with Mary Mackey, New York Times Best Selling Author

Date:     Friday August 13, 2010

Time: 11 AM PDT |12 PM MDT | 1 PM CDT |2 PM EDT

Cost: FREE FOR NAMW MEMBERS (NAMW Members, the Call-In Details will be posted in the Member Area as the date approaches.  Please be sure to login to see the details below as the date approaches).

Not Available for the Live Call? NAMW members can access a link in the NAMW member area within a week of the teleseminar to download the audio mp3 of this call!

Not already a member of NAMW? Click here to become a member now!

In this teleseminar, Mary will talk about the role poetry can play in developing and contributing to memoir. Some of her talking points will include how to use poetry to find your personal voice, choose your narrative style, set the emotional tone of your memoir, summon up the past, and make your prose come alive.

Topics that will be discussed include:

• How writing poetry can help you write your memoir, even if you have never written poetry before.
• What is so liberating about writing poetry?
• How poetry helps recover forgotten parts of the past.
• Personal voice and how writing poetry helps us find it.
• The four most important techniques for making writing come alive
• Poets who write poems based on memoir

About Mary:  Mary Mackey received her B.A. magna cum laude from Harvard and her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. One of the founders of the Graduate Creative Writing Program at California State, University, Sacramento, she has taught memoir writing for many years on both the graduate and undergraduate level.

Related to Mark Twain through her father’s family, she lived in the rain forests of Costa Rica in her early twenties. For a number of years, she has been traveling to Brazil and incorporating her experiences into her fiction and poetry.   In 2005 she took a boat up the Rio Negro, a tributary of the Amazon, travelling over two thousand miles through flooded jungle. In June 2009, she made another trip to one of the headwaters of the Amazon on the Rio Tocantins

Mackey is the author of five collections of poetry including Breaking The Fever (Marsh Hawk Press), and twelve novels including The Widow’s War which recently appeared on the San Francisco Chronicle’s bestseller list. Mackey’s works, which have also made the New York Times bestseller list, have been translated into eleven languages, and sold over a million and a half copies. At present she lives with her husband in northern California. To learn more about her and sample her writing, you are invited to visit her website: www.marymackey.com

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Fun & Simple Steps for Memoir Writers to Thrive

with Writing Career Coach Teresa LeYung Ryan

Date: Friday June 18, 2010

Time: 11 AM PDT |12 PM MDT | 1 PM CDT |2 PM EDT

Cost: FREE FOR NAMW MEMBERS

Didn’t make it to the Live Call? NAMW members who are logged in can access a link below to download the audio mp3 of this call!
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How do writers thrive in the fiercely competitive industry?  Find out for yourself in this delightful session with Coach Teresa who created Build Your Name, Beat the Game: Be Happily Published (the 22 minutes for 22 days workbook).

She will help you:

• understand the need to build one’s name/fame in today’s publishing arena.
• identify advocates, endorsers and fans.
• gain recognition through your words and your community. 

Linda Joy Myers, Ph.D.

The Power of Platform: Building Tools and Keys to Success to Help Authors Promote Themselves and Their Work

Linda Joy Myers & Marketing Consulting Staci Motherwell

Date: Friday April 23, 2010

Time: 11 AM PDT |12 PM MDT | 1 PM CDT |2 PM EDT

Cost: FREE FOR NAMW MEMBERS (NAMW Members, Access the Call-In Details in the Member Area.  Login to the Member Area & Click Here!)

Not Available for the Live Call?  NAMW members can access a link in the NAMW member area  within a week of the teleseminar to download the audio mp3 of this call!  NAMW Members:  The audio download of this teleseminar is now available!  Login to the Member’s area to access this file now!

Not already a member of NAMW? Click here to become a member now!

Everywhere authors go, the term “platform” comes up, especially with agents and publishers. Some writers start worrying when they hear that they need to have a platform—wondering what is it and how they can create it. Agents and publishers want an author to have more than a book to offer them. In fact, most agents and publishers say they won’t consider an author who does not have a website, a blog, a following on Facebook and Twitter, and the other social networking sites, and a marketing plan that is well thought out, which these days might include a blog tour. When her new book The Power of Memoir was released, Linda participated in a month long blog tour, and will share her experience.

Event: National Association of Memoir Writers Day-Long Free Virtual ConferenceTelesummit
Topic: Memoir Writing—From Transformation to Publication
Cost: FREE
Date: Friday April 16, 2010
Time: 10 AM PDT-4 PM PDT

Please join us for our annual free National Association of Memoir Writers Virtual Teleconference on Friday April 16, 2010! At NAMW, we know Iit’s important to join the a community of talented writers, creators, editors, and publishers as you develop your knowledge of craft. Learning how to create a memoir from bits of memory, fragments of poetry, dreams, and journals is an important step in your literary life. Many memoir writers are lost when it comes to making the transition from transformational writing into the world of a completed work, to finding an agent and a publisher. So in this teleconference lead bywith respected experts you will discover the knowledge you need to create your memoir and birth it into the world—from transformation to publication.

We’ve summarized each of the sessions below, but be sure to click on the topic hyperlink for each session to learn more about the topic of discussion as well as the presenters for each respective topic.

We’ve assembled some of the best and the brightest talent in memoir writing for this exciting one day event!

The virtual teleconference will be audio tape-recorded and by signing up below you will receive the link to an audio download within a few days following the completion of the last session–of the entire conferenceafter the conference is over. That’s right, not just a free download of one session, but of all 5 teleconference sessions!

Speaker: Brooke Warner
Date: March 12, 2010
Times: 11 AM PST /12 PM MST / 1 PM CST /2 PM EST

Cost: FREE FOR NAMW MEMBERS (you will receive the call information via email as the event draws near)

Do you wish to become an NAMW Member? Click here to become a member now!

This teleseminar for our NAMW members will present several issues that arise when writing a memoir. A significant issue is to understand when the book simply needs to go through more layers of the writing process, and when it needs to be edited. We will address how self-editing and micro-analyzing every sentence you write is a hindrance to completing your work, and why, after you’ve completed your manuscript, you’re not really done.
This conversation is chock-full of strategies for writers at various stages of their projects. It’s both permission-giving and a reality check. Every writer needs to learn when to ignore the voice whispering that it’s not good enough and when to be open to outside feedback.

Speaker: Sue William Silverman
Date: Feb. 19, 2010
Times: 11 AM PST / 12 PM MST / 1 PM CST / 2 PM EST
Cost: FREE FOR NAMW MEMBERS (you will receive the call information via email as the event draws near)
Do you wish to become an NAMW Member? Click here to become a member now!

To write a memoir is to explore a specific theme of your life story by crafting it into art. A large part of this artful writing is to discover the voice, or voices, of any given piece. What voice that best reflects any given story? During the time I wrote my two memoirs, I came to realize that I was actually using two different voices. One, the Voice of Innocence, relates the surface facts or action of the story. The other, the Voice of Experience, deepens the Voice of Innocence through the use of metaphor, irony, and reflection. By twining these two voices together throughout the manuscript, authors achieve a fully realized and compelling memoir.

Of course, when it comes to writing memoir, there’s more to it than craft. Most memoirists must also discover the courage to write, the courage, to reveal long-held family secrets, the courage to dig deep inside and discover our truths. This teleseminar, will also explore techniques to find the courage to share your stories in public.

Michael Larsen and Elizabeth Pomada

Agents and Memoir Writers—Who, What, When, Why, and How

Date: Friday, January 22 , 2010
Times: 11 AM PST / 12 PM MST / 1 PM CST / 2 PM EST
Cost: FREE FOR NAMW MEMBERS (you will receive the call information via email as the event draws near)
Do you wish to become an NAMW Member? Click here to become a member now!

Please join Michael Larsen and Elizabeth Pomada from the Larsen-Pomada Literary Agency as they talk about what memoir writers need to know with Linda Joy Myers. They will discuss the role of the literary agent, publishing realities, and how you can shape your writing life so you will be ready for what the agents need to help make you a successful published author.

Rebecca Lawton is our guest NAMW Speaker for December 2009

Planning and Publishing In Spite of Ourselves

Date: December 11, 2009
Guest Speaker: Rebecca Lawton
Times: 11 am Pacific | 12 noon Mountain | 1 pm Central | 2 pm Eastern
Cost: Free for NAMW Members
Become A Member of NAMW Today to take part in this teleseminar!

Too many irons on the fire? Three or four–or more–unfinished manuscripts in your files? But not out for publication? You’re not alone. The creative soul has been known to be the last person to find closure for one project–through publication or presentation–before moving on to another great idea.

Join Rebecca Lawton on December 11 for an ease-filled and fun hour in which you’ll learn to create your own personalized Publication Action Plan–a six-month strategy for prioritizing the completion of your writing projects and getting them out for publication. Your plan will have both a practical and spiritual side–and it will work! This approach to ordering your writing life is time tested and effective.

Rebecca Lawton, M.F.A., is also a graduate of Full-Spectrum Foundational Coaching, which informs her collaborations with other writers. Her memoir, Reading Water: Lessons from the River, was a 2008 San Francisco Chronicle Bay Area bestseller, and she has co-authored three other books of non-fiction, most recently Write Free: Attracting the Creative Life, with Jordan E. Rosenfeld in 2008. Among other honors, Rebecca’s prose and poetry have earned her the Ellen Meloy Fund Award for Desert Writers, two Pushcart Prize nomations, selection as finalist for the 2009 David Nathan Meyerson Prize in Fiction, and first place in the Redwood Writer’s Club 2009 poetry competition.

Mary E. Knippel - November 2009

Tap Into Your Creativity

Date: November 13, 2009
Guest Speaker: Mary E. Knippel
Times: 11 am Pacific | 12 noon Mountain | 1 pm Central | 2 pm Eastern
Cost: Free for NAMW Members
Become A Member of NAMW Today to take part in this teleseminar!

Would you like to learn how to boost your immune system and reduce your stress level without prescriptions or costly supplements? Get creative! Simple pleasures can be powerful stress busters. Scientific research has shown that when we are engaged in creative expression, the body’s physiology and brain wave patterns change. This affects every cell in the body, changing the immune system, even our blood flow, and helps to create healing.

Mary’s message is that we are all creative beings, and our creativity is a chameleon which takes many forms. Making time to play is engaging our creativity. The word “play” brings to mind sports and games, but it’s also an attitude. Opportunities to be creative surround us: trying a new recipe, taking a new route to work, watching the travel channel instead of a Mash rerun, taking a walk on the coastal trail, enjoying the sunset, arranging flowers in a vase for the dining table.

Make a Scene: Learn to master the miracle tool of good fiction writing for your memoir

Guest Speaker: Jordan Rosenfeld
Topic: Make a Scene: Learn to master the miracle tool of good fiction writing for your memoir
Date: August 7, 2009
Times: 11 am Pacific | 12 noon Mountain | 1 pm Central | 2 pm Eastern
Cost: Free for NAMW Members
Become A Member of NAMW to take part in this teleseminar!

MEMBERS:  AUDIO DOWNLOAD AVAILABLE SOON!  WATCH YOUR EMAIL FOR A LINK!

You’ve felt the pulse-pounding drama of a good story, turning pages at a furious clip, caught up in a book so real, you feel as though it is happening to you. What makes that story, book or essay come to life? Strong, powerful scenes. Learning to write scenes is crucial to writing powerful narratives that compel, and it simplifies the writing process.