Birthing a Book: The Shero's Journey

Our members will discuss the triumphs and labor pains of birthing a book -- the self-revealing, self-exposing, self-annihilating, and always self-empowering process of bringing your baby (oops, I mean book) into the world. We will discuss the pros and cons of publishing options available today (traditional, major, electronic, and self) and words of wisdom and encouragement about how to persist through the perils of publishing.

 

Our panelists are professional speakers and authors of multiple books (published with major publishers as well as self-published) that will stimulate your mind, open your horizons, and rock your word!

 

Moderator:

 

Kelly Sullivan Walden (http://www.kellysullivanwalden.com/) will moderate our panel. WNBA-LA President, Walden, is a Hypnotherapist, Dream Coach, and author of (Warner Books) I Had The Strangest Dream, The Dreamer's Dictionary For The 21st Century. Author Of Discover Your Inner Goddess Queen an Inspirational Journey from Drama Queen to Goddess Queen (self-published), Kelly is also the publisher of GoddessQueenMagazine.com. Her specialty is in empowering people to live the life of their dreams. Kelly is a regular guest on FOX news New York and has recently been featured around the country on ABC, FOX, and NBC news, as well as in Cosmopolitan, Woman's Day, ELLE, SELF, and the Chicago Tribune. Kelly is the WNBA representative to the United Nations and is the creator of The Dream Project, a local movement for Global change.

 

WNBA Panelists will include:

 

Ina Hillebrandt (http://www.inaspawprints.com/) is a recovering Fortune 500 consultant, now an author, speaker, writing coach and publisher, with Amazon.com top selling books Pawprints and Stories From The Heart, Vol. 2, a compilation of her class' writings, How to Write Your Memoirs...Fun Prompts to Make Writing...and Reading...Your Life Stories a Pleasure. and other books, plus print and online articles. Ina has appeared on TV, video, online and radio on a variety of topics. She coaches writers both in her classes and privately, has experience with both traditional and self-publishing, and more than a dozen books out under her Pawpress imprint. Having created Pawprints Literacy Plus for kids, she appears in classrooms and other venues around the country working on enhancing literacy through love of animals. Currently, her focus is on working with mature adults to help them write compelling memoirs as well as offbeat fiction. New projects include expanding the just completed Living History at UCLA, a program fostering intergenerational communication. Coming:  new books, one she is writing, an as told to about a bigger than life female big game hunter, and more in her How to Write Your Memoirs series for memoir writers, another for teachers who wish to conduct their own memoir writing classes, plus Stories From The Heart, Vol. 4, winter 2008 release.

 

Laurel Corona (http://www.laurelcorona.com/) is a professor of Humanities and English at San Diego City College and is the author (with Michael Bart) of Until Our Last Breath: A Holocaust Story Of Love And Partisan Resistance, (St. Martin's Press 2008). Her first novel, The Four Seasons, based on Vivaldi's work with an orchestra of cloistered women in Venice, will have a November 2008 release from Hyperion Books' VOICE imprint. Her second novel, Penelope's Daughter, based on Homer's Odyssey, is presently being shopped by her agent. She has just begun research for a third historical novel to be set in Spain in the years just before the Reconquista. She is also the author of nineteen YA books for school libraries, which is the way she got her start as a published author.

 

Mira Tweti (http://www.parrotstory.com/Welcome.html) is an award-winning investigative journalist (Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Village Voice, The L.A. Weekly and numerous magazines) with a focus on animal welfare issues. Her articles have helped pass four pieces of legislation to protect unweaned parrots and other animals in the pet industry. Her exposes on the parrot trade for The Los Angeles Times Magazine (Plenty to Squawk About) and The News Tribune of Tacoma, Washington, (Parrots in Peril) garnered Genesis awards from the Humane Society of the United States. Mira has authored two books published this year: Here, There and Everywhere, the first parrot-welfare children's book, heralded as "a masterpiece for children" by Jane Goodall, and Of Parrots and People: The Sometimes Funny, Always Fascinating, and Often Catastrophic Collision of Two Intelligent Species, an expose on the global parrot trade (Viking, in stores August 18^th).

 

Pamela Phillips Oland (http://www.pamoland.com/), a Grammy-nominated songwriter of over 450 recorded songs (Whitney Houston, Aretha Franklin, Frank Sinatra, Reba McIntyre, etc.) and film themes (102 Dalmatians, Coming to America, etc.) In print: (from Allworth Press: NY): "The Art of Writing Great Lyrics," "The Art of Writing Love Songs." A new novel, The Downfall of Oliver Hepz has just been optioned by Deep Muddy Productions for a feature film. Current: co-writing "Soldier of Orange," a $multi-million musical; Current: #1 song in Philippines. Currently shopping: Her co-written self-help book Read This! Before Falling in Love and TV reality show "Hotel California."

Bernadene High Coleman (www.mamarose.com) received her MS from Loyola-Marymount and her BA from California State University, Los Angeles. She has also attended the UCLA School of Writing. While a student in high school in the late forties, Bernadene was discouraged from pursuing a career in writing. She was told writing was not a career for a Negro. Consequently, her writing was placed on hold until she retired. After her retirement, Mrs. Coleman began to pursue her deferred dream by becoming a student all over again in order to sharpen her writing skills. Her published works are three novels, Mama Rose, I Leave You My Dreams and Beyond Color, also a collection of her poems, Listen My Children.  Mama Rose and Listen My Children have sold out twice and are both being prepared for republishing in the fall of 2008. Mrs. Coleman is available for speaking engagements. She has appeared at many universities, libraries and schools across the country.

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