Category: Writers Conference

Always Something New

9/12/2014

Guest Post by Barbara Lee
MCWC Registrar

Barbara Lee has been the MCWC Registrar since 2005 after joining the board in 2003. As well as being a writer she worked for the Polaroid Corporation, as a hotel concierge and owned an interior design business.

I’ve been the registrar for the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference for years and there’s always something new. This year, 2014, was no exception.

I got an email from a fellow asking if we would let him buy a “surprise” participation for his wife, Christi, whose birthday was a few days away. “Sure,” I said. “She can call me with her choices.” I registered her, ran the credit card charge and waited for her call. When she recovered from the shock and thrill of the gift, she did. I fairly beamed with vicarious joy as she chose her workshop: Novel led by Scott Hutchins.

When she arrived at the start of conference, we met face-to-face. She was lovely; brunette, thirty-something, with a beaming toothy smile. I saw her in the hallways or coming from the ladies’ or at the first evening’s meet ‘n greet; she was having a wonderful time.

The day after the conference ended I received an email in which she wrote:

"The conference was such a wonderful experience for me, and I'm so thankful that I was able to attend. I've been to several conferences before, but something about this one really moved me—the combination of talented and approachable faculty, supportive, aspiring writers, and warm and welcoming organizers made the whole event golden." Christi

This is why I do what I do.

Seen and Appreciated

8/17/2014

Who doesn’t love to be seen and appreciated? This beautiful note from participant Gloria Jorgensen who lives on the Mendocino coast, and placed second in our 2014 Short Fiction contest, is a great reminder of the power of a community of writers to change lives. She writes:

click to enlarge

We say it takes a village to raise a writer! Are you part of a supportive writing community? How have you been helped and encouraged? Do tell! Share your stories with us at
BlogMaven@mcwc.org!

My MCWC experience from last year was quite extraordinary owing to the involvement of two special teachers. It began when I enrolled in Norma Watkins’ writing class at College of the Redwoods for two or three semesters. I’d not written seriously for twenty-five years, but Norma’s knowledgeable, positive, upbeat, encouragement helped me tremendously. Thanks to her, I found myself in the Mendocino Writer’s Conference last summer, 2013.

I signed up for short fiction with Peter Orner, a dynamic teacher from San Francisco State who clearly loves literature. During one of our class breaks I mentioned to him that I’d always wanted to get a MFA in writing but they’re too expensive. He replied SFSU keeps the costs down. At the closing night dinner, where he gave a rousing keynote speech, I told him even if I could afford the classes I probably couldn’t get in, since it has been thirty-five years since I was in school, some of the schools I went to were non-traditional and some don’t even exist anymore. He said, if I wanted in, I was in.

Suddenly I had a champion to help me pursue my life-long dream, someone who believed in me, my writing. It took me the entire year to track down my records from the late 60s, 70s and 80s. Meanwhile Peter let me sit in on some of his classes at the university. I was so jazzed I could hardly stay in my seat. At some point he heard me make the offhand remark that I didn’t know how I’d pay the tuition if I did get in. The next thing I knew, I had been awarded the Joe Brainard Fellowship. I had never even applied for a fellowship, scholarship or grant. The letter informing me of the award said how honored they were I had decided to study at SFSU. Imagine.

I cannot tell you how many times I have wept over this process, not from sadness, from joy. On November 28th of this year, 2014, I will be 62 years of age. My life has not been easy, though I’ve accumulated a lot of great material for stories along the way. I’m finally doing what I’ve always wanted to do. I needed help to get here. In addition to the stories I have published in the Mendocino Coast CWC Anthologies, I have just had a story accepted by the Yale University Press. It will come out in October of this year.

Thank you for all you do.

Kindest regards,

Gloria

Oscar's Phantom Café

8/8/2014

Ponderings by Henri Bensussen, MCWC board member and
Mendocino Quill's editor, a.k.a. The Maven

Web Log Maven Henri/etta Bensussen

Henri serves on the board of the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference. She worries endlessly, fruitlessly, and in between writes tragic poetry and comical short stories.

Email Henri
as the Blog Maven

It’s a few minutes before 8 on the second morning of the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference when Oscar the caterer arrives, screeching to a halt at the entrance to the College dining room.

She’s driving a 1970 Dodge, a Special Edition sold back then as a compact sedan. It looks about 25 feet long. The top is painted a dark orange (when its vinyl coating peeled off in a car wash, Oscar painted it with Rust-Oleum); the gas cap hangs off its sprung hinge (the car’s been rear-ended three times). Inside the capacious trunk is a hot breakfast for 90, including spinach frittata, potatoes, oatmeal, scones; on the back seat are platters of watermelon and cantaloupe dripping juice on the sturdy upholstery. But do not dismiss Oscar or her unusual catering vehicle. She’s a fixture at MCWC for good reason.

By 8:05 people are lined up and being served by Oscar and her assistant of 30 years, Eileen Kwan. Oscar was named before birth by her grandfather (her middle name is Ann). It
brought a lot of teasing in her school years, but later it helped her get jobs as a chef. She was the first woman chef hired by the local Captain Flint’s seafood restaurant at Noyo Harbor, done by phone and quite a surprise to them when she showed up for her first day of work.

Oscar established her catering business in 1982, as The Phantom Café (“If you can find it you can eat there”). You can learn more of her history on her website ThePhantomCafe.com.

And you can taste her cooking at next year’s Mendocino Coast Writers Conference.

www.ThePhantomCafé.com

Confessions of a Conference Pusher

7/7/2014

Guest Post By Shirin Yim Bridges
MCWC Faculty 2011 and 2013, MCWC Advisory Board Member

Author of Ruby's Wish, one of Publishers Weekly's Best Children's Books of 2002 and winner of the 2003 Ezra Jack Keats award; The Umbrella Queen, named one of the Best Children's Books of 2008 by TIME magazine; the forthcoming Mary Wrightly So Politely; and The Thinking Girl's Treasury of Real Princesses. All her books are about girls who manage to exert themselves and do the unexpected.

My sister, Natasha Yim, is a self-proclaimed conference junkie. By which she means if there’s a writers’ conference, she’ll try to find the funds to attend. She usually gets to at least one a year (she’s a MCWC alum), and sometimes as many as three. It was at a writers’ conference that she found a publisher for her most recent book, Goldy Luck and the Three Pandas. Similarly, she met her agent beside a swimming pool at a social event.

I am a conference pusher. Whenever I teach or speak about writing and publishing, I tell anyone who will listen that conferences are the only short cut left to getting published by someone other than yourself. But is this true? I subject my oft-repeated assertion to closer scrutiny in my blog at goosetracks.me.

Conferences are how the book industry does business. In addition to the writers’ conferences, there are the booksellers’ conferences (BEA being the largest one in the U.S., usually held in New York), and the library conferences (the behemoth being ALA). As an author, publisher, and speaker, I attend on average eight to twelve conferences a year.

That many conferences does not a happy camper make. I’ve just returned from this year’s ALA National Conference in Las Vegas. It was a very successful conference for Goosebottom Books, at which we introduced our new series, A Treasury of Glorious Goddesses.

But my back and legs still ache from four days of standing. My brain is exhausted from constantly being ON. I’d like to say the 108˚ weather and infrequent meals (try walking away from a booth to get fed when there are 13,000 attendees!) have made me newly svelte, but no such luck.

There’s one conference that I look forward to every year though: the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference. It has everything that I tell my students conferences offer: the opportunity to improve your craft; the opportunity to meet other authors like yourself; the golden chance to put your manuscript in front of agents, editors, and publishers.

And it has something that I value even more—community.

You’ll see what I mean when you get there. As you watch shy newcomers being greeted by the million-watt smiles of board members; as you see conference regulars embrace each other as at a reunion; as faculty shake hands and slap each other on the back, and turning, include you too; listen out for Louis Armstrong:

I see friends shaking hands
saying how do you do.
They’re really saying...

Yes, it’s a wonderful world.

Shirin Yim Bridges

Only an invitation to speak at the SCBWI East Australia and New Zealand Conference in Sydney, Australia, prevents her from joining the MCWC community this year.

Glimmering Goals

5/16/2014

21 Comments

Web Log Maven Henri/etta Bensussen

Henri serves on the board of the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference. She worries endlessly, fruitlessly, and in between writes tragic poetry and comical short stories.

Join The Conversation

“The printing press has made presidents, killed poets, furnished bustles for beauties and polished genius with criticism. It has made worlds get up at roll call every morning, given the pulpit lungs of iron and a voice of steam. It has set the price on a bushel of wheat and made the country postoffice the glimmering goal of the rural scribe.”

From the pages of The Beacon, March 16, 1889
Compiled by Debbie L. Holmer in the Mendocino Beacon

It’s as true today as it was 125 years ago: words in print have power. And whether they come to us between the covers of a book, squeezed into a newspaper column, or etched in cyberspace, the words we see in print have been selected, sculpted, and polished by passionate writers determined to make a difference. The annual Mendocino Coast Writers Conference provides guidance and support for writers who want to sharpen their skills and increase their reach. Our MCWC blog is yet another place where writers can find encouragement, expertise, and inspiration. We invite you to visit often as a way to get to know our community and become part of it. Your insights and reactions are important to us. Join the conversation!

The Editors

21 Comments

Always Something New

Guest Post by Barbara LeeMCWC Registrar

Seen and Appreciated

Oscar's Phantom Café﻿

Ponderings by Henri Bensussen, MCWC board member andMendocino Quill's editor, a.k.a. The Maven