Christine Anderson has an eclectic work background including nonprofit and government. Her writing background has been mostly comprised of grant writing. Now that she’s retired, she looks forward to more time to develop her writing. She appreciates the encouragement from other WMC members.
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Kelly Barrett is a researcher, writer, and artist living in Mendocino, California and Taos, New Mexico. She holds a Masters in Consciousness and Transformative Studies. Her writing has appeared in the 2025 Womancraft Compendium, Weaving Our Way Beyond Patriarchy, Hello Goodbye Apocalypse, Women on Art, and the Creative Magic podcast.
Michelle Blackwell is a writer, journalist, and reader. She contributes to the KZYX News program and publishes in the Fort Bragg Advocate and the Mendocino Beacon regularly. She developed, hosts, and produces the KZYX radio show and podcast “Upwelling” Her fiction pieces have appeared in several Writers of the Mendocino Coast anthologies.
Aron Lee Bowe aka Sharon Bowers is an artist, illustrator and graphic designer. She was the first place winner of the Rosalie Fleming Memorial Humor Prize from the National League of American Pen Women. Her graphic novel, Amazed & Elated, Depressed & Deflated, won an Independent Publisher’s Silver Medal in 2016. Her next book, Alpha Ding, was published in 2018. Her third graphic novel: Journey to the Anthropocene was published in 2022. http://www.aronleebowe.com/
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Historian and author Dot Brovarney writes about relationships between humans and the natural world. Besides her award-winning book Mendocino Refuge: Lake Leonard & Reeves Canyon, Dot’s other books include The Sweet Life: Cherry Stories from Butler Ranch (editor and publisher) and Remember Your Relations: The Elsie Allen Baskets, Family, and Friends, (co-author) about Pomo basket weavers.
Notty Bumbo is a writer, artist, and poet living in Ft. Bragg. He has been published in a number of small journals and presses, including the Amphigoric Sauce Factory, Words Without Walls, Poesis, Telling Our Stories Press, Peacock Journal, Calabash Cadence’ Taisgeadan, Word Fountain, Poetry South and others. His novella, Tyrian Dreams, is available through Kindle via Amazon Publishing. www.bumpintheroad.net
Newly published in 2024, writer and artist Sally Carter resides with her husband and 2 dogs on the beautiful and creative Mendocino coast in Fort Bragg, California. When not holding a pen or brush her hands are embedded in the soil at home and in local community gardens.
Molly Dwyer's debut novel, Requiem for the Author of Frankenstein, was nominated for the 2009 Northern California Book Award in Fiction; was Winner of the 2008 Independent Publishers Book of the Year Award, and the 2008 Indie Book Award for Historical Fiction. Molly teaches Critical Thinking at Mendocino College and runs private critique groups.
Writing big and little stories in all genres is Earlene Gleisner’s greatest joy. Reiki In Everyday Living is translated into four languages and published in five countries. Short stories, essays, and poems are published in USA and Canadian anthologies. She is working on the third novel of her Sacred Bundle Series and a novella, GG’s Magic Garden. Now in Lakeport, she is planning a Prompt Writing Class and ‘Writing For a Change’ Seminar at the local library.
Susanna Janssen is a foreign language educator and author of Wordstruck! The Fun and Fascination of Language, winner of five national awards in Humor and Education. She writes with heart and humor on everything related to words, language, cultures, travel, and human experience. In 2025, Susanna published Once Upon a Continent: A Memoir of South American Adventures Unplugged which has now received four national and international literary awards including Book of the Year in Adventure Non-fiction from the Independent Author Network.
Patty Joslyn lives on the Northern California coast. She’s fascinated with death and birth as passages into new realms. She has several chapbooks and two books: ru.mi.nate and Wonderland (co-created with Elizabeth Rosner). Patty has yet to recover from the fact that she can no longer do a cartwheel.
Lynn Kiesewetter came to the coast for a 2 week vacation in 1970 & just never thought to leave. For all these decades she has performed jazz piano & vocals, as well as teaching same. In recent years she has also begun reading her poetry & stories in public. A novel & memoir are in the works, as well as a new CD of jazz standards and original compositions
Elizabeth Kirkpatrick-Vrenios' award-winning chapbook, Special Delivery, was published in 2016, followed by Empty the Ocean with a Thimble in 2021, and Concerto for an Empty Frame in 2023. Nominated numerous times for a Pushcart Prize, twice for Best of Net, she has poems published in numerous anthologies and journals. She also did a stellar job as editor of the WMC Anthology for three years. A professor Emeritus from American University, she has been a solo artist, singing all over the world.
Robyn Koski writes fiction, memoir, essay and occasional prose poems. Her interests are varied, but usually focus on the individual shaped by culture, with some psychology and a sprinkling of spirituality mixed into the dirt of this physical world. Her writing can be found in many WMC anthologies.
Karen K. Lewis lives near Albion between the forest and the sea. She holds an MFA from Antioch Los Angeles. Karen leads workshops with California Poets in the Schools and is a former Director of the Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference. Her fiction, essays, and poetry appear in journals including Literary Mama, Minerva Rising, Weave, Six Words About Work, and Iron Horse. https://www.wordjourneys.org/
Rob Hawthorn is a husband, a father, a writer, a podcaster, and a bookseller who lives on Northern California’s Mendocino Coast. He began writing seriously at the age of nineteen. Currently, he’s working as a book seller and events coordinator for Gallery Bookshop, one of the best independent bookstores on the planet. Rob has two podcasts, one of which is about music, and the other is a book club that examines 1960s comics through a modern lens.
Matthew Sidney Long was raised in the redwoods of Northern California, indoctrinated into DIY-filmmaking in Durham, North Carolina and currently writes screenplays in Mendocino & Los Angeles. He is the writer/director of the cult indie feature X-GEN and the dark comedy short DOUBLE BLIND. Matt is currently developing a novel about a luxury euthanasia cruise into a TV pilot (LAST RESORT) and is shooting an ndependent feature on the Mendocino coast about memory & obsession. https://www.5149screenwriting.com/
Susan Lundgren has an undergraduate degree in English and a doctorate in Educational Psychology. Since retiring to Mendocino in 2011, her stories have appeared in You’re Doing What? Older Women’s Tales of Achievement and Adventure, Art Ascent, All in a Day's Shopping, Short Takes: Secrets, Persimmon Tree, Redwood Coast Senior Center Gazette, California Writer’s Club Literary Review, and WMC anthologies. susanlundgrenwriter.com
Ericka Lutz is the author of San Andreas: Short Fiction on Shaky Ground, the novel The Edge of Maybe, seven nonfiction books, and many anthologized short stories, poems, and essays. A Pushcart nominee, winner of the Boston Fiction Festival, solo performer, and longtime writing coach, she lives on the Mendocino coast and hosts creativity retreats in exciting, international places. erickalutz.com
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Joycelyn Trigg moved to Mendocino and joined the local writing community in 2014 after a career in scholarly publishing in the South. She holds an MA, and an MFA in poetry from the Ranier Writing Workshop. Her publications include the book Vital Records: Poems.
Fran Schwartz published her debut novel—Mila, Eclipsed—in 2025. She writes memoir and creative non-fiction, published a memoir piece in Woman’s World, and numerous stories in WMC Anthologies. Fran and her late husband Roger moved from Los Angeles to Mendocino in 2005, culminating a forty-two-year love affair with the North Coast.
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Catherine Marshall spent thirty years working with nonprofits as either an executive director or a consultant. She’s published two non-fiction books, Field Building: Your Blueprint for Creating an Effective and Powerful Social Movement and The Easter Moose: One Family's Journey Adopting through Foster Care. Catherine's new non-fiction work, No Longer Needed, will be published in late 2026. Her creative nonfiction short stories have appeared in numerous anthologies. Find her at catmarshall.net.
Loré McLaren is a retired health-care worker, in the process of rediscovering her spirituality and her love of writing. She is a Quaker, attending the Mendocino Friends Meeting. In her writing, she strives to examine the deep spirituality present in the most quotidian of experiences. She lives in Fort Bragg.
Current Point Arena Poet Laureate, Blake More is an artist of multiple paths including performance, video, and teaching. She is a longtime Mendocino Area Coordinator and poetry teacher with California Poets in the Schools. She hosts the Point Arena Third Thursday Poetry & Jazz event, as well as Be More Now on KZYX FM Mendocino County Public Broadcasting and Cartwheels on the Sky on KGUA FM Gualala. Her most recent book is Dystopia Unplugged: Please Talk Back. bmoreyou.net
Sonya Nesch is the author of Advocating for Someone with a Mental Illness, and WWII
Pilot, Betrayal, Then Congressional Gold Medal: A Great Ride for WASP, Jean Landis.
She moved to a Comptche cabin in 1988 and built a house on the Albion River. She
worked for IBM and Amdahl in the Bay area but her heart lie in helping victims of
violent crimes and advocating for people with severe mental illness. She teaches Healthy
Living classes for a nonprofit in Fort Bragg.
Lisa Norman has worked as reporter and sports editor (first woman) for the Fort Bragg Advocate-News and Mendocino Beacon. She holds degrees in English and Communications from the University of Pennsylvania. She’s edited (and written for) the Real Estate Magazine, 26 stories a year—about Mendocino County. Her projects: memoir, cookbooks, illustrated children’s book, self-help/inspiration, and The Mendocino Review--Mendocino’s first journal of literature, music, and art, acquired in 2010.
Jonathan Pazer is a poet, artist and abstract photographer. He is a graduate of Syracuse University, with an MS in Education and a law degree from Union University’s Albany Law School. Jonathan joined CAPS, Calling All Poets, a Hudson Valley poetry organization. He was later invited to contribute poems and images to Ekphrasis 2017 (Volume 1), a poetry collection published by CAPS.
Born and raised in a Northern California farming town, Katy Pye moved to the Mendocino coast and turned one form of environmentalism into books. In April 2013, her debut novel, Elizabeth's Landing, earned four book awards. Her passion for pollinators created a gardener’s workbook called, I Spy! Who’s Using My Garden.
Phillip Regan began writing a bowling column for a local newspaper when he was twelve years old. At seventeen he became the youngest-ever nationally-certified bowling instructor. Later, he wrote a column for a national bowling magazine for three years, and joined the Professional Bowlers Association. He spent ten years in radio news and public affairs. Somewhere along the line, he became Vice President of a large paper recycling company, retired, and now spends some of his spare time as a substitute elementary school teacher.
Mary Rice is an educator, arts advocate, world citizen, and writer living in Fort Bragg, California. Mary was educated at UC Berkeley, SF State University, Freie Universität Berlin, in humanities, art history, dance, social psychology and languages. She has lived in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Greece, and Hawaii.
Ginny Rorby is the author of How to Speak Dolphin, Lost in the River of Grass (a Sunshine State Young Readers Award winner), Hurt Go Happy (a Schneider Family Book Award winner), The Outside of a Horse, Dolphin Sky, Freeing Finch, Like Dust, I Rise and Girl, Under Glass, and her latest novel Time After Time.
Steve Sapontzis is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, California State University, East Bay. He is the author of Morals, Reason, and Animals and Subjective Morals and the editor of Food for Thought, the Debate over Eating Meat. He co-founded, “Between the Species, A Journal of Ethics, and was its philosophy editor for over a decade.
Nona Smith writes humorous personal essays, short fiction stories, and is working on her first novel. She is the author of Stuffed, Emptying the Hoarder’s Nest. Her work has been published in numerous periodicals, magazines and anthologies including the California Writers Club Literary Review and St. Petersburg Times. She is a former co-president of the Writers of the Mendocino Coast, a chapter of the California Writers Club.
Holly Tannen writes satirical songs about Mendocino, the internet, and natural selection. Her best-known songs include Bonobo Wannabee, Brownies for Breakfast, Rime of the Ancient Matriarch, Sheltering Tree, Downstream from Dylan, and Eat Your Triceratops. Since lockdown, Holly Tannen has been writing sploems: songs that also work as poems and/or plays.
Karin Uphoff is author of Botanical Body Care; Herbs and Natural Healing for your Whole Body (2007) and various articles on health and nature. She has published poetry and story in Noyo River Review, Writers of the Mendocino Coast anthologies, California Writers Club Literary Review and Lake County Bloom. Website: www.karinuphoff.com
Leslie Wahlquist moved from Wyoming to the Mendocino Coast in 2000 and has been writing ever since. She works freelance for a Mendocino County travel magazine and her work has appeared in the Mendocino Coast anthology as well as being published online. A former co-president of Writers of the Mendocino Coast, Leslie is currently working on a novel.
Susan Warner has been publishing her non-fiction, fiction, and poetry writings for years. With degrees in chemistry and earth sciences, she worked in environmental protection for over three decades and retired as the head of California’s North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board. She also edited and published LEAPINGS Literary Magazine between 1998-2003. sawarner.net
Norma Watkins grew up during the civil rights struggles in Mississippi. She is the author of The Last Resort, That Woman from Mississippi, and In Common. Watkins has a Ph.D. in English and an MFA in Creative Writing, is Professor Emerita at Miami Dade College, and has taught creative writing at College of the Redwoods and Mendocino College. She lives in northern California with her husband and three cats. www.normawatkins.com
Art Weininger is a retired architect, contractor, and jeweler who moved to Mendocino more than twenty years ago. When friends invited him to join their writing group to give critique, he readily agreed, if only for the comradery. Eventually, they encouraged him to try his hand at writing. To date, he's had three personal essays published.
Ron Morita earned a Master of Science degree in biomedical engineering from Case Western Reserve University and became an electronics design engineer in Greater Boston. He lives among the redwoods in the off-grid house he designed. His stories have appeared in Pleiades, Vine Leaves, and other literary magazines. ronmorita.wordpress.com
Marnie White, a graduate of SFSU, poet and author of novels, Echoes from an Open Space Ranch, about her life as a park ranger’s wife; and King of the Air and Sea, a tale of two teenagers who are sailors, balloonists and aviators at the turn of the 20th century. The sequel to King of the Air and Sea is scheduled to be released in Spring 2027.
Mike Winn is a Fort Bragg resident, by way of Boston and Sacramento. Now retired, he has written three novels—fiction and historical fiction—which he continues to the refine and workshop in a writers group. The Noyo River River and literary anthologies have published his short stories and essays.
Philip Zwerling has authored or edited six books: Nicaragua: A New Kind of Revolution; After School Theatre Programs for At Risk Teenagers; The CIA on Campus: Academic Freedom and National Security; The Theatre of Lee Blessing; Eyes on Havana: Memoir of An American Spy Betrayed by the CIA; Locked: a Full-Length Play in Two Acts (with Lorenzo Pace); In Search of the Thin Man: Dashiell Hammett, William Powell, and the Classic Film Series, and Drama in the Time of Covid: 50 Plays of Love, Loss and Hope (as co-editor with Robert Paul Moreira).
Even MORE Members of Writers of the Mendocino Coast
Darryl Williamson Zelda Zuniga