Founder Antoinette May |
Antoinette May
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Founding Gold Rush Writers Conference Director, Antoinette May, organized the first conference in 2004, in the quaint little Gold Rush town of Mokelumne Hill.
She was inspired by the release of her first novel, Pilate’s Wife, which became an international success story. As an experienced author, biographer, travel writer, columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle and local newspapers, and a newspaper editor, she wanted to share her joys of writing and publishing with the community and help stimulate recognition for the historic town of Mokelumne Hill and her favorite local restaurant and inn, the Hotel Leger.
The intimate conference has retained its unique flavor of being a friendly writing community, with many of the participants returning every year to delight in the course offerings that rival much larger conferences at a fraction of the price. The boutique feel of the conference offers writers a chance to network, learn more about the writing craft and marketing, and greet writer friends from across California and other states. Antoinette May invites writers of all levels to experience a conference that is truly one-of-a-kind, a writer’s gathering like no other.
www.antoinettemay.com
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Co-Directors
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Antoinette May
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Antoinette May reads Tarot cards, chases ghosts, and collects myths. Her fascination with the unknown led her to write Adventures of a Psychic which spent 42 weeks on the New York Times bestseller
list.
Antoinette’s love of legend inspired her debut novel, Pilate’s Wife, which has been translated into 19 languages and The Sacred Well, the San Francisco Book Festival’s top place winner in 2011.
A former newspaper editor, Antoinette has for years written weekly columns for the San Francisco Chronicle and SFGate. Her articles have appeared in Cosmopolitan, Self and Country Living magazines.
www.antoinettemay.com
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Monika Rose
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Founding Director of the 501(c)3 publishing company in the Mother Lode region, Manzanita Writers Press, Monika has been affiliated with the Gold Rush Writers Conference since its inception and has attended and taught at several of the conferences over the years.
She is honored to be co-director this year and thanks the Manzanita Writers Press Board for their commitment to the project’s ongoing success. MWP facilitates local writer support groups, including Voices of Wisdom free writing classes for seniors (Zoom and live), and Manzanita Night Writers, weekly manuscript review meetings (Zoom and live).
https://monikarosewriter.com
https://manzapress.com
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Faculty
Tommy Orange
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Tommy Orange
Tommy Orange is an American novelist and writer from Oakland, California who lives in the Sierra foothills. Born and raised in Oakland, Orange is a citizen of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Nations of Oklahoma. He is a recent graduate from the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he now teaches writing, and a 2014 MacDowell Fellow and 2016 Writing by Writers Fellow.
His first book, There There, was one of the finalists for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize and received the 2019 American Book Award. There There also received nominations for various other recognitions, including the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, the Audie Award for Multi-voiced Performance, and two from Goodreads Choice Awards: Best Fiction and Best Debut Goodreads. Orange received the John Leonard Prize in 2018, awarded for an author’s first book in any genre. In 2019, he received the PEN/Hemingway Award, which is dedicated to first-time authors of full-length fiction books.
He is currently working on a sequel to his first novel.
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Sands Hall
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Sands Hall
SANDS HALL is the author of the memoir, Reclaiming My Decade Lost in Scientology (Counterpoint), finalist for the Northern California Book Award, and a Publishers Weekly Best Book in Religion and Spirituality. She is also the author of the novel, Catching Heaven (Ballantine), a Random House Reader's Circle selection and Willa Award finalist for best Contemporary Fiction; and a book of essays and exercises, Tools of the Writer's Craft;.
Her stories and essays have appeared in such journals as New England Review, Iowa Review, and Los Angeles Review of Books. She brings her extensive theatre experience as playwright, actor, and director, as well as her work as a singer/songwriter and performer, to her teaching. Professor Emeritus at Franklin & Marshall College, she teaches annually for the Community of Writers and for the Iowa Summer Writing Festival, among others.
She lives in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada in California.
sandshall.com
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Antoinette May
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Antoinette May
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Antoinette May's first novel, Pilate's Wife, published by William Morrow, has been translated into 18 languages. The Sacred Well, her second for Morrow, was chosen best book of the year by the San Francisco Book Festival.
Antoinette's non-fiction includes Adventures of a Psychic which spent 44 weeks on the New York Times best seller list and Witness to War which has been optioned for a television mini series. She was the recipient of La Pluma de Plata, an award conferred by the Mexican Government for the best travel article on their country.
She writes weekly columns and her articles appear frequently in Cosmopolitan, Country Living, San Francisco and Sacramento magazines.
Visit Antoinette's website www.antoinettemay.com
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Monika Rose
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Monika Rose
Monika Rose, at home in the foothills of Calaveras County, founded Manzanita Writers Press, a nonprofit literary publisher in the Mother Lode. She is published in several anthologies and literary magazines. Her children's book, Bed Bumps, and a book of poems, River by the Glass, by GlenHill Publications, is available from Amazon as a print and eBook, as well as at the Manzanita online bookstore as are the other publications she has edited, including anthologies such as Out of the Fire, A Taste of Literary Elegance: Wine, Cheese & Chocolate, Wild Edges, and the ongoing Manzanita series of literary prose and poetry, which includes Voices of Wisdom publications.
With a Masters Degree in English, she teaches courses in writing and literature at Delta College as an Adjunct Associate Professor of English. Monika is currently writing a novel while editing other writers' books, readying them for publication.
Contact her at www.manzapress.com or her website ~ you can also email her at mrose209@gmail.com.
https://monikarosewriter.com
https://manzapress.com
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Kevin Arnold
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Kevin Arnold
Kevin Arnold is a transplanted Midwesterner who’s lived in Palo Alto, California, most of his life. His poems, praised for their accessibility, have been published in over fifty literary magazines and online journals. He has published a book of poems and a novel. The San Francisco/Peninsula California Writer’s Club recently named him Writer of the Year.
His latest book Do Not Think Badly of Me has just been released.
He served as President of Poetry Center San Jose for twelve years while he earned an MFA from San Jose State University. His novel, The Sureness of Horses, is available from Manzanita Press in hardback, softcover, and as an audiobook read by Sands Hall from Cherry Hill Publications.
He published a number of articles on usrepresented.com, including a series called Kevin’s Favorite Poems.
The national website YourDailyPoem.com has selected his poems eight times and is anthologizing his work in their ‘Best of Your Daily Poem’ collection, Poems to Lift You Up & Make You Smile, to be released this summer. A new anthology of Kevin’s poems is in the works—all efforts are being made to debut it at this year’s Gold Rush Writers.
https://kevinauthor.com
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Kathy Boyd-Fellure
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Kathy Boyd Fellure
Kathy Boyd Fellure is author of four children's books, and her debut contemporary women's fiction novel released in January 2018. The Language of the Lake is the first book in the completed ~ On the Water's Edge Tahoe Trilogy.
Her 4th novel, Across the Pond and her WIP, Harper House, are both set in England. Kathy is a member of CWC, ACFW, and is the founder of Amador Fiction Writers. She hosted, wrote & produced the TSPN TV Show ~ Authors, Writers, Books & Beyond from 2012- 2015.
Kathy has served as a judge for the NCPA book awards in 2017-18. She guest speaks, teaches at writer conferences, hosts an annual literary read, exhibits her photography, and is agented with Books & Such Literary Agency. Kathy Boyd Fellure currently lives in the foothill gold country of California with her family and three stand-up comedian rescue dogs.
https://www.kathyboydfellure.com/
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Lucy Sanna
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Lucy Sanna
Lucy Sanna's historical novel, The Cherry Harvest (HarperCollins 2015), was named Book Club Book of the summer by the Wisconsin State Journal and the Midwest Independent Booksellers Association's Book Club Pick for July. For this and previous works, Lucy has been featured on national television and radio, including CBS, NBC, NPR, and FOX. Her books have been recognized by national press, including the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Examiner, Wisconsin Journal, San Jose Mercury-News, Playboy Magazine and Men's World Magazine.
Lucy is a sought-after speaker and workshop leader at writers' conferences, including San Francisco's Litquake, the Wisconsin Book Fest, the Chicago Tribune's Book Fest, the Chicago Tribune's Printers Row, the University of Wisconsin's Writers Institute, the University of Wisconsin's Write-by-the-Lake Retreat, and the Sterling North Book & Film Festival. Since 1999, Lucy has served on the Executive Planning Board for the National Kidney Foundation's annual San Francisco's Authors Luncheon, the premier authors' event of the San Francisco Bay Area. She has also served on the Board of the California Writers Club, San Francisco Peninsula Branch. She is currently working on her next WWII historical novel.
Lucy's website: www.lucysanna.com
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Kathie Isaac-Luke
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Kathie Isaac-LukeKathie Isaac-Luke is a poet, editor and freelance writer.
Her poetry collection, Chrysalides, was published in 2010 by Dragonfly Press, and was selected as runner-up
at the 2014 Los Angeles Book Festival. Her poetry appears in numerous journals and has been widely anthologized.
She was nominated for a 2015 Pushcart Prize for her short story, “The Collection.”
Kathie was formerly a program coordinator for Poetry Center San Jose, where she edited the journal, caesura. She currently lives in Sonora, California, and
has reviewed plays for The Union Democrat newspaper for 14 years. She is currently working on a new poetry chapbook.
https://chrysalidespoetry.wordpress.com/
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Scott Anderson
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Scott Thomas Anderson
Scott Thomas Anderson is a California journalist whose work regularly appears in The San Francisco Chronicle and The Sacramento News & Review.
A 2018 Fellow for The USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism, he's written for a diverse range of publications, from The Irish Independent to Distiller's Magazine. For more than 15 years, Scott has primarily covered American crime, the drug world, environmental threats and the impacts of poverty. He's been awarded the California News Publishers Association's highest honors for feature writing, governmental coverage, agricultural reporting and breaking news. Scott's been interviewed about homicide investigations nationally on the Travel Channel, and internationally on Ireland's Radio 1: Drivetime. In recent years, Scott has balanced his hard news focus with cultural reporting and travel journalism, filing pieces on his time spent in Mexico, Greece, Croatia, Spain, Italy, Ireland, Scotland and Southern France. In 2019, he produced his first documentary podcast series, "Drinkers with Writing Problems," which travels to cities around the world to study the link between drinking culture and creative legacies. That series is live on iTunes, Audible and Stitcher. Back to the Top
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Tom Weidlingere
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Tom Weidlinger
Tom Weidlinger is a writer and filmmaker who has been writing, directing and producing documentaries for 35 years. His work deals with a wide range of subjects, from the emotional development of boys to humanitarian aid in the Congo. Social justice is a common theme.
One film, created in collaboration with Native American author Joe Bruchac was Jim Thorpe, The World's Greatest Athlete, receiving over 6,000 television broadvcasts.
His latest film, The Restless Hungarian, is his most personal project. It's based on his book of the same title, awarded a gold medal for biography from the 2020 Independent Publisher's Book Awards.
Combining documentary material with recreated scenes from his own childhood, the filmmaker discovers how family tragedies, mental illness and suicide are manifestations of trauma passed on from one generation to the next.
Weidlinger's quest makes meaning from his family's suffering, resulting in a healing work that breaks the cycle of intergenerational trauma.
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Sharon Strong
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Sharon Strong
SHARON STRONG is a practicing psychologist and artist, mask-maker, and creator of towering sculptures for Burning Man as well as gallery exhibits in Northern California.
She is the illustrator of two books-Serious Fun: Ingenious Improvisations on Money, Food, Waste, Water & Home, by Carolyn North, and Two Lines 13: Masks, edited by Zack Rogow-and in 2005 she self-published Soul Unmasked: A Personal Journey into the Ancient Ritual of the Mask.
She lives in Angels Camp, California, on twenty acres in a straw-bale house with her husband, filmmaker Tom Weidlinger, whom she met at age seventy. Their story inspired her to write Burning Woman.
https://www.sharonstrongartist.com/
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CONFERENCE SCHEDULE
Friday, Oct 7
- 5-6:45 p.m. Registration and Dinner Picnic at Hotel Leger banquet room
- 7-8:30 p.m. Friday evening Publisher Monika Rose interviews prize winning novelist Tommy Orange -
public invited ($20)
Saturday, Oct 8
- 8:30-9 a.m. Registration for those not registered Friday, Hotel Leger, 8304 Main St.
- 9 a.m. Conference founder and emeritus, Antoinette May, welcomes everyone and introduces all the Gold Rush workshop leaders.
- 9:15 Conference emcee Kevin Arnold offers words of encouragement to get the weekend off to a great start. The World According to [You].
- 10:00-11:30 Workshops : Morning Session
- 11:30-1:30 p.m. Lunch on your own; explore Mokelumne Hill
- 1:30-3 p.m. Workshops: Afternoon Session I
- 3:00 to 3:30 Break
- 3:30-5 p.m. Workshops Afternoon Session II
- 5-6 p.m. Network, book signing/sales, and no-host bar
- 6:30 p.m. Dinner.
- 8:00 p.m. Keynote Dinner Address: Nzondi (Ace Antonio Hall)
Never Say Nevermore: How to Raise the Dead
(This event open to the public)
- 9:00 p.m. Open Mic for all genres of writing. This is a casual, laid-back event with no critiquing, just fun. Each reader is limited to 500 words (about two double-spaced pages). Everyone is invited to share.
Sunday, Oct 9
- Morning: breakfast on your own.
- 9:30 a.m. Kathy Boyd Fellure gives a motivational talk: Don’t Tell It, Show it - Just Like The Movies
- 10-11:30 Workshops : Sunday Session
- 12 noon Lunch Featured Speaker: Sands Hall
- 2:00 Alumni Roundtable : You Followed the Muse and Now What? Hear their success stories
- 3:00 Antoinette bids us goodbye until next year!
Workshop Schedule
Saturday, Morning Session
10:00-11:30: choice of one
Workshop Schedule
Saturday, Afternoon Session I
1:30-3 p.m.: choice of one
Workshop Schedule
Saturday, Afternoon Session II
3:30-5 p.m.: choice of one
Sunday Session
10-11:30 a.m.: choice of one
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Pricing: Friday's picnic supper, Saturday dinner and Sunday lunch included.
- $220 Conference returnees before August 1st
- $230 Early bird Before August 1st
- $240 After August 1st
Click Here for Registration
This year, we are pleased to offer locals the opportunity to sign up for individual workshops at $40 per 90 minute session by check or cash only.
If you are interested in this special offer please
email Antoinette May
directly.com
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