San Francisco Writers Workshop
The San Francisco Writers Workshop is one of the oldest continuously running writing critique groups in the United States, meeting every Tuesday night, except for major holidays, since 1946. Successful published authors who first workshopped their books in the group include Khaled Hosseini,[1] David Henry Sterry, Aaron Hamburger, Joe Quirk, Michelle Gagnon, Kemble Scott, Tamim Ansary, Erika Mailman, Zarina Zabrisky, and Ransom Stephens.
Tamim Ansary has moderated the workshop for twenty-two years until his retirement in 2015. Currently, the workshop is moderated by Robin Bullard, Kurt Wallace Martin, Judy Viertel, and Olga Zilberbourg. The workshop is free and open to all interested writers and genres, providing a forum to share work-in-progress and receive constructive critiques from other writers. The group meets at the Alley Cat Books, near San Francisco's Mission district.
Sessions are uniquely structured so participants share, aloud, up to six double-spaced pages of their work at a time. Writers are not allowed to speak or respond while the group critiques their work.
San Francisco Writers Workshop Alumni
Some of the published authors who have emerged from the workshop:
Note: Partial List - Updates Requested
- Tamim Ansary, author of West of Kabul, East of New York, The Other Side of the Sky: A Memoir, Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes, The Widow's Husband
- Melodie Bowsher, author of My Lost and Found Life
- Michael Chorost, author of Rebuilt: How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human, World Wide Mind: The Coming Integration of Humanity, Machines, and the Internet,
- Christine Comaford-Lynch, author of Rules for Renegades
- Tim Floreen, author of Willful Machines
- Michelle Gagnon, author of The Tunnels, Boneyard, The Gatekeeper, Kidnap & Ransom
- Rip Gerber, author of PHARMA
- Stan Golberg, author of Lessons for the Living
- Yanina Gotsulsky, author of Speed of Life
- Aaron Hamburger, author of The View from Stalin's Head, Faith for Beginners
- Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns
- Irete Lazo, author of The Accidental Santera
- Erika Mailman, author of Woman of Ill Fame, The Witch's Trinity
- Shana Mahaffey, author of Sounds Like Crazy
- Elise Frances Miller, author of A Time to Cast Away Stones
- Joe Quirk, author of The Ultimate Rush, It's Not You, It's Biology, Exult
- Kemble Scott, (novelist pen name of Scott James, columnist for The New York Times) author of SoMa, The Sower
- Holly Shumas, author of Five Things I Can't Live Without, Love and Other Natural Disasters
- Ransom Stephens, author of The God Patent
- David Henry Sterry, author of Chicken: Self Portrait of a Young Man for Rent, Master of Ceremonies: A Story Story of Sex, Drugs, Roller skates, and Murder, editor of Ho's Hookers, Callgirls, and Rentboys
- Ian Tuttle, author of StretchyHead
- James Warner, author of All Her Father's Guns
- Zarina Zabrisky, author of Iron and We, Monsters
- Amy Zemser, author of Beyond the Mango Tree
External links
References
- ↑ The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini Acknowledgments