ELLEN SUSSMAN
Author
is the New York Times bestselling author of four novels, A Wedding in Provence, The Paradise Guest House, French Lessons, and On a Night Like This. She is the editor of two critically acclaimed anthologies, Bad Girls: 26 Writers Misbehave and Dirty Words: A Literary Encyclopedia of Sex. She teaches through Stanford Continuing Studies and in private classes. www.ellensussman.com
ELIZABETH STARK
Author
is the host of Story Makers Podcast (StoryMakersShow.com), author of the novel Shy Girl (FSG, Seal Press) and co-director and co-writer of several several films, including FtF: Female to Femme, a creative documentary and Little Mutinies, a short (both distributed by Frameline). She earned an M.F.A. from Columbia University in Creative Writing. Currently the lead coach and teacher at the BookWritingWorld.com, she’s taught writing and literature at UCSC, Pratt Institute, the Peralta Colleges, HWS Colleges and in 2010, she was the Distinguished Fiction Writer at St. Mary’s College in Orinda.
NATALIE BASZILE
Author
is the author of the debut novel, Queen Sugar, which is being adapted for TV by writer/director, Ava DuVernay of “Selma” fame, and co-produced by Oprah Winfrey for OWN, Winfrey’s cable network. Queen Sugar was named one of the San Francisco Chronicles’ Best Books of 2014, was long-listed for the Crooks Corner Southern Book Prize, and nominated for an NAACP Image Award. Natalie has a M.A. in Afro-American Studies from UCLA, and holds an MFA from Warren Wilson College’s MFA Program for Writers. Her non-fiction work has appeared in The Rumpus, Mission at Tenth, The Best Women’s Travel Writing Volume 9, and O, The Oprah Magazine. She is a member of the S.F. Writers’ Grotto.
PETER COYOTE
Author
has performed as an actor for some of the world’s most distinguished filmmakers, including: Barry Levinson, Roman Polanski, Pedro Almodovar, Steven Spielberg, Martin Ritt, Steven Soderberg, Sidney Pollack and Jean Paul Rappeneau. He is an Emmy-Award winning narrator of over 120 documentary films, including Ken Burns, National Parks, Prohibition, The West, the Dust Bowl and this year’s acclaimed The Roosevelts for which he received his second Emmy in 2015. Mr. Coyote has written a memoir of the 1960’s counter-culture called Sleeping Where I Fall which received universally excellent reviews, and his new book, The Rainman’s Third Cure: An Irregular Education, about mentors and the search for wisdom, was nominated for one of the top five books in Northern California in 2015.
LAURIE FOX
Agent
West Coast Associate for the Linda Chester Literary Agency based in Manhattan, is celebrating 28 years as Chester’s partner. A graduate of UCSC, in Creative Writing and Theatre, she is the author of fiction and poetry, including Sexy Hieroglyphics (Chronicle Books), and two novels: My Sister from the Black Lagoon and The Lost Girls (both Simon & Schuster). Fox acquires, develops, and markets books in the areas of literary and quality fiction, memoir/biography, popular culture, narrative nonfiction, technology and science. She has represented 19 national bestsellers, co-agented two-time Oprah Book Club novelist Wally Lamb, and represented Cheryl Strayed’s first novel Torch. Clients include Lolly Winston, author of New York Times bestselling novel Good Grief and Carolyn Cooke, author of The Bostons (NY Times Notable Book of the Year; a Los Angeles Times “Best Book of the Year,” winner of the PEN/Bingham Award) and Amor and Psycho, a PW Top Ten Book of the Year. You can view more of her agency’s books at LindaChester.com.
SERE PRINCE HALVERSON
Author
is the author of the international bestseller, The Underside of Joy, published in 2012, and All the Winters After, published in February, 2016–novels that explore grief, forgiveness, nature, and the intimate layers of family. Her work has been translated into 18 languages. She and her husband have four grown children and live in Northern California in a house in the woods.
KENDRA LUBALIN
Coach
is a coach, a teacher, a writer, and a mother of two. She can empower you to live the life you want to be living. To learn about coaching or check out her blog please visit gettherecoaching.com You can see her writing at Mutha Magazine and on Medium @kendralubalin. She’s just completed a middle grade book, and is working on a series of essays about childhood, for adults.
CAILLE MILLNER
Author
is the author of The Golden Road: Notes on My Gentrification (Penguin Press), which won the Barnes & Noble Emerging Writers Award and was a San Francisco Chronicle Notable Book of the Year. Her short fiction has appeared in Zyzzyva and Joyland, and will appear in Best American Short Stories 2016(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). Her nonfiction has appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, the Paris Review Daily, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and many more.
ANGIE POWERS
Speaker
teaches at BookWritingWorld.com and co-hosts the podcast Story Makers Show. Co-director and co-writer of the short Little Mutinies (distributed by Frameline), she was a quarterfinalist for the Nicholl Fellowship and at Blue Cat Screenplay Competition for the full-length screenplay of Little Mutinies. She’s twice made it into the second round of consideration for Sundance Labs and was a Cinestory semi-finalist. Her shorts Hot Date and The Truth About Love and Panic premiered at Frameline. She has a certificate in screenwriting from UCLA and an MFA in creative writing and English from Mills, where she won the thesis prize for her year.
BJ ROBBINS
Agent
established her Los Angeles-based agency in 1992 after a multi-faceted career in book publishing in NY, first in publicity at Simon & Schuster and later as Marketing Director and then Senior Editor at Harcourt. Her agency represents quality fiction, both literary and commercial, and general nonfiction, with a particular interest in memoir, biography, narrative history, pop culture, sports, travel/adventure, medicine and health.
NINA SCHUYLER
Author
Nina Schuyler’s novel, The Translator, was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Writing Prize and won the 2014 Next Generation Indie Book Award. Her first novel, The Painting, was nominated for the Northern California Book Award and was named by the San Francisco Chronicle as a Best Book. She teaches creative writing at the University of San Francisco.
JENNIFER MARCH SOLOWAY
Agent
is an Associate Agent with the Andrea Brown Literary Agency, an agency that specializes in children’s literature. She enjoys all genres of children’s literature, such as laugh-out-loud picture books and middle-grade adventures, but her sweet spot is young adult. Although she mostly represents children’s literature, she is also open to adult fiction. Her wish list includes action-packed thrillers, mysteries, and psychological horror. But as much as she loves a good thriller, she finds her favorite novels are literary stories about ordinary people, especially those focused on family, relationships, sexuality, mental illness, or addiction.
