“Start clean and simple. Don’t try to write pretty or noble or big. Try to say just what you mean. This is hard because you have to find out what you mean, and that’s work, real work. (Gertrude Stein)”
- Rebecca Robins
Speakers
Dorothy Allison
Saturday, June 9 at 7:30 p.m.
Dorothy Allison is the author of the prize-winning novels, Bastard out of Carolina and Cavedweller, as well as the books: Two or Three Things I know for Sure, Trash, Skin, and the book of poetry, The Women Who Hate Me. Ms. Allison has been Emory University Center for Humanistic Inquiry's Distinguished Visiting, Writer in Residence at Columbia College in Chicago, and McGee Professor at Davidson College in North Carolina.
Ms. Allison was born in Greenville, South Carolina but makes her home in Northern California, with her partner Alix Layman, and her teenage son, Wolf Michael and declares herself a happily born again Californian. www.dorothyallison.net
Christopher Buckley
Sunday, June 10 at 7:30 p.m.
Christopher Buckley was born in New York City 1952. He was educated at Portsmouth Abbey, worked on a Norwegian tramp freighter and graduated cum laude from Yale. At age 24 he was managing editor of Esquire magazine; at 29, a chief speechwriter to the Vice President of the United States, George H.W. Bush. He was the founding editor of Forbes FYI magazine (now ForbesLife), where he is now editor-at-large.
He is the author of fifteen books, which have been translated into sixteen languages. They include: Steaming To Bamboola, The White House Mess, Wet Work, God Is My Broker, Little Green Men, No Way To Treat A First Lady, Florence of Arabia, Boomsday, Supreme Courtship, Losing Mum And Pup: A Memoir, and Thank You For Smoking, which was made into a movie in 2005. His most recent novel is They Eat Puppies, Don't They? (Twelve; May 2012). He has written for The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Time, Newsweek, Vanity Fair, National Geographic, New York Magazine, The Washington Monthly, Forbes, Esquire, Vogue, Daily Beast, and other publications.
He received the Washington Irving Prize for Literary Excellence and the Thurber Prize for American Humor. He is the son of Patricia Buckley and, past SBWC speaker, William F. Buckley Jr. He lives in Connecticut.
Miles Corwin
Monday, June 11 at 7:30 p.m.
Miles Corwin spent the first years of his life living with his family in the Rosslyn Hotel, which his grandfather owned, located at 5th and Main streets in downtown Los Angeles, at the edge of Skid Row. His main character in Kind of Blue and Midnight Alley lives in a downtown loft, not far from the Rosslyn.
Corwin graduated from University of California, Santa Barbara and received an M.A. at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. He spent more than five years as a Los Angeles County beach lifeguard. There are some surfing scenes in Kind of Blue and Midnight Alley that reflect his time at the beach.
Corwin, a former crime reporter for the Los Angeles Times, is the author of three nofiction books: The Killing Season, a national bestseller; And Still We Rise, the winner of the PEN West award for nonfiction and a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year; and Homicide Special, a Los Angeles Times bestseller.
Kind of Blue, his first novel, was selected by Booklist in 2011 as one of the year's Top 10 First Crime Novels. The novel also was a finalist in teh Best Books of the Year Awards (Mystery & Suspense category) sponsored by USA Book News.
His second novel, Midnight Alley, will be published in April 2012.
Corwin lives in Altadena with his family and teaches literary journalism at the University of California, Irvine.
Fannie Flagg
Wednesday, June 13 at 7:30 p.m.
Fannie Flagg's career started in the fifth grade when she wrote, directed, and starred in her first play entitled, "The Whoopee Girls" and she has not stopped since. At age 19 she began writing and producing television specials, and later wrote and appeared on "Candid Camera." She then went on to distinguish herself as an actress and a writer in television, films, and the theater. She is the New York Times bestselling author of Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man; Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe; Welcome to the World, Baby Girl; Standing in the Rainbow; A Redbird Christmas; and Can't Wait to Get to Heaven. Flagg's script for the movie Fried Green Tomatoes was nominated for an Academy Award, the Writers Guild of America Award, and won the highly regarded Scripter Award for best screenplay of the year. Flagg lives happily in California and Alabama.
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