Women writers and book lovers

by Alyssa J. O’Brien

On March 7, the day before International Women’s Day, Skyline College will welcome women writers and book lovers to its campus on the hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

Better known as WOW, the Women on Writing conference is an exciting event open to writers, students, community members, and men and women from all over the Bay Area. This year’s program promises to wow attendees once again.

Those who cherish our oceans will enjoy the keynote speaker, Julia Whitty, whose creative nonfiction book, The Fragile Edge, won a PEN USA Literary Award, the John Burroughs Medal Award, the Kiriyama Prize, and a Northern California Book Award — and is short-listed for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. “Whitty shows you the beauty of the oceans and the horrors of what we are doing to them,” explains WOW Program Director Marijane Datson. Indeed, Whitty’s writing raises awareness and teaches us to live with environmental consciousness. “She brought me right into the ocean, to watch through her eyes h?ow sea creatures relate to each other,” Datson said.

Conference favorite Wild Writing Women (Jacqueline Harmon Butler, Carla King, Pamela Michael and Lisa Alpine) will return to WOW 2009. Photo credit: Lina Susbilla.

After the keynote, the conference will offer a rich array of sessions for writers who live and work on the coast. Many fit the theme of International Women’s Day, and all are given by published writers who are also proven teachers. Among the 17 workshops are sessions on writing about nature (Pamela Michael, cofounder of River of Words), on writing as healing (Sharon Bray), on poetry (Elline Lipkin), on writing movie scripts (Laurel Minter), on travel writing (Wild Writing Women) and on memoir (Tristine Rainer, author of Your Life as Story).

Tristine Rainer signs Your Life as Story for attendees. Photo credit: Lina Susbilla.

Writers will appreciate the new roundtable on savvy strategies for promoting your work, the primer on publishing with literary agent Amy Rennert, and the workshop on writing blogs or high tech stories with Ellen Lee.

Favorite sessions include the poetry slam, moderated by Meliza Bañales, the Oakland poetry slam champion, where prizes will be given for the best work, and the Open Reading at lunch, where attendees read short pieces — often writings composed in morning workshops.

.One of the 2008 Isabelle Maynard Memorial Fund Scholars, Shannon Elliot, at Open Reading. Photo credit: Shelly Hausman.

Another highlight is the Book Talk where three successful writers share strategies and answer questions; this year’s authors are Nona Caspers, Micheline Aharonian Marcom and Yiyun Li, recently featured in Poets & Writers. “All three writers work on the edges of cultural experience,” says Datson. The day ends with a celebratory reception and the scholarship awards given to young  aspiring writers, founded in memory of Isabelle Maynard, Bay Area dramatist and author of China Dreams: Growing Up Jewish in Tientsin.

Tess Uriza Holthe and Mary Monroe, authors who presented at Book Talk. Photo credit: Lina Susbilla.

Not some snooty academic conference, WOW is open to everyone. Datson founded WOW seven years ago with money from the President’s Innovation Fund for programs to connect the college to the community. “There was a hunger for creative cultural events, especially for women,” explains Datson, who relied on her previous work as program coordinator for the Stanford Center for Research on Women to launch WOW. Meeting with Skyline Development Director Sandra Irber at a coffee shop in Pacifica, she hatched the plan and designed the first program. She soon realized her dream to “bring professional writers together with students, community women and creative faculty.” Datson’s mission — to celebrate the synergistic spirit of women writers on the coast — continues today, although Datson has handed over the organizing work to Georgia Gero and a team of WOW Ambassadors, women from the local community along with students, faculty and staff who offer their voices and hard work in the design and running of the conference.

WOW Ambassadors Lina Susbilla and Anyta Archer, beside presenters Rhodessa Jones and Idris Ackamoor. Photo credit: Lina Susbilla.

“There’s a special energy when people can meet and talk with writers,” says Datson. “For some people it is life changing.” At WOW, the writers are not superstars but instead, purposefully, “people in our midst whose professional life is that of writing.”

“It is one of the most affordable and friendly writing conferences around,” affirms Datson. What does she like best? That WOW encourages people of all ages to come together around writing.

Whether you are an accomplished writer looking to build a local network or a new writer with a strong desire, the WOW conference in its diversity, its richness of sessions, and its supportive spirit offers an abundance of opportunities for connection, inspiration and learning, right here on the coast.

In honor of this International Women’s Day, do something for yourself as a writer or reader, or as a lover of the seas and creative people gathered together: Attend WOW at Skyline College, overlooking the majestic Pacific Ocean.
For more information and registration, visit www.smccd.net/accounts/skywow/.

Founders of WOW, Sandra Irber and Marijane Datson, along with Lorraine Macchello and Pamela Eakins. Photo credit: Lina Susbilla.