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We are all recovering from the pandemic isolation. The Writers of Kern are included in that number. As we navigate this new path together, I hope all our members consider how they can help reinvigorate our club, our community and our creativity. Matthew Woodman at Cal State University Bakersfield recently put out a call for poets to submit their work to “Writing Covid Anthology”. I am inspired to see the number of WOK members who contributed their work to make this important book possible. In a way, the poetry found within helps us document the experiences we shared and helps us find a way back to our creative centers.
As you reflect on the past two years, I hope you consider how you want your club to grow and reunite. I look forward to seeing our members in the flesh, with real pens and paper at the table, sharing a communal meal and telling our stories. Let’s celebrate our submissions, rejections, acceptances and publications. Think about how you might help your board recreate the vibrant community we were before these sequestered times. If you have any ideas or suggestions, please contact us through the website. Leave a message. We are all ears (with pens).
Sincerely,
Anke Hodenpjil
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Important Announcements
Board elections are approaching fast! Nominations are due by this month's meeting, May 21, 2022. Elections take place at the June meeting. The Writers of Kern is a chapter of the California Writers Club and is a non-profit, community-based organizations. Volunteers are what keep are organization alive. If you love this club as much as we do, want to help keep it running, and are interested in volunteering, please contact Sandy Moffett at sm@sandymoffett.com. See below for more information about participating as a volunteer.
May is WOK Honors. We will be celebrating winners of the Peggy Connolly Scholarship, honoring new active members, and more.
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Inclusive Characterization: Writing ‘the other’ without Stereotypes or Appropriation
Course description
This workshop will advance your skills in real-world characterization and authentic representation. Gonzales will teach you how to write diverse characters in a rich and meaningful way that humanizes them.
Biography
Michelle Cruz Gonzales is an English professor and author of the memoir, The Spitboy Rule: Tales of a Xicana in a Female Punk which is taught in in colleges and Universities in colleges all over the United States. She has essay and fiction in anthologies by Putnam, PM Press, Seal Press, and Literary Kitchen, and she has published online in Longreads, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Latino Rebels, and Mitu. She recently completed a satirical novel about near-future-California that secedes from the US and forces intermarriage between whites and Mexicanos for the purpose of creating a race of beautiful, intelligent, hardworking people, and she is currently at work on a screenplay.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Gonzales was a member of three all women punk bands, Bitch Fight, Kamala and the Karivores, and Spitboy. Never interested in playing music with men, Gonzales, primarily a drummer and lyricist, toured nationally and internationally with Spitboy whose lyrics focused on women and gender issues. In 2016, Gonzales published The Spitboy Rule: Tales of a Xicana in a Female Punk Band, about her experiences as the only person of color in Spitboy and what it was like being a person of color in the predominately white Bay Area punk scene. Gonzales and Spitboy are featured in the 2017 documentary, Turn it Around: Story of East Bay Punk.
Purchase in-person tickets here: $15 members and $18 nonmembers.
Purchase online tickets here: $5 Zoom.
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Last Meeting |16 April 2022 | Writing Childhood
When writing memoir about childhood, or fiction with a child protagonist, how do we convey a child’s point of view and experience? What are the particular characteristics of child consciousness we need to capture? Do we use a child’s language or an adult’s? If we are writing in the voice of a first person child narrator, how do we transmit information beyond what the child understands? Author of the coming of age memoir, Don’t Go Crazy Without Me and Antioch college instructor, Deborah A. Lott, addressed these questions and others, enabling us to create memorable and specific child characters, and to convey the perspectives, fantasies, and dilemmas of childhood. Thank you, Deborah, for a lively discussion.
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April Poetry - Thank you to all the contributors for sharing your poetry with the Writers of Kern. We will let you know when the ezine is available.
Wendigo by Mateo Perez Lara
Longing for Peace by Portia Choi
How Simply God Shows His Care by Shelley Evans
Sounds of 2020 by Christie Finley
Of Pockets And Words by Christie Finley
Like a Lotus, Open by Christie Finley
Poetics by Christie Finley
Crossing the Finish Line by Jacqueline Thomas
Naptime for Justin by Jacqueline Thomas
Rain Lady by Ramona Acree Burnham
Cotton Candy Delight by Jennette Green
Sirena by Cyn Bermudez
Nucleosynthesis by Cyn Bermudez
Sparkling Like Dust by Dianne Buxton
Forgotten & Remembered by Jennette Green
Baby Bud by Julie Bonderov
Message On the Notepad by Julie Bonderov
Walking In the Rain by Julie Bonderov
Thinks that Stink (in the style of Dr. Seuss) by Julie Bonderov
Mourning Dove Evans by Shelley Evans
In the Ocean by Shelley Evans
July 4th at Pismo Beach by Gary Evans
Looking for the Art in Myself by Gary Evans
Three Haiku Concerning…by Darlene Stotler
Bed-Time Stories by Mark Fisher
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 Cinco de Mayo is a Mexican holiday celebrating the victory at the Battle of Puebla of the Mexican army on May 5, 1862, against the French army during the Franco-Mexican War.
The Writers of Kern wishes all of you a safe and happy Cinco de Meay celebration.
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 Sunday May 8 is the annual celebration honoring mothers everywhere. The Writers of Kerns wishes all mothers, mothers-to-be, and mother figures a wonderful Mother's Day.
Need gift ideas? Check out WOK Press for our anthologies or books by our members. |
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WOK Critique Groups are up and running! The new Screenwriters Group has room for more members, and so does the Mystery Writers Group. There is room for one more in Portia’s Poetry Group as well. I encourage new WOK members to join – it will really improve your writing and you’ll make some new friends! Interested? Contact Carla Martin at critiquegroups@writersofkern.com
Respectfully submitted,
Carla Joy Martin
Critique Group Chair
critiquegroups@writersofkern.com
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