Willamette Writers
Coast Chapter
Willamette Writers Coast Chapter
Sample of Recent Programming
Emmeline Duncan
Finding the Mystery at the Heart of Your Novel
Every book is a mystery, but not every novel is a whodunit. What can you learn from analyzing a traditional mystery to add depth to your story, regardless of genre? Find out at the Willamette Writers Coast Chapter February 17 meeting at 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm at the Newport Public Library.
Presenter Emmeline Duncan will show you how studying the building blocks of a classic mystery, from clues to red herrings and authentic villains to flawed sleuths will help you improve the plot of every work-in-progress.
Everyone, from novelists and short story writers to memoirists will benefit from this presentation.
This program is co-hosted by the Newport Public Library.
Like her Ground Rules Mystery series, Emmeline Duncan is based in Portland, Oregon. Her series includes Fresh Brewed Murder, Double Shot Death, Flat White Fatality, and Death Unfiltered, which comes out in March 2024. She’s also the author of Chaos at the Lazy Bones Bookshop, which will be published in July 2024.
Emmeline also writes for teens as Kelly Garrett. Her debut YA Novel, The Last to Die, was an Oregon Book Awards finalist. She also received a 2020 Oregon Literary Fellowship. When not writing, she spends her time seeking out new coffee shops and hiking trails to explore, frequently accompanied by her Great Pyrenees sidekick. You can track her on-line at emmelineduncan.com.
Michael Dylan Welch
Haiku Targets beyond 5-7-5
What do you shoot for when you write haiku? How can its strategies help your longer poetry or fiction? This presentation by Michael Dylan Welch explores the targets to aim for and why 5-7-5 is not necessarily one of them, at the Willamette Writers Coast Chapter, January 20 meeting, from 2-3:30 pm on Zoom. Please register on-line at www.willamettewriters.org for the link.
Learn why 5-7-5 is an urban myth for writing haiku in English, and why other techniques (not “rules”) are more important for writing brief poems of personal experience. The presentation will dive into seasonal reference and two-part juxta-positional structure and discuss how they can help improve your other writing. Writing exercise and optional sharing/feedback will be part of the program.
Michael Dylan Welch likes to be surprised by empathy and gratitude in haiku, has been active with haiku for more than 40 years, and joined the Haiku society of America in 1987. He founded his press, Press Here, in 1989 and is currently co-editing First Frost. Michael co-founded the Haiku North America Conference in 1991 and the American Haiku Archives in 1996, and National Haiku Writing Month (www.nahaiwrimo.com) in 2010.
Michael has won first place in the Henderson, Brady, Drevniok, and Tokutomi haiku contests. His poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in hundreds of publications, including three Norton Anthologies. His website, devoted mostly to haiku, is www.graceguts.com.
Larry Lehnerz
How to Add Humor to Your Writing
Feel like you’re one card short of a full deck in your writing? Perhaps it’s the joker card. From cozies to serious drama, humor plays a vital role in storytelling. But what if you’re not funny? The good news is that like other elements of writing, humor techniques can be practiced, learned and applied to any writing style. The even better news is that doing so is fun.
Join writing coach and humor writer Larry Lehnerz on Saturday, October 21 from 2:00-4:00 pm at the Newport Public Library as he presents his workshop on writing humor for the Willamette Writers Coast Chapter. This meeting is free and open to the public.
In this workshop, we will discuss and practice humor writing techniques and send everyone away with a smile.
Larry Lehnerz is a writing coach, humorous storyteller and author of, SUMMER of ’74, a coming-of-age novel imbued with humor and warmth. A former Newport, Oregon resident, he now lives in the Seattle suburbs. As a husband, father and “silly Grandpa” he strives to tell meaningful tales that tickle his readers.
Catherine Rickbone, left, and Anne Ettel, right, are co-chairs of WW Coast Chapter. They recently authored and presented a program on “How to Write an Elevator Pitch.”
How to Write an Elevator Pitch
Do you ever wonder what you would say if you came face to face with an editor, agent, or a publisher? What if you needed to introduce yourself at a conference—or explain your published book or a work in progress?
How to Write an Elevator Pitch is the focus on Saturday, September 16 from 2:00-3:30 pm of the Willamette Writers Coast Chapter at the Newport Public Library. Coast Chapter Co-Chairs Catherine Rickbone and Anne Ettel bring fresh tips from the August Willamette Writers Conference and will facilitate this workshop on how to promote yourself and your writing through pitches.
Participants will practice drafting a pitch or revising a pitch draft they have completed. The purpose is learning a technique and receiving encouragement. This workshop is beneficial for all writers no matter what their genre or where they are in the writing process. After the program there will be time for networking.
Meeting is free and open to the public.
This program is co-hosted by the Newport Public Library.
Willamette Writers Open Mic Meeting
The Willamette Writers Coast Chapter invites coastal writers and authors to join us on Saturday, June17th from 2 pm to 3:30 pm at the Newport Public Library for an Open Mic program highlighting personal work. Each writer will have five minutes to present a work of their choice. Please note five minutes is the maximum time so everyone gets a chance to read.
Why an open mic? From the ritual of reading bedtime stories to children, to listening to audio books while we exercise or walk, we all sense that words read aloud brings them to life. The art of putting words on paper is only a first step for writers and authors. Regardless of the genre, authors hope that writing calls out to its readers, grabs their attention, and entices them to join in the storytelling.
Words should sing, not just on the page, but as we speak them aloud. Hearing and sharing of writing bring a fresh perspective, creating new space between the writer and the written word. And, since writing is a solitary effort, reading work aloud is a celebration of the craft and work, and honors the efforts of fellow writers.
We hope to see this event filled with coast writers eager to share their work and telling their stories with their own author’s voice.
In addition to the Open Mic, there will be a brief brainstorming session on programming for next year.
How to Write a Memoir Readers Will Fall in Love With
What is it about memoir that’s drawing more and more writers to the genre? And if you’re thinking about diving in, or have a memoir-in-progress, what do you need to know about the genre to make your story resonant with readers?
Join memoir expert and enthusiast Brooke Warner on Saturday, May 20 from 2:00 pm-3:30 pm. This meeting is free and open to the public. Attendees can find the Zoom link on the Willamette Writers events calendar: Willamettewriters.org/events
Whether you’re a beginning memoirist or well into your project, this workshop will give you hands-on strategies to deepen your work and, most importantly, write scenes and characters that make readers care.
Brooke brings energy and passion to her teaching of memoir, supporting writers to find ways to make their stories bigger and more meaningful than simply “what happened.”
This workshop guides writers through the most important craft elements: scene, narration, character development/characterization, memory and flashback, reflection and takeaway. And we’ll examine popular memoirs that execute these elements of craft beautifully so that writers grasp how to implement what they learn in their own writing.
Brooke Warner is publisher of She Writes Press and SparkPress, president of Warner Coaching Inc. brookewarner.com, and author of Write On, Sisters!, Green-light Your Book, What’s Your Book?, and three books on memoir. Brooke is a TEDx speaker, weekly podcaster (of “Write-minded” with co-host Grant Faulkner of NaNoWriMo), and the former Executive Editor of Seal Press. She writes a regular column for Publishers Weekly.
Editing Bootcamp
Join the Willamette Writers Coast Chapter as Maren Anderson, Emerita Editor of the Timberline Review, presents “Editing Bootcamp” Saturday, April 22 from 2:00 pm-3:30 pm at the Newport Public Library.
We love it. We hate it. Without it, a story is doomed. This fast-paced interactive workshop will walk you through a specific process for deep editing of scenes, paragraphs, sentences, and words. These are practical tools you can use on the fly to make your scenes shine.
Attendees are encouraged to bring two pages of their work in progress (preferably the beginning of a chapter that is still in the rough draft stage) and they can work along as Anderson moves through the process. Writers are welcome to participate even if they do not have a chapter in rough draft stage. Nonfiction and memoir writers can learn tips as well.
Maren Bradley Anderson is a writer, teacher, and alpaca rancher in Oregon. She is the Emerita Editor of the Timberline Review and Editor of PURE Insights –Undergraduate Research Experiences at Western Oregon University. She has written plays for the Apple Box Children’s Theater. Her writing has appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, Alpacas Magazine, and the Timberline Review. She teaches at Western Oregon University. Her new novel Sparks (July 2019), sex farce Closing the Store, and alpaca ranch romance Fuzzy Logic are available online and through your local bookstore.
Book Banning and Censorship
Join the Willamette Writers Coast Chapter as Laura Kimberly, the Newport Public Library Director, provides an interactive presentation on book challenges, banning and efforts across the country to remove or restrict access to books and information on Saturday, March 18 from 2:00 pm-3:30 pm in the McEntee Meeting Room of the Newport Public Library, 35 NW Nye Street Newport, OR 97365.
Many books are banned and challenged today. A challenge is an attempt to remove or restrict materials, based upon the objections of a person or group. A banning is the removal of those materials.
The efforts to censor state and local boards of education, libraries and librarians and the minds of the citizenry has an ominous impact on our individual freedoms and our right to be educated, to know and to make our own decisions. In this time of intense political polarization, library staff in every state are facing an unprecedented number of attempts to ban books.
The American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom tracked 729 challenges to library, school and university materials and services in 2021<https://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/top10>, resulting in more than 1,597 individual book challenges or removals.
Most current targeted books are by or about Black or LGBTQIA+ persons. However, George Orwell’s 1984, Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, and recently in the state of Kansas, E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web, are among the thousands of books banned some place in this country.
Laura Kimberly earned her MLIS from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in December 2013. She is a member of the American Library Association, the Oregon Library Association and Mountain Plains Library Association. She currently works as the Library Director of the Newport Public Library.
Prior to her current position, Kimberly was employed in Jackson County Library Services as the Assistant Director of Public Services, Medford Branch Manager, and Library Media Specialist for the Washoe County School District in Reno, Nevada. In her spare time, she enjoys running, reading, volunteering, the great outdoors and spending time with her husband and children.
“How to Move Through Writer’s Block
and Finish that First Draft Dump!”
Does the blank page terrify you? Does starting a writing project give you nightmares? Do you get lost from point A to point B in your manuscript?
Join Willamette Writers Coast Chapter as Sonja Thomas, a 2023 Oregon Book Awards Finalist, provides practical advice to move through writer’s block and finish that first draft on Saturday, February 18 from 2:00 pm–3:30pm at the Newport Public Library.
Writer’s Block—what is it really and what causes it? No matter if you’re at the beginning of your writing journey or a seasoned author, we’ve all had moments where we’ve avoided the blank page or just can’t move forward with what we’ve started.
In this workshop, Thomas discusses the three main reasons why we get stuck and how to get writing again and finish that first draft dump!
This workshop includes interactive conversations, real-life examples, and time for Q&A. The presentation is for ALL genres and ages of reading.
Sonja Thomas (she/her) writes stories for readers of all ages. A 2023 Oregon Book Awards finalist, Sir Fig Newton and the Science of Persistence is “a noteworthy debut” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). Her next middle grade novel is scheduled for publication in spring/summer 2024 with Simon & Schuster.
“Ruled by coffee & cats, a few of her favorite things are: dancing to music blasting in the living room; traveling to new places and buying a magnet before leaving; and snuggling with her furry friend, Gabbie Lu.
She’s a contributing author for Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls: 100 Real-Life Tales of Black Girl Magic. She is also the author several short stories appearing in the Beware the Bugs, Oregon Reads Aloud, 2015 Young Explorer’s Adventure Guide, and Dark Heart Volume 2 anthologies.
Raised in Central Florida and a Washington, DC transplant for eleven years, she’s now “keeping it weird” in the Pacific Northwest. Visit her at www.bysonjathomas.com.
Willamette Writers Open Mic Meeting and Fall Networking Party
The Willamette Writers Coast Chapter invites coastal writers and authors to an Open Mic reading and a festive, fall networking party on November 18 from 2-4 pm at the Newport Public Library.
The event will begin with a chance for writers to network with each other. Snacks will be provided.
The party features a free book exchange. Any writing craft books, novels, non-fiction, mysteries, poetry, etc. you would like to pass along, bring them for our table. You may find a new favorite for your bookshelf.
Open Mic provides any writer who wishes, five minutes to read a work of their choice. This will be a fun time for writers to share and make connections. Please plan to join us.