Board and Members in Service
Norma Watkins - Co-President
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Catherine Marshall - Co-President
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Nona Smith - Vice President
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Susan Lundgren - Secretary
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Ginny Rorby - Treasurer & Membership
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Elizabeth Vrenios - Anthology Editor
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Sharon Bowers - Website
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Ericka Lutz - Speakers
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Naty Osa - Publicity
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Christine Anderson - Member at Large
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Rob Hawthorn - Media
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E-Mail contact for all - info@writersmendocino.org
Founding President, Molly Dwyer
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Founding President, Molly Dwyer, invited local writers to her kitchen table in 2009 to form the Mendocino Coast branch of the California Writers Club, chartered in 2010. Her intention was to expand the network and opportunities for writers on the coast. Among that talent is a host of excellent writers, published and not, who now have a venue for bringing their poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction to the local and world stage.
Molly's debut novel, Requiem for the Author of Frankenstein, was nominated for the 2009 Northern California Book of Year in fiction. In 2010, the National Women's Political Caucus honored Molly for "Writing Women Back into History." Molly has been an educator for twenty years, facilitating workshops and critique groups. Molly coaches writers and edits manuscripts of all stripes, and is an English instructor at Mendocino College. Watch for Molly's second (soon to be published) novel, The Appassionata, set in Victor Hugo's Paris. |
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California Writers Club
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Jack London Service Award
A one-in-a-lifetime award bestowed every two years upon one branch member who has made extraordinary contributions to the branch.
California Writers Club Beginnings
The esteemed California Writers Club evolved in the wake of the Alameda Press Club and a small group of “break-off” members who met outside formal settings during the time that the Bay Area was experiencing a literary revival.
With degrees and scholarship from Oxford, West Point, and Harvard, members included George Sterling, Harold Lamb, Herman Whitaker, Kathleen Norris, William Lederer, Eugene Burdick, James Henry MacLaferty, Charles Keeler, Frank Soule, Julia Cooley Altrocci. Fiction chair Torry Connor held luncheon meetings at the Clairmont Hotel. Women dressed in formal wear. The new club adopted the motto “Sail On,” from Joaquin Miller’s Columbus. The logo came from U.C. Berkeley Professor of Art Perham Nahl, who also designed the poster for the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco. A core group enjoyed the sea and themes of the West. They published a collection “West Winds.” Honorary members, whose reputations lent a veneer to the club—and whose dues may have been waved - included the first state Poet Laureate Ina Coolbrith, Jack London, John Muir, Joaquin Miller, and Gertrude Atherton. Drawn to the energy emanating from Berkeley, thirty-one Sacramento charter members formed the first California Writers Club “off-shoot” or branch on September 30, 1925. Guests from Berkeley included Henry Noyes Pratt, club V. P. Dr. Derrick N. Lehmer, and Mrs. Esther Birdsall Darling. |
