Featured Authors 2021-22

Celebrate the success of Bay Area authors at the annual Redwood Writers Author Launch event.

Scroll down to check out the stellar lineup of featured authors during the 2021-22 Author Launch.

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Watch the video of the February event to hear excerpts from new books published by our members from January 2021 through January 2022.

CLICK BELOW TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE AUTHORS AND THEIR BOOKS

  • Irradiated Cover 1-29-22

    Richard Boyd

    Irradiated: An Alien Perspective

    Science Fiction

  • Robbi Sommers Bryant_The Darkness

    Robbi Bryant

    The Darkness

    Horror/Suspense

  • Nancy-Dougherty_Heaven is in Truckee

    Nancy Dougherty

    Heaven Is In Truckee

    Poetry

  • Where to Next? Sample 2 New Font

    Joan Goodreau

    Where to Next?

    Poetry

  • Cynthia Gregory_What is Possible from Here

    Cynthia Gregory

    What Is Possible From Here

    Fiction

  • Kathy-Guthormsen_The Story of Jazz and Vihar

    Kathy Guthormsen

    The Story of Jazz and Vihar

    Illustrated Children's Fiction

  • Schoole winner vector file-OL

    Lenore Hirsch

    Schooled: Confessions of a Rookie Vice Principal

    Fiction

  • Karl Kadie_Revenge-of-Nature

    Karl Kadie

    Revenge of Nature

    Poetry

  • Karen Misuraca_Secret Sonoma

    Karen Misuraca

    Secret Sonoma: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, and Obscure

    Nonfiction

  • Bruce Koepp_Pitfall

    Bruce Koepp

    Pitfall

    Mystery

  • Joan Prebilich_Some Men Must Live

    Joan Prebilich

    Some Men Must Live

    Fiction

  • Rebecca Rosenberg_CHAMPAGNE-WIDOWS

    Rebecca Rosenberg

    Champagne Widows

    Historical Fiction

  • Brittany Sweeting_Pearlized

    Brittany Sweeting

    Pearlized

    Mystery/Thriller

  • Steve Trenam_An Affront to Gravity

    Steve Trenam

    An Affront to Gravity

    Poetry

  • Tommie Whitener_California Vignettes-Some Stories

    Tommie Whitener

    California Vignettes: Some Stories

    Short Stories

  • Natasha Yim_Dim-Sum

    Natasha Yim

    Luna's Yum Yum Dim Sum

    Children's Picture Book

FEATURED_AUTHORS_21-22
Richard Boyd

RICHARD BOYD

Richard Boyd is a retired professor with interests in astrophysics and astrobiology. He now writes novels, usually aimed at issues in modern society, or poems, designed for amusement.

Irradiated: An Alien Perspective

The world is awash in electromagnetic radiation, and humans are unable to restrain their perceived needs for smartphones and other wi-fi-related devices. The watchdog agency of the United States refuses to place meaningful limits on what the telecom industry can do. It takes an alien lady to bring the world to its senses.

Irradiated Cover 1-29-22
Robbi Sommers Bryant_The Darkness

The Darkness

The Darkness is a harrowing journey into the depths of evil and the battle to overcome it.

"Bryant has scribbled a "black belt" thriller, showcasing her immense talent, ambition with technique, and wonderfully wild imagination. But more importantly, it's readable as hell."
—Joshua Mohr, Ophrah’s Book of the Month author

ROBBI SOMMERS BRYANT

Robbi Sommers Bryant’s award-winning books include a novella, seven novels, five story collections, and one book of poetry. Published in Readers Digest, Redbook, Penthouse, college textbooks, and anthologies—Robbi’s work was optioned for TV’s Movie of the Week. She also appeared on TV’s Jane Whitney Show. Robbi is also an editor. robbibryant.com

Robbi Sommers Bryant
Nancy-Dougherty-

NANCY DOUGHERTY

Nancy Cavers Dougherty is the author of three chapbooks: Tape Recorder On, Memory In Salt, and Levee Town, as well as the collaborative work, Silk. Her poetry has appeared in many journals and anthologies including Westview, The Pinch, California Quarterly, West Marin Review, and more publications. Nancy lives in Sebastopol, California.

Heaven is in Truckee

Heaven is in Truckee, published by the Orchard Street Press, brings humor to the Post Office and Little League, penetrates through pretentiousness to the deep archeological niches within us. These are poems of quintessential American sounds and seasons; the rustle of Sycamores, the staccato of cleats. Her language is full of music.

Nancy-Dougherty_Heaven is in Truckee
Where to Next? Sample 2 New Font

Where to Next?

"From the very first word to the very last in Joan Goodreau's Where to Next, she expresses how to transit directly to the heart of all things human. These are poems of dynamic honesty and profound tenderness. This is a book to cherish."
—Les Bernstein, author of Loose Magic

JOAN GOODREAU

Joan Goodreau's books are Where to Now? Strangers Together: How My Son’s Autism Changed My Life, and Another Secret Shared. Her poems, stories, and articles have appeared in numerous periodicals and anthologies in North America. Joan’s plays have appeared at local festivals. A Pushcart nominee, she has been awarded a Hedgebrook Writing Residency.

Joan-Goodreau
Cynthia Gregory

CYNTHIA GREGORY

Cynthia Gregory is an award-winning author of literary fiction. Her work has been published in The Sun, Glimmer Train, and other notable journals. Her collected short stories were published in 2021, following her first book, Journaling As Sacred Practice, in 2017. Cynthia lives in the Sonoma Valley with her two rescue pups, Winston and Mr. Blue.

What Is Possible From Here

Cynthia Gregory’s collected stories, What is Possible From Here, explores the relationships that form meaning in our lives. Set in wildly different locations, stories unfold that connect us all. Gregory’s prose opens doors into strange and compelling worlds that tease us forward, inevitably, toward possibility.

Cynthia Gregory_What is Possible from Here
Kathy-Guthormsen_The Story of Jazz and Vihar

The Story of Jazz and Vihar

The Story of Jazz and Vihar is an educational tale sure to delight children and adults alike. Learn the important role that birds play in our ecology and how to best help them when you find one lost or injured in the wild.

KATHY GUTHORMSEN

Kathy Guthormsen’s writing has been published in The Write Spot: Memories and The Write Spot: Possibilities, The Write Spot: Writing as a Path to Healing, and The Write Spot: Musings and Ravings from a Pandemic Year. Her story, "Come, Calls the Demon," won the Petaluma Argus Courier’s Halloween story contest in October 2021.

Kathy Guthormsen
Schoole winner vector file-OL

Schooled: Confessions of a Rookie Vice Principal

An obnoxious boss, troubled middle schoolers, angry parents, a few clueless teachers, and a little romance. What could go wrong for a new female vice principal? Remember your own school days, and laugh and cry as you watch Cynthia Walker stumble, find her way, stand up for what she believes, and perhaps find lasting love.

LENORE HIRSCH

Lenore Hirsch enjoyed thirty-one years as a teacher and school administrator at elementary and middle schools. Her books include My Leash on Life, Foxy's View of the World from a Foot Off the Ground, a collection of poetry, Leavings; and Laugh and Live, Advice for Aging Boomers; humorous essays about aging.

LenoreHirsch.com

Lenore Hirsch
Karl-Kadie

KARL KADIE

Karl Kadie is the author of two previous books of poetry, The Burning House and Singing with the Storm. His work has been published or accepted for publication in Train River, 2021 Redwood Writers anthologies Beyond Distance and Remember When, The Santa Clara Review, The New Verse News, and Haiku Headlines. He lives in Santa Rosa, California.

Revenge of Nature

The poems in Revenge of Nature depict the powerful changes shaping our climate and planet. They highlight how people, animals, and other life forms are coping with nature and climate change. The key message is to rescue ourselves from climate change, we must personally experience it, physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

Karl Kadie_Revenge-of-Nature
Bruce Koepp_Pitfall

Pitfall

Pitfall is a romantic thriller set in the Minnesota north woods. The protagonist is a private forensic pathologist who serves families needing support and questions answered when it seems no one else cares. By coincidence, he finds himself caught up in a cold case of a young woman he once knew well in this rural lake country.

BRUCE KOEPP

Bruce Koepp (pen name: Brace Ruben) is a retired medical professional who is finally embracing a fictional writing career after forty years of teaching, publishing in journals, seminars, and pathology. He prefers descriptive narratives of the midwestern culture, the colorful characters, and the psychological interaction of the past and present.

Bruce Koepp
Karen Misuraca

KAREN MISURACA

Karen Misuraca is an award-winning travel journalist and author of 10 guidebooks. Also a ghostwriter and book publicist, she contributes to the updates and rewrites of popular travel books about California, and she is the fournder of DeepCultureTravel.com.

Secret Sonoma: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, and Obscure

Secret Sonoma: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, and Obscure reveals 84 of the quirkiest, strangest, and least-known places and people to discover in the county, from fighter jets to Star Wars and hidden museums, roadhouses, totems, ghosts, and a Field of Dreams. Purchase Secret Sonoma at your local bookseller, on Amazon, or at ReedyPress.com (free shipping).

Karen Misuraca_Secret Sonoma
Joan Prebilich

JOAN PREBILICH

Joan Prebilich has been writing steadily since her retirement from language teaching in 2010. Having lived in post-war Germany and Vietnam-era Japan, she has maintained a lifelong interest in other cultures that is reflected in her novels and short stories.

Some Men Must Live

Returned from the war as a survivor of the Burma-Thai death railroad, Michael Paxton resumes his civilian life as a reporter for the Sydney Times. When the Australian political climate turns against a free and open press, he's determined to do the right thing. The question is: can he do it?

Joan Prebilich_Some Men Must Live

Purchase Joan's book by emailing her at [email protected].

Rebecca Rosenberg_CHAMPAGNE-WIDOWS

Champagne Widows

2022 Historical Novel Society's Editors' Choice. Champagne Widows, first woman of champagne battled pandemics, mental illness, wars, sexist laws, and even Napoleon to forge a champagne empire.

REBECCA ROSENBERG

Rebecca Rosenberg is a champagne historian, tour guide, and champagne cocktail creator for Breathless Wines. Her other award-winning novels include The Secret Life of Mrs. London, Gold Digger: The Remarkable Baby Doe Tabor, Lavender Fields of America. Follow Rebecca at Rebecca-Rosenberg.com or Facebook at rebeccarosenbergnovels.

Rebecca Rosenberg
Brittany Sweeting

BRITTANY SWEETING

B. K. Sweeting is the author and illustrator of Bubbly By The Sea, a 2021 International Book Award-winner. She's a thriller enthusiast, wine connoisseur, and loves the sea. She currently lives in Northern California. Learn more at BKSweeting.com

Pearlized

Pearlized is filled with mystery, thrill, and unexpected twists and turns. Throughout his life, Oisín Murphy questions his mother's disappearance. A deadly adventure ensues, across East and West coastal waters, intertwining the ones closest to Oisín and bringing him to a climax that you won't see coming.

Brittany Sweeting_Pearlized
Steve Trenam_An Affront to Gravity

An Affront to Gravity

“As the initial poem, "Full Circle," suggests, the reader will want to return to these pages, again and again, meeting different versions of themselves, but also knowing that both the questions these poems elicit and the beauty they curate have no real end.”
—Megan Merchant, author of Before the Fevered Snow (Stillhouse Press, 2020)

Purchase this book by sending an email to [email protected].

STEVE TRENAM

Steve Trenam teaches poetry writing for Santa Rosa Junior College. As a poet, he is neither sure-footed nor clear. Metaphorically speaking, Steve is out on a leafless limb with just spider webs and moss, listening to the silken slip of water over stone.
Pandemic Puzzle Poems and Canyon, River, Stone and Light, Nov. 2021.

Steve Trenam
Tommie Whitener_California Vignettes-Some Stories

California Vignettes: Some Stories

A collection of twelve short stories mainly about we more mature folks and running the subject-matter gamut from a man coming to grips with different sexuality after his wife dies, to grandparents second-guessing a planned move to another city to be closer to their grandchildren, to the eponymously named "The Asshole."

TOMMIE WHITENER

Often drawing material and ideas from his California upbringing and his long-term interest in things Russian, this is Tommie Whitener's second collection of short stories. He also published a historical novel based on his Arkansas grandparents, as well as another novel about couples attending a personal development retreat.

Tommie Whitener
Natasha Yim

NATASHA YIM

Natasha Yim is a children’s author, and freelance writer. She has published seven picture books and written for the children's magazines Highlights for Children, Appleseeds, Faces, and Muse as well as various adult magazines. Her two book projects with Disney/Pixar based on upcoming Pixar movies will be released on Feb. 8 and May 3 2022.

Luna's Yum Yum Dim Sum

Luna and her family are celebrating her birthday with a dim sum lunch—Luna’s favorite. But when Luna drops a pork bun, she and her two brothers must figure out how to share five buns fairly. Should some siblings get more? Or should they cut the buns into smaller and smaller pieces? An introduction to simple division and fractions.

Natasha Yim_Dim-Sum

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