Writers Wrangling Research
Yvette Keller
Friday, June 14, 9-11:30 AM, Pacific Ballroom
Moderator, Yvette Keller, has done plenty of writing research of her own. She has also utilized degrees in literature and psychology from UC Santa Cruz to educate and coach Silicon Valley technical professionals. She returned home to Santa Barbara to focus on telling her own stories and supporting her fellow writers. Yvette's short fiction leans toward SF/Fantasy at an extravagantly relaxed angle. Douglas Adams' London is available from Herb Lester and Associates. Audiobooks narrated by Yvette can be found at Audible.com.
The publications involved range from memoir to biography to fiction to family history. Areas covered will be: sources of research, including interviews, public records, libraries as well as the universe of online possibilities. When research has been collected, how to face the daunting task of organizing the materials and shaping it into a coherent narrative. Every research story is different. There will be ample time to not only hear the individual stories, but also for Q&A and discussion. Attendees might want to share their research stories as well as time allows. Eight authors who have done extensive research. Gallery of photos below bios:
Marianne Dougherty is an award-winning writer and former beauty editor and publisher who has appeared on Live in L.A., Lifetime's New Attitudes, and Weekend Today. In 2017 she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Beauty Bus Foundation, which provides grooming services to seriously ill people and their caregivers. In 2019 and again in 2022, she was a finalist for a Golden Quill Award for journalistic excellence. She resides in Santa Barbara, California. Author of the novel What We Remember, her latest is Dye: a memoir of art, music, faith, family and hair color, based on the life of celebrity hairdresser Brad Johns.
Lisa Angle’s self-published historical novel, Whiskey and Old Stogies, landed on the long list for the 2021 MARK TWAIN Book Awards for Humor and Satire. She has always possessed a vivid imagination, probably spawned from watching too much television while growing up in Santa Barbara. She earned a master’s degree in computer-based education from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. Technology didn’t fulfill her creative spirit, so she began writing fiction. She likes to combine her tech knowledge with helping writers build their author platforms.
Paul Levine is the author of the “Jake Lassiter” and “Solomon vs. Lord” bestselling mystery/thriller novels. He has won the John D. MacDonald Fiction Award and the PenCraft Book of the Year Award and has been nominated for the Edgar, Macavity, International Thriller, Shamus, and James Thurber prizes. A former trial lawyer, he also wrote 20 episodes of the CBS military drama "JAG" and co-created the Supreme Court drama “First Monday” starring James Garner and Joe Mantegna. His “Solomon vs. Lord” novel series is currently being developed for television.
Lorissa Rinehart is an author, cultural producer, and public speaker. Her writing explores women’s history, politics, war, and their points of intersection. Her debut book, First to the Front: The Untold Story of Dickey Chapelle, Trailblazing Female War Correspondent (St. Martin’s Press) has received rave reviews from The Wall Street Journal, The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, and Publishers Weekly. She’s a TEDx speaker who’s appeared at the National Press Club, Friends of the National World War II Memorial, the Women's National Press Club, and the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation among other prestigious organizations. She’s been featured on numerous podcasts.
Harlan Green is author of The Mystery of Money-Understanding the Modern Financial World and Building Community Answering Kennedy’s Call, Green’s memoir of his years working to build successful communities at home and abroad. He was a Peace Corps Volunteer in a rural community development program in a Turkish village, as a photographer and filmmaker for the US Environmental Protection Agency in its earliest days. He then brings what he has learned building communities to his own community where he leads a successful planning effort that results in the formation of the new city of Goleta that is safe for children as well as adults.
Bee Bloeser is equipped with vivid memories and her personal archives of notes, letters, cables, film and official reports. She speaks and writes about this personal story set alongside the public triumph of the global eradication of smallpox. Her historical memoir, Vaccines & Bayonets: Fighting Smallpox in Africa amid Tribalism, Terror and the Cold War, receives high praise. Bloeser has lived in West Africa, the Middle East and Native American nations, and supported her late husband’s public health work on five continents.
Layne Staral What began as a series of articles on Layne D. Staral’s family history became the larger story of the settling of Henry Dalton’s Ranchos Azusa and San José. In the mid-1800s, these California homesteaders built homes, schools, churches, and the local towns of the San Gabriel Valley. Including family photos and memorabilia, Pioneer Picnics elaborates on the story of the transition from vast Mexican land grants to small independent communities that still remember and celebrate their beginnings. She did a research looking for information about her family and it all culminated in a niche book of California history.
Hendrika deVries is author of When a Toy Dog Became a Wolf and the Moon Broke Curfew, a memoir. A second memoir is coming out soon. Born in the Netherlands at a time when girls are to be housewives and mothers and nothing else, Hendrika de Vries is a “daddy’s girl” until her father is deported from Nazi-occupied Amsterdam to a POW camp in Germany and her mother joins the Resistance. In the aftermath of her father’s departure, Hendrika watches as freedoms formerly taken for granted are eroded with escalating brutality by men with swastika armbands who aim to exterminate those they deem “inferior” and those who do not obey.
