The Unwritten Rules

— 6 double-spaced pages max.
— don’t bring the same work twice (even after editing)
— bringing copies for others to follow along helps, but not required

Meridian Gallery
545 Sutter Street, 2nd floor
San Francisco, CA 94102

7:00 pm

Get Lost Travel Bookstore
1825 Market St.
San Francisco, CA 94103 (map)
San Francisco, CA

Left Coast Writers and The Canvas are hosting a night of literature. Tonight’s theme: Humor.

7:00 pm

The Canvas
1200 9th Ave.
San Francisco, CA 9 (map)
(415) 504-0060

Listen to the MP3 here. Radio producer Kathryn Ketman and KUSF, Linda Watanabe McFerrin and Left Coast Writers, and Book Passage are teaming up to kick off an exotic new music and travel writing radio program, “Traveling Music,” a lively new weekly music and travel writing radio show set to debut on January 2, 2005, on KUSF, San Francisco’s award-winning FM station.

Program Time: Sunday evenings, 7:30 pm – 8:30 pm
FM Station: KUSF 90.3 FM, San Francisco
Webcast: http://www.live365.com/stations/kusf
Producer and Host: Kathryn Ketman
Guest Story Editor: Linda Watanabe McFerrin

Traveling Music will feature excellent writers reading their own stories of world travel in a mix of approximately 80% intriguing global music and 20% readings. The program’s first three months promise readings by writers Donald George, Lonely Planet’s Global Travel Editor; Jeff Greenwald, author of Shopping for Buddhas, Scratching the Surface: Impressions of Planet Earth from Hollywood to Shiraz and the creator of Strange Travel Suggestions; Firoozeh Dumas, author of Funny in Farsi; and more.

Producer and Host Kathryn Ketman writes, “Traveling Music explores places and communities all over the globe through music and readings from fine travel writers. We might go anywhere: Paris, Krakow, Bali, downtown Manhattan, Crete, ancient Japan, New Jersey. We might meet anybody: avant-gardists, cowboy poets, troubadours of medieval Provence, enlightened sadhus, outback didgeridoo artists. We might waltz in Vienna, shout and stamp in a flamenco cave, chant in India, or roll away in a Romani caravan. Come along and savor the world.”

Kathryn Ketman produced several music programs at KUSF from 1985 to1995. She left the airwaves to pursue a computer programming career, indulging a keen enthusiasm for travel between software projects. Her journeys have often included musical studies such as Arabic percussion in Cairo and Gaelic singing on Scotland’s Isle of Skye.

Guest Story Editor Linda Watanabe McFerrin will select featured stories and readers for the first three months of programming. She is a noted Bay Area novelist, poet, journalist, editor and teacher.

Traveling Music is presented for its first three months on KUSF with underwriting support from Book Passage, one of the finest independent bookstores in the country, and Left Coast Writers, a membership organization created to support new and established writers in the production and promotion of their work in a stimulating atmosphere of creativity and community.

Somehow I’m going to be reading alongside these other big names in travel writing:

Here are some of our World Renowned Authors who will be signing books at the SF ATE Show:

Saturday, October 9
Linda Wantanabe McFerrin
Jeff Greenwald
James Balog
Peter Krahenbuhl
Donald George
Robert Young Pelton
Doug Lansky
Phil Cosineau
Lee Foster

Sunday, October 10
Carole Terwilliger Meyers
Mary Beth Bond
Larry Habegger
Michael Shapiro
Paola Gianturco

Saturday, September 18, 2-4pm
Dr. Insomnia’s Coffee & Teas’ courtyard
800 Grant Ave (at Reichert), Novato, CA (map)
(415) 897-9500

August 21
Poetry with GERI DIGIORNO & CHUN YU

Poet and artist, Geri Digiorno is the founder and director of the Petaluma Poetry Walk. Her poems have appeared in Paterson Literary Review, Mandala, Tomcat, and Bogg, and her books include I’M TAP DANCING, Norton Cooker Press, MARILYN AND ME, and soon WHITE LIPSTICK, which is forthcoming in 2005 from Redhen Press.

Chun Yu began writing poetry and stories in verse while completing her post-doctoral fellowship at MIT as a biomedical engineer. LITTLE GREEN, a memoir in verse and her first book, is forthcoming from Simon and Schuster in February 2005. Though currently writing three other books, Chun works as a principal scientist in a medical device company in the Bay Area.

September 18
Prose/Travel Writing with MICHAEL FALK, LAURIE MCANDISH KING & BRADLEY CHARBONNEAU

Laurie McAndish King has studied medicinal plants in the rainforests of Brazil and Argentina, hunted a lion in Botswana without a gun, survived a kidnapping in Tunisia. Her Tunisian story, “At a Crossroads,” was published in the Lonely Planet anthology THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS. For Laurie’s free e-mail newsletter re: San Francisco Bay Area events for travel writers, please e-mail: laurie at laurieking dot com

Michael Falk swears his novel in progress is not autobiographical: “If I could remember what really happened back then I wouldn’t have to make this stuff up.” An eleven-year cancer survivor, Michael is currently impersonating a real estate agent and in training for a short triathlon, while also working on his novel and a memoir.

Bradley Charbonneau, www.likomaisland.com/design, spends more time promoting other writers than writing or promoting his own work, which is published in anthologies and magazines. He writes about travel, love, and the love of travel, but with a new baby boy, he doesn’t even travel. So as a travel writer who doesn’t travel or write, his first book is naturally URBAN TRAVEL GUIDE TO SAN FRANCISCO.

October 16
Contributors to HOT FLASHES, Left Coast Writers’ Erotica Anthology, will read erotic poems and prose.

Thursday, August 26, 2004
7:30 pm
(Easy GoingTravel Shop & Bookstore (events)
1385 Shattuck Avenue
Berkeley, CA 94709
(510) 843-3533

7-8 pm
A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books
601 Van Ness Ave
San Francisco, CA 94102 (map)

5:30 pm

Monticello Inn
127 Ellis Street
San Francisco, CA 94102 (map)
(415) 392-8800

All photos below thanks to (and copyright of) Christine Krieg. Christine does a brilliant job shooting all of the Left Coast Writer events. See more of her work at her website.

Left Coast Writers and the Monticello Inn threw a book launch party for the Urban Guide to San Francisco! Click here for photos of the event.

Check out more of photographer Rebecca Dadson’s work here.

A reviewer from Amazon had this to say, “With most guides, I pick the thing up after I’ve decided what to do: I use it to see if the restaurant I’m considering is any good, or what the hours are, or whatever. Bradley Charbonneau’s Urban Travel Guide is something else again. Seems to me, Charbonneau has gone out and found about 200 interesting/fun/weirdly rewarding things to do in San Francisco that you don’t usually hear about. Each place he reviews is on its own page, so each page corresponds to a different activity. Last weekend, I was bored, I said to my wife, pick a number, she picked 96, I opened the book, it turned out to be a place called the Linc Gallery, so we went and saw an art show. Never would have thought of it otherwise. Next time I have a vistor from out of town, and I have to leave them on their own, I’m going to give them a copy of this book.”

Tell a friend! Go to this link and click on the little envelope in the bottom left of the page and send this info to a friend.

A great gift for Christmas / Birthday / July 4th / Hannukah / Easter! Someone visiting San Francisco? Never been? Never will? Let them read about what they’ll be missing!

“Finally! A guidebook even a local could use!” was the comment I heard most while doing this guidebook. Whether you were born here or have never been here, I hope you’ll feel right at home in San Francisco with this guide.

Are you a shop owner or book store that would like to sell the book?Download this form and place an order!

News item from RSM.

mo’ media publishers (The Netherlands)
April 2004

Some sample pages: