Authors


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	Welcome to Mendocino College's Lit Fest! Here are some of the authors scheduled to appear.		Note that it is best to reserve a sandwich by Wednesday, May 16 or else bring a lunch or snacks to LitFest. Our cafeteria is closed on weekends.
	Dan Barth, Author & Poet Dan Barth's poetry, fiction, essays and reviews have appeared in a wide range of publications from Ant Farm to Zam Bomba!. He is the author of Fast Women Beautiful: Zen Beat Baseball Poems (Tenacity Press, 2008), Coyote Haiku (Secret Goldfish Press, 2004), and Ukiah Haiku: Journal of a Year (Goin' Prose Press, 1996). He is a contributing editor of The Redwood Coast Review, an organizer and judge for the annual Ukiah Haiku Festival, and co-director of the monthly Writers Read series in Ukiah. He lives near Talmage with his wife Mary and their son Nate. In addition to writing and editing he works as a teacher and librarian at the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas in Talmage.		Blake More, Poet A resident of Point Arena, Blake More is an artist with many creative voices and expressions, poetry being her first obsession, though her work is all over the map: from book, magazine, poetry and playwriting to performance art, dance and yogic trapeze; from teaching poetry, video and drama to costume design, functional mixed media art/life pieces and wildly painted poetry art cars. She has recently discovered a passion for radio and has become the host of her own web radio show called "Cartwheels on the Sky" and is also the fourth Monday host of Women's Voices on KZYX&Z Mendocino, listener supported radio. Her book godmeat is a collection of poetry, prose, color artwork, and a DVD compilation of poem movies (available at www.godmeat.com). To explore more of Blake’s creative world, please visit www.snakelyone.com.
	Christina Perez Christina Perez is a Latina Slam/Performance Poet. Her work is sometimes bilingual, self-exposing, and she hopes, connecting. She has been a finalist competing to represent various Bay Area Venues for Nationals, IWPS, and WOWPS during the last three years. Christina teaches workshops for at risk youth in Mendocino. Sponsored in part by The Youth Project and the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference. She is a member of the 2011 San Francisco Slam Team. The Columbia College Academic Wellness Educators Committee invited Christina to teach two workshops to teachers exploring ways slam/performance poetry can be incorporated into the classroom. Christina is the slam-master for the Coast Slam www.facebook.com/CoastSlam in Fort Bragg, CA. She is a Poetry Out Loud Teacher poetryoutloud.org for Santa Rosa and Rancho Cotati High Schools in Sonoma County. Christina is a California Poets In The Schools cpits.org teacher in training.		Natasha Yim Natasha Yim is an author, freelance writer, and playwright. Her picture book, Otto's Rainy Day; was published by Charlesbridge Publishing and was a Kids' Pick of the Lists selection. She has published articles in Highlights for Children, Appleseeds, and Faces magazines, and her ten-minute plays have been performed in venues around Northern California, Los Angeles, and Sydney, Australia. Her picture book biography, Cixi, The Dragon Empress, was released by Goosebottom Books in fall 2011. Natasha’s upcoming books, Sacajawea of the Shoshone (Goosebottom Books) is due out in fall 2012, and Goldy Luck and the Three Chans (Charlesbridge Publishing) is slated for a January 2014 release.
	Doris Eraldi Born and raised in Northern California, Doris Eraldi is a horsewoman, web designer and author. Her first novel, Settler's Law, was published in 1999, and the 2010 sequel, Settler's Chase, was named a Women Writing the West WILLA Literary Award Finalist in 2011. She currently edits and writes for two monthly online magazines, and is working on a new novel set in 1870 Northern California. She lives in Potter Valley, California, on a small ranch with her partner, seven horses and two dogs.		Terry Ehret Terry Ehret is a poet and teacher, one of the founders of the innovative Sixteen Rivers Press, a hands-on publishing collective run by and for San Francisco Bay Area Poets. She has published four collections of poetry, most recently Night Sky Journey from Kelly's Cove Press. Literary awards include the National Poetry Series, California Book Award, Pablo Neruda Poetry Prize, Nomination for the Northern California Book Reviewer's Award, and five Pushcart Prize nominations. From 2004-2006, she served as the poet laureate of Sonoma County where she lives and teaches.

	Jordan Rosenfeld Jordan E. Rosenfeld is author of Make a Scene: Crafting a Powerful Story One Scene at a Time. Her essays and stories have appeared in publications including Smokelong Quarterly, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the St. Petersburg Times, and on KQED Radio's California Report. She is a former contributing editor to Writer's Digest magazine. She teaches online writing intensives via her website: www.jordanrosenfeld.net and is hard at work breathing new life into old novels while raising her young son.		Becca Lawton Rebecca Lawton is the author of the S.F. Chronicle best-seller Reading Water: Lessons from the River and many other works. She received the Ellen Meloy Desert Writer's Award and other honors, and has been nominated for three Pushcart Prizes, in poetry, nonfiction, and fiction. Her work in nature is integrated into her writing, her online blog "Writer in Residence," and her classes and coaching. Her latest book, the novel Junction, Utah, is represented by Van Haitsma Literary. Visit her at www.beccalawton.com.
	Ricardo Stocker Ricardo Horacio Stocker is a mystical poet-philosopher-sage, who also happens to be a professor of Psychology and Communication at Mendocino College and National University, a father of four and a grandfather of five, an artist, and other things. He was conceived in the Southern Andes, born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Stocker studied in Europe for seven years, then moved to USA in 1980. He has written two books of Poetry in Spanish, and several essays in journals.		Molly Dwyer In 2010, Molly Dwyer was honored for “Writing Women Back into History” by the National Women’s Political Caucus of Mendocino. Her debut novel, Requiem for the Author of Frankenstein, was nominated for the 2009 Northern California Book Award in Fiction; and in 2008 won the Independent Publishers Book of the Year Award and the Indie Book Award for Historical Fiction. Molly the Founding President of the Writers of the Mendocino Coast, a branch of California Writers Club, and works as an editor, writing coach and writing group facilitator. Molly holds a PhD in Humanities and teaches Critical Thinking at Mendocino College in Ukiah, CA.
	Sheldon Siegel San Francisco attorney and Marin County resident Sheldon Siegel is the New York Times best selling author of seven critically-acclaimed courtroom dramas featuring San Francisco criminal defense lawyers Mike Daley and Rosie Fernandez: Sheldon is a native of Chicago who graduated from the University of Illinois in 1980 and from Boalt Law School at UC-Berkeley in 1983. Although he's lived on the West Coast for 32 years, he's still a fan of the Chicago Bears, Bulls and White Sox. Sheldon began writing novels in 1995 on the Larkspur Ferry on his daily commute to San Francisco. His books have sold millions of copies and they've been translated into a dozen languages. Sheldon has been in private practice in San Francisco for twenty-eight years. Sheldon recently finished the manuscript of his eighth novel, a standalone thriller set in his hometown of Chicago.		Jean Hegland Jean Hegland's first novel, Into the Forest, has been translated into twelve languages, and taught in a number of community- and campus-wide reading programs. It has recently been optioned for film development by a creative team that includes the actress Ellen Page. Midwest Book Review calls her second novel, Windfalls, “a profound look at motherhood,” and Publishers Weekly promises it is “a good prospect for reading groups.” Excerpts from her creative non-fiction, The Life Within: Celebration of Pregnancy, have been published in such diverse places as a college English textbook, a high school science textbook, and a book about journal-keeping for pregnant women. Jean is an avid teacher and a frequent presenter at workshops and conferences. In addition to being an instructor at Santa Rosa Junior College, she spent two winters teaching at the Mediterranean Center for Arts and Sciences in Sicily, and has been Writer in Residence at the University College of York St John in England.
	Theresa Whitehill Theresa Whitehill served as Poet Laureate for the city of Ukiah from 2009 to 2011, and her work is known to Mendocino audiences through her readings in public venues and on radio. Her current collection of poetry, A Grammar of Longing, was published by Pygmy Forest Press in 2009. In 1998 she served as Poet-in-Residence for Stags’ Leap Winery, participating in salons that lead to the collection, Napa Valley: Portrait of a Community. Educated at UC Santa Cruz, and Mills College in the 1970s and early ’80s, she founded Colored Horse Studios with her husband, artist Paulo Ferreira, providing creative services for marketing and publishing, with studios in Ukiah and St. Helena, California. Their literary letterpress broadsides are in the archives of many national libraries and universities as well as many private collections. www.coloredhorse.com		David Smith-Ferri David Smith-Ferri grew up in an Italian-Irish family in a suburb of New York City. His mother’s love for the literary and other arts and her keen sense of justice shaped his sensibilities. His first book of poetry, Battlefield without Borders (Haley’s Press, 2007; 2nd Edition 2008), arose from encounters with people in Iraq during the era of economic sanctions and no-fly zone bombings, and in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion. His new book of poetry, With Children Like Your Own, also from Haley’s, contains over 100 poems, most of them written in the Middle East and in Afghanistan. These narrative poems portray the courage, resilience, and decency of the Iraqi and Afghan people he met, demonstrating their hospitality and intelligence and compassion in the face of foreign invasion and localized violence. Smith-Ferri lives in northern California with his wife and daughter, and he can be reached at dsmithferri@gmail.com.
	Sandra Wade Sandra Wade was born in Hertfordshire, England and came to California with her limnologist husband in 1970. She has been involved in the literary community in Lake and surrounding counties since settling near Lower Lake in 1977. She served as President of the Lake County Writers’ Guild, helped publish the Wildflower Press, Clear Lake Clarion and Lake Currents magazines as well as establishing the Lake County Arts Council in the early 1980’s. In 2006 Ms. Wade was selected as the county’s fourth Poet Laureate for a two-year term. In this capacity she encouraged creative writing and open mics throughout the county and facilitated various monthly groups. She spearheaded the Poetry Out Loud program in local high schools and addressed many service and philanthropic groups. For the past six years Sandra has presented a weekly literature program “Accent on Words” on KPFZ 88.1 FM, the county’s first FCC-licensed, listener-supported community radio station.		Jody Gehrman Jody Gehrman is the author of six novels and numerous plays. Babe in Boyland is her most recent Young Adult novel, published in 2011 by Penguin's Dial books. She also writes stage plays, screenplays, and sometimes even songs. Her plays have been produced in Ashland, New York, San Francisco and L.A. She and her partner David Wolf won the New Generation Playwrights Award for their one-act, Jake Savage, Jungle P.I. She's a professor of English at Mendocino College.
	Terena Scott Terena Scott is the publisher, editor-in-chief and general Queen Bee behind Medusa’s Muse, a micro-press located in Mendocino County. In October of 2007 she published Traveling Blind: Life Lessons from Unlikely Teachers, by Laura Fogg and has since published two more books. She has a knack for seeing the big picture and helping writers find their way through the maze that is creating a novel. When not publishing books, she writes plays and essays. Her play, The Wedding Party, will debut at this year's Mendocino College Festival of New Plays. You can learn more about Terena at http://terenascott.wordpress.com/about.		Stefanie Freele Stefanie Freele was born and raised in Wisconsin and currently lives in the Northwest. Her short story collection Feeding Strays, released by Lost Horse Press, was a finalist for both the Book of the Year Award and the 2010 Binghamton University John Gardner Fiction Book Award. Surrounded by Water, a second collection of short stories, is being released by Press 53 in May 2012. She is also the fiction editor of the Los Angeles Review. She has an MFA in fiction from the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts: Whidbey Writers Workshop in Washington.
	Armando Garcia-Davila Armando Garcia-Dàvila was named Healdburg's Literary Laureate for the year 2002-2003 adding to his distinction as Poet Laureate of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Sonoma County. A landscape contractor by profession, Armando started writing in 1990 - an impassioned letter to a dear friend who was killed in Vietnam. The Santa Rosa Press Democrat ran the letter as an OpEd piece entitled "Vow to a Fallen Comrade." When the war ended, he continued writing. A poem, "No Time: Lamentations of a Contractor," was recorded by Latino USA radio, and broadcast on more than 200 stations nationwide in 1995. Catholic and Protestant ministers asked permission to use it for their Sunday sermons. Armando is currently at work on short stories and reminiscences of his Catholic grammar school days with twin brother Fernando.		Linda Noel Linda Noel is a Native Californian of the Koyungkowi tribe who grew up in Willits. The former Poet Laureate of Ukiah has presented her work at various venues across the western United States and has most recently been both a featured reader and workshop presenter at the Redwood Coast Writers Conference, the Watershed Project, The Conference of American Indians; Humboldt State University, and Santa Rosa Junior College to name a few.