Monterey
Herald's 2002 fiction contest, and she is a co-author
of The Barmaid, The Bean Counter and the Bungee Jumper
published by Thunderbird Publications in October of 2003.
Pat continues to write short stores and is currently at
work on a mystery series set in Monterey County.
Julie Anne Morley
is the author of Cole Creek, a tale of three generations
of women that begins at the sea and travels to the high
Sierra. She is currently working on her second novel Pacheco
Falls, which is set in Henry Coe State Park. Julie
feels most at home out in the backcountry astride a horse,
swimming in the chilly Santa Cruz ocean waters, strapped
into snowshoes or laced into well worn hiking boots. Her
love of the wilderness helps her to create vivid characters
that experience the outdoors in life altering situations.
Julie hopes to bring her readers closer to the natural
world through story and also to inspire people to seek
the magic that can be found by stepping outside.
After raising four children, Julie has reinvented herself,
much as her characters do in Cole Creek. Julie lives with
her husband in Santa Cruz, California and north of Mackay,
Idaho in the Big Lost River Valley. Julie Anne Morley
earned a degree in Philosophy from the University of California
at Santa Cruz. She is a member of the Outdoor Writers
Association of America. Her passion for the outdoors is
only equaled by her love for the written word.
Wanda
Sue Parrottis one of this
veteran writer's 18 literary aliases. She is Branch Secretary.
She made her debut as a stand-up- comedy poet as Professor
Parrott in Springfield, Missouri poetry slams in 2007.
“I love to experiment, and to invent,” she says.
As Diogenes Rosenberg, in 1997 she invented the world's
shortest--and only purely horizontal--sonnet, the Pissonnet
(pronounced Pee-so-nay if intoned for delicacy with a
French accent).
As Edgar Allan Philpott, in 2009 she won the Louisiana
Senior Poet Laureate Award by masqueraging as an itinerant
musician from New Orleans. As Philpott, she also self-
published The Boondoggler's Bible, a limited-edition
private mini-book, in 2009.
As Prairie Flower, a name that evolved decades ago, she
has produced poetry inspired by the Native American influence.
Other bylines include Juan Garcia, Thomas de Mia, Susan
Norris and Alexandre Scotch.
During the 1970s she wrote Swamiwanda's Metaphysical
Mailbag column for the old Hollywood Citizen News, and
for nearly forty years, survived an on-and-off career
as journalist under her best-known byline, Wanda Sue Parrott.
Under this name, while living in Missouri from 1988 through
2009, where she was syndicated columnist with Senior Living
Newspapers and teacher of writing at Ozarks Technical
College, she invented the Story Stanza.
“This is a 100-word Shortcuts To Success formula
I've used to win every flash fiction contest I've entered,
except one,” she says. “My students used to
get published. I hope to share it with California writers
because it works. You don't need a Ph.D. to succeed as
a writer. You need shortcuts to success that will work
for you if you work with them.”
She is co-founder of the National Annual Senior Poets
Laureate Poetry Competition for American Poets age 50
and older, and is currently serving as editor of Scribbles,
newsletter of the Central Coast Writers branch of the
California Writers Club.
She lives in the Monterey area with her feline friend
Big Blackie. No new names are on the agenda—yet.
She is often referred to as "Amy" and always
answers such mail. "Amy Kitchener's Angels Without
Wings Foundation is a business name, not one of mine,"
she says. www.amykitchenerfdn.org
Diana Y. Paul is an
author and artist, living in Carmel, California. She is a former Stanford University professor
who has published three books on Buddhism, written articles on US-Japan trade for California
newspapers, and will have some of her first short stories published in upcoming literary journals
due to be released in 2011. She is currently polishing the manuscript for a novel, The Unhealed Wound.
Diana is also a printmaker: "I love printmaking, because I feel that there are no mistakes. I love writing just
as much and am currently polishing the final draft of my novel, The Unhealed Wound. To me these two creative processes
are intertwined and this belief was reinforced when I read that the author of The Time Traveler's Wife, Audrey Niffenegger,
had been and continues to be a well-respected printmaker, before she leaped into writing her first novel!"
Diana's focus in printmaking is on a Japanese aesthetic combined with a mixed media approach to the image, usually an
organic one, with an element of surprise or the unexpected. Her art has been exhibited in California, Hawaii, and Japan.
David
Perryis a third generation
Monterey native who, at fifty six years of age, has recently
found his writing voice. He has written extensively for
his employer of thirty one years, and is now a site steward
for Creative writing: Short stories at Helium.com under
the name of David Elder. He has published over one hundred
pieces there, a majority of which are short stories. He
also writes satire and humor and offers critiques and advice
to new writers at Helium.com. In addition, he manages several
other websites including his favorite, Tantalizing Tales.
Tantalizing Tales displays exceptional short stories
of all categories by various writers, and offers a monthly
short story writing contest with the prize of having the
author’s story and name featured on his site.
David is also writing a novel, which he hopes to have
finished within the year. He is married to a very understanding
and thoughtful wife who indulges his passion for writing.
Like most
budding writers, David has had his triumphs and disappointments,
but through it all has embraced the accepting spirit and
encouragement of fellow writers. To read his work, or
participate in the contests, please follow these links.
Bob Roy was raised in Massachusetts until entering the navy during the Vietnam War. He's earned a degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Massachusetts (Dartmouth) and for the past thirty years plied his way through a construction management career. He resettled in California after a decade long absence, having lived in Hawaii for a short time then in Washington State for eleven years. He began writing over twenty five years ago, first concentrating on screenplays then moving into the novel. He's penned four complete novels, two successive ones in the private investigator genre, another in historical fiction in which he offers up a unique take on the JFK assassination. His first publication, The Torrance File, is due for release shortly from Aberdeen Bay Publishing.
Bob currently resides in King City, California, with his lovely bride, Barbara, and is
dutifully employed by the United States Army Corps of Engineers. He continues to write and strives for his second publication. He blogs on his website, www.bobroy.com, and welcomes correspondence with fellow mystery writers.
I am C. Jonathan Shoemaker.
I came here from Milwaukee, Wisconsin to study Russian
at the Army Language School in 1961. I have a Secondary
Teaching Credential with a Major in German and Minors
in Spanish and Russian. I also have a Bilingual Certificate
of Competence.
I have taught in many academic areas and a variety of
situations, as a foreign language teacher, department
chairman, resource specialist, special day teacher, migrant
resource teacher, summer migrant program director, English
as a Second Language teacher, teacher of Personal Responsibility,
and a home/hospital instructor.
I have now retired from full time teaching for various
reasons, but I still enjoy working with the public, especially
young people. I enjoy working as a marshal at the Pacific
Grove golf
course. I enjoy reading literature of all kinds, and
I have written three books, two of poems and an instructional
book on golf.
Jonathan serves the branch through volunteer development
and hospitality related efforts.
A native of the Bay Area of Northern
California, Michelle L.
Smith aspired to pursue
a profession dedicated to assisting people in need. During
her freshman year at Mills College, a private women’s
college in Oakland, she determined that a career in medicine
was the perfect choice to accommodate her love of the sciences
and passion to help others. After obtaining a B.A. in Chemistry
at Mills, she earned her medical degree from the University
of Southern California, and then returned to Oakland to
complete an internship and residency in Internal Medicine.
After 11 years of practicing medicine, Dr. Smith listened
to her inner voice and acted upon a longstanding desire
to write. A proponent of preventive medicine, she was
pleased to discover a venue that afforded an opportunity
to communicate with a large number of people. While writing
articles for trade and consumer magazines, focusing on
subjects
ranging from health to travel, she also enrolled in novel
mechanics courses and took on the arduous task of penning
her first novel.
In 2001 Dr. Smith founded The Ebony Quill, LLC through
which she continues writing freelance. She enjoys attending
writers conferences and critique sessions and studying
the writing styles of other authors to congeal much of
what she has learned in the classroom. Her website (theebonyquill.com)
highlights some of her work, and she hopes to find an
agent to represent her novel, Hide and Seek, a
suspense-drama that follows the metamorphosis of a troubled
nine-year-old girl who encounters an uncanny ability to
communicate with spirits while her dysfunctional family
struggles with the death of her younger brother.
While Dr. Smith maintains her medical licenses in the
states of California, Arizona and Hawaii, she is also
a member of The Authors Guild, The National League of
American Pen Women and the National Writers Union. Currently,
she splits her time between residences in California and
Arizona.
Illia
Thompsonis the author of
Moments, Gracious Seasons, and Heartframes.
She teaches memoir writing through Monterey Peninsula College,
MPC, and presents private classes and workshops on Journaling
which emphasize writing as an art form and a tool for growth
and healing. A graduate of Antioch College in Ohio, Illia
has taught preschool through college and delights in those
who find joy in discovering their ability to write their
life stories. Illia serves on the Board of Directors of
The Creative Edge and is a charter member of Pebbles, the
Thunderbird Bookshop writers group. A poem of Illia's, Dancing
on the Brink of the World, will appear in a collection
of poetry celebrating Point Lobos which published in April,
2003.
Frances
Diem Vardamiswas born
in New York City. A graduate of Queens College of the City
of New York, she has taught English and history, at the
high school level, in California, Germany, New York City
and up-state New York, and in Vermont. For several years
she worked in public outreach and sales positions with the
Sugarbush Ski Resort in Warren, Vermont. She was employed
as a journalist and lecturer in North Dakota. She is Membership
Chair and Newsletter Editor for the Robinson Jeffers Tor
House Foundation in Carmel, California. Fran serves on the
Board of the Friends of the Harrison Memorial Library in
Carmel.
She is the author of the Yannis Lavonis series of detective
novels published by Silk Label Publishing Co., a subsidiary
of Royal Fireworks Printing Co. of Unionville, NY. The
novels, Russian Doll, Ancestral Voices, and Pity the Children
are set in modern Greece and deal with contemporary politics
as well as crime. The fourth novel in the series, Vermont
Sea Glass, follows Yannis Lavonis to the United States
and looks at America through the eyes of a Greek visitor.
Its themes are immigration and terrorism. A soon-to -be-published
fifth novel in the series, a millennial mystery, Time
Running Out, is set in Greece and Russia.
In addition to the Yannis Lavonis novels, Vardamis has
done considerable translation of Norwegian texts. Among
them are some half dozen self-help books published by
Psyk Opp, the Norwegian Psychiatric Information Foundation.
She has translated Freedom and Fear by John Arne Markussen,
a contemporary analysis of American society, as well as
a medieval verse play set in tenth century Norway. Her
translation of The Carriage Stone, by the modern Norwegian
novelist Sigbjørn Hølmebakk was published
in 1996 by DuFour Editions, Inc. of Chester Springs, PA.
She is, also, the recipient of a Nordic Council translation
grant for the prize-winning short story collection, What
Will We Do Today? by the contemporary author, Øystein
Lønn.
She is married to Alex Vardamis, also a writer, and a
retired Army colonel and university professor. She is
the mother of two adult children. Her daughter, Sharon,
a poet and playwright, resides in Amherst, Massachusetts
and is a professional fundraiser. Her son, Daniel, lives
with his poet/novelist wife and a rescue husky in a caboose
in the Rockies and works as a tech at Neptune Mountaineering
in Boulder. His high mountain blog can be found at http://thewhiteroom.typepad.com
G.M.
Weger , alias Gwyn Weger,
has been writing all of her life. During her childhood,
teens, and early twenties, she wrote children's stories
and poetry. She attended California State University, Chico,
(amongst other colleges), and in 1995 completed her master's
thesis, "Women's Stories," which she wrote and developed
into an interactive CD-ROM (new at the time). As a college
student she focused primarily on the nonfiction writing
required of college: scholarly papers, media writing in
her major, and personal essays. By her thirties, she flirted
with screenplay writing. Yet it wasn't until she began working
on short fiction stories that she found her niche. At the
2008 East of Eden Writers Conference, she was awarded 3rd
place in the Memoir/Nonfiction category with a short called
Practically Magic. She's won other awards for her
writing, but in 2010 she won Best Regional Fiction in the
National Indie Excellence Awards for her first novel, East
Garrison. Currently, she's working on her second
novel, a historic account of a local family's tragic story
from the 1800s, tentatively titled Unknown. G.M. Weger
has been an editor/writer for the Department of Defense
since 1996, at Fort Ord, California. She lives in Salinas
with her husband and their two children.
Kerry
M. Wood is a retired teacher
of English, co-author of eight textbooks, a self-published
memoirist, and a prize winning poet. He is a regular contributor
to Writers Digest Forum and Helium.com. His 37-year teaching
career involved secondary schools, private and public, on
the San Francisco Peninsula as well as three years in Istanbul,
Turkey. He received a BA in English at Yale and an MA at
San Jose State. His military service was mostly spent studying
Russian at DLI. Currently he is a member of FaceBook, LinkedIn,
StumbleUpon, and Twitter.
Judy
Zhugrew up in Beijing, China.
She came to Monterey for graduate school in 2000 and landed
a job as a Chinese language professor after graduation.
She is a member of the Chinese Language Teachers Association
of California (CLTAC) as well as a member of American Translators
Association (ATA).
Judy began publishing her works at the age of 14. At
the age of 15, she won Third Place at the International
Chinese Poetry Contest and her poem Speechless Winter
was published in the book International High School
Chinese Poets. At the age of 17, six of her essays
were included in the five-volume series of Beijing
Top Ten High School Award-Winning Writings. In short,
before she came to the US for graduate school, she had
won many literature awards in China and her 300 plus poems,
prose and stories were published in national newspapers
and magazines as well as being broadcast by national radio
stations
in China. She was also an invited part-time columnist
for Teda Times when she worked in Beijing.
Judy's first English book is Modern Chinese Cultural
Encounters. She is devoting herself to education related
writings now, such as diagnostic assessment, teaching,
and motivation.
MEETINGS
The third Tuesday of the month. Mark your
calendar and join us.
Bay Park Hotel
1425 Munras Avenue
Monterey - (831) 649-1020
5:30pm - Dinner: $15
"All you can eat" salad bar, tax, tip and non-alcoholic beverage. Purchase dinner tickets at the CCW Check-in table.
Sorry, cash only.
Bring exact change if you can. 6:30pm - Meeting
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