Lit Crawl Sebastopol 2025

Our North Bay writing critique group has met twice monthly for 21 years, beginning at the old SebArts building and then Iota Press in Sebastopol (we've been "Iota Writers" ever since) and more recently via Zoom. We'll be celebrating our years of mutually inspired dedication to the craft and our many publications with readings at Lit Crawl. The founding members met each other in Guy Biederman's Lowfat Fiction workshops, writing from seeds, and occasionally we still challenge one another with seeds that blossom into flashes or longer stories. Two-thirds of our group collaborates to produce the Sonoma County based, online hybrid literary journal and chapbook publication, Wordrunner eChapbooks (https://echapbook.com), which in April celebrates its 15th anniversary. We publish fiction, CNF and poetry by authors from all around the world as well as locally. Our featured speaker will be Dan Coshnear, fiction and CNF editor for our journal and a mentor to many in the North Bay literary community.

Tamsin Smith and Matt Gonzalez curate an independent literary press based in Sebastopol and San Francisco. We publish two series -- The Divers Collection and The Page Poets. The Page Poets Series to solely dedicated to showcasing Northern California poets. To date, we've published 25 volumes. Several of the poets live in Sonoma County. Two live in Sebastopol. You can see our publications at www.fmsbwpress.com.

Novelists and memoirists start with the truth—artistic or factual. They discover their stories by looking to the past and to secrets, exploring the space between what was and what might have been. Through their own truth-seeking, the authors on this panel found not only the story arcs of strong female protagonists, but their own profound truths as well. These five authors will read from and discuss highlights of creating their recent books published by Sibylline Press.

Thank you very much for considering our group of five Bay Area writers who have books of short fiction and poetry published with Unsolicited Press (https://www.unsolicitedpress.com), a vibrant, cutting-edge, and women-owned and operated independent press based out of Portland, Oregon. We are also widely published in literary journals and have strong ties with Bay Area writing organizations and readings. We love engaging with audiences about our work, publishing, and writing in general. One of us lives in the North Bay, and one of us is a third generation Bay Area resident whose writing sample takes place in Sonoma. The others of us live in the East Bay and Pacifica.