PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE
Dear Redwood Writers,
For years, I had a hard time accepting the cold and darkness of winter. The long, sunny days of summer would give way to the crisp, colorful season of fall. But then the orange leaves would turn brown, nothing felt warm enough, and there just wasn’t enough daylight to soothe my sun-starved soul. I’d hunker down through winter and let the darkness seep into every emotion, just hanging on until spring.
Something is different for me this year, though. I’ve been ultra-busy for most of the year with this club, my job, my writing, and changes happening in my family home. When summer ended and fall started to appear, I realized I needed a reset in a serious way.
So I went dark early—but this time, it was intentional. I turned off my social media. I stopped obsessing over the news. I let my world get really small and quiet. I even stepped back from writing for a little while. I started reading more, and exploring new mediums of art, like watercolor. I welcomed the quiet without trying to fill it with digital noise. I wrote letters and called friends and took long walks. I kept my phone down and laptop closed as much as possible, and paid more attention to the clouds, the birds, and my breath.
The result? I feel like a huge burden has lifted. The cold and darkness of winter have returned, and I’ve embraced the season instead of bracing against it. Author Katherine May calls this slowdown “wintering,” which is also the title of her memoir. I can’t think of a better word for it. I’ve been wintering as a way of healing. I’m even returning to writing, but at a much gentler pace.
If you’re feeling pulled in too many directions as we move into the holidays and the darker days of the season, maybe wintering could help you too. What are some ways you’ve been nourishing your inner self lately?
I want to thank everyone who turned out for our Six Winning Plays event at the beginning of November and our Book and Craft Faire mid-month. Both events were so much fun and a true celebration of our local writers. I’m excited to share that we’ll be holding another 10-Minute Play Contest at the start of 2026, with a play event in the spring. I hope to see your play among the submissions!
And of course, we are celebrating 50 years of Redwood Writers this year! To honor our legacy, we have two special projects that will serve as a time capsule for future members: our Redwood Seeds anthology of member wisdom, and a video project capturing how Redwood Writers has shaped our individual writing journeys. You can read below on how to participate in each.
Wishing you a wonderful, cozy winter and a meaningful holiday season.
Until the next chapter,
Crissi Langwell
President, Redwood Writers
president@redwoodwriters.org
| | | |
| December Meeting & Potluck with Audrey Kalman on "Your Story Unleashed" | Ready to ignite a short story or essay project for the new year? Led by experienced author, coach, and teacher Audrey Kalman, co-creator of the Birth Your Truest Story online writers’ community, this dynamic one-hour workshop offers a tantalizing preview of the longer “Concept to Draft: Birth Your Short(est) Story” workshop. Come experience a concentrated burst of inspiration and practical techniques to kickstart your short fiction or nonfiction. | | | |
NEW! Redwood Writers is taking care of the fees.
Register online for the same price you'd pay at the door!
About the Presenter:
Audrey Kalman:
Audrey Kalman writes fiction with a dark edge about what goes awry when human connection is missing from our lives. She is the author of three novels and a short fiction collection, “Tiny Shoes Dancing and Other Stories;” her stories and poems have appeared in numerous print and online literary magazines. She has been active with the California Writers Club since 2013 as past president of the SF-Peninsula Branch and editor of the branch’s Fault Zone anthology. With Jennifer Browdy, she co-created the free online Birth Your Truest Story writers’ community (bit.ly/JoinBYTS) in 2021. She holds an undergraduate degree in creative writing and a master’s degree in journalism. She offers editing and coaching services for writers and is (perpetually) at work on another novel. Find her at www.audreykalman.com and on Substack at audreykalman.substack.com.
| |
Volunteer with Redwood Writers!
Our branch is a community of writers helping writers, and we have plenty of ways for you to get involved! We currently have an immediate need for a social media manager, as well as several other positions.
Curious about where you can step in? Check out our available volunteer positions at redwoodwriters.org/volunteer, or contact Crissi at president@redwoodwriters.org.
| | 50 Years of Redwood Writers | | |
Let’s Celebrate Redwood’s 50th together.
For five decades, Redwood Writers—the largest branch of the California Writers Club—has championed writers of every kind: poets, memoirists, novelists, screenwriters, nonfiction pros, and everything in between. Our mission is simple but powerful: Writers Helping Writers.
After our Meeting on 12-20 Roger has agreed to record your 30 second testimonial about our wonderful club—still the largest branch of all in CWC.
Here’s what you can prep for: a short, 30-second video answering three quick questions:
1. What’s your name and genre?
2. How has Redwood Writers helped your writing?
3. End with a cheerful “Happy 50th, Redwood Writers!”
Keep it sincere and simple—no need to overthink it. Just speak from the heart in a quiet spot with good light.
If you would like to prepare and send your own 30-second video, you can email it to video@redwoodwriters.org.
| | |
Redwood Seeds
There’s still room in the Redwood Seeds collection for concise bits of wisdom about the writing process, industry, or mindset. The submission page will remain open for a little while longer. Any interested members who would like to contribute seeds in person at the December meeting are welcome to use the index cards that will be passed out just before the break. We look forward to seeing more of your advice!
Submit Your Seeds Here: redwoodwriters.org/redwoodseeds
| | Get Lit with Redwood Writers | |
Tuesday Mornings on The Krush
Every Tuesday at 8:45 a.m., tune in to The Krush, 95.9 FM, to hear a member of Redwood Writers talk about their book on the Mornings with Mindi show on KRSH. Watch your email for the lineup from coordinator, Carol Jacobsen.
If you miss it live, you can hear a recording of the interview at www.krsh.com/getlit
Coming up on Get Lit
| | | Susanna Solomon | December 9 | | Debra Palmer, PhD | December 16 | | Melissa Geissinger | December 23 | | Shawn Langwell | January 6 | | John Duran | January 13 | | Robin Gabbert | January 20 | | Nancy Econome | January 27 | | | |
Redwood Writers is a club of writers helping writers. Do you have a writing-related topic you'd like to share about, or a Redwood Writers event you'd like to report on? We'd love to read it!
Where to submit
| |
By Linda C. McCabe
On Sunday, October 12th, Redwood Writers held its official launch for its tenth poetry anthology Just So to help mark California Writers Week. The launch party included readings from some of the poets included in the anthology. Award winning poet Les Bernstein served as editor for the anthology and emcee for the event. She mentioned there were over 700 poems submitted by Redwood Writers members and only 110 poems were selected for publication.
As Bernstein introduced one writer, she admitted her astonishment. “I get a ton of submissions, and I have some idea of who people are because I have met them before, but sometimes I don’t have any idea who someone is. And that would be the case with Lee Riggs. I had no idea that Lee was so young, I did know he was accomplished.” She then asked him to verify his age and asked if he was fifteen, when he clarified he was only thirteen she replied, “Thirteen, oh my God!” Les Bernstein composed herself to add to his introduction, “He is our youngest published poet. This is quite a start, this goes on your resumé, you are on the books now!”
READ REST OF ARTICLE HERE
| | Attention Poets, Monthly Poetry Lab! | | |
Poetry Lab meets once a month on Zoom. Les Bernstein and Amrita Skye Blaine host the meeting, and we encourage people to bring their poems that are puzzling, frustrating, or confusing them. In the format, you send your poem to both Les and Amrita a week before Poetry Lab, then we meet in a positive, fun environment to make our poems stronger! Find reminders on Redwood Writers groups.io.
As Les Bernstein says, “Dare to be great and send us a poem you’re wrestling with. We promise you it is the safest, most empowering space… and if you just want to only observe, that’s okay, too. And remember—no risk, no reward.”
amritaskyepoetry@gmail.com
lessieb13@yahoo.com.
| | |
Heliotropism
by Les Bernstein
I am dreaming
always dreaming
a protagonist sleepwalking
these most ordinary chapters
of thought's well-worn grooves
things will always happen
an anarchy of experience
mess and distraction
bountiful and inexhaustible
in my epic novel
no one is reading
to tell a little bit of truth
here is a non-fiction version
my story is my story
my story is just a story
my story is not true
will the sleepwalker awake
to an illuminated darkness
no foothold in the mutable past
no mindless march into ephemera
can there finally be
the silencing of language
the inner symphony
with only one sustained note
of full throated living
just simple
so simple
being
and not
so simple
being
in the soft glow
of an eternal now
Les Bernstein is an award-winning poet and anthologist whose poems have appeared in journals and anthologies in the United States and internationally. Her full-length book, Loose Magic was reviewed by the Los Angeles Review of Books and is available on Amazon.
| | | |
About the Poetry Editor
Amrita Skye Blaine develops themes of aging, disability, and awakening. She received a PocketMFA in poetry in 2024. She has published a memoir, a three-novel trilogy, and has been published in nineteen anthologies including fourteen poetry anthologies. Two poetry collections, every riven thing and strange grace, were published Spring 2025.
| |
Share Your Good News!
Have a book event coming up, a recent publication, an award, or any exciting writing milestone? We want to celebrate you! Share your news with the club using our quick online form. Your update may be featured in the next Redwood Writers newsletter.
Where to submit
| | |
Just Published!
The Token Human, Volume One
by Mara Lynn Johnstone
Robin never planned on a career gallivanting about space. She’s just taking a bit of a break between veterinarian jobs back on Earth when an opportunity pops up that’s too good to ignore … and it leads to one thing after another. No regrets.
Someday she’ll settle down to a permanent job somewhere planetside, possibly as an Earth animal expert on an alien world. But that’s a concern for the future. Right now, there are space goats to wrangle, cats to rescue, adventures to be had, and alien coworkers to introduce to the many baffling joys of having a human onboard.
(Available everywhere except Amazon.)
https://books2read.com/b/bwJ9Xe
| |
Share a Book Review!
Use the Newsletter Submission Form to send in your 250-word (or less) book review. We accept reviews of member and non-member books.
Where to submit
| |
Book Review: Motherland by Julia Ioffe
Julia Ioffe’s Motherland is far more than a family memoir. It is a deeply researched, emotionally precise account of the women who lived through—and were often erased from—the turbulent history of the Soviet Union and modern Russia. By centering the lives of her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, Ioffe restores attention to the women who endured revolutions, purges, antisemitism, collapsing institutions, and the quiet, grinding labor that kept families alive.
What gives the book its power is Ioffe’s ability to illuminate how these “ordinary” women carried extraordinary burdens. Their stories—rarely recorded and almost never celebrated—become a parallel narrative to the official history dominated by men in uniforms and offices. Through them, Ioffe shows how survival in the Soviet system depended on resilience, ingenuity, and emotional endurance, qualities too often dismissed or overlooked.
Ioffe weaves these personal histories into a broader portrait of Russia across a century, revealing how the pressures on women have remained constant even as regimes changed. The result is both intimate and expansive, a reminder that the real story of a nation lives in the people history tends to forget.
Motherland is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand Russia through the lives of the women who held it together.
Reviewed by Tommie Whitener
| |
|
If you have a paid event, you can purchase an ad in the newsletter as follows:
3 lines (text only) for $25.00
Display ads (square or horizontal images: .png, .jpg only, under 2M) for $50.00
Canva can help you format your ads
Please submit your paid advertisements and pay online at
https://redwoodwriters.org/newsletter-submission/
| | |
A Note From The Editor
Hello, I’m Signe and I’m excited to join Redwood Writers as the volunteer newsletter editor!
By day, you can find me at the Humane Society of Sonoma County writing grant proposals and stories about the animals. Nights and weekends, when my adorable senior rescue pup and parrot will allow it, I’m working on my knitting-themed cozy mystery trilogy.
It was a delight to meet some of you at the Holiday Book & Craft Faire last month. I was so inspired by your stories and by the depth of creativity in our community. I’m looking forward to getting to know you in the year ahead!
| | REDWOOD WRITERS LEADERS & VOLUNTEERS | | |
Volunteers make Redwood Writers possible. Thank you to our wonderful leaders and chairpeople who generously give their time and efforts. We appreciate you!
Board of Directors
Crissi Langwell, President
Mara Lynn Johnstone, Vice President
Shawn Langwell, Vice President
Barb Cottrell, Secretary
Malena Eljumaily, Treasurer
Roger Lubeck, Membership Chair
Karl Kadie, New Members Chair
Signe Ross Villemaire, Newsletter Editor
Chairs and Editors
Judy M. Baker, 2025 Prose Anthology Editor
Barb Cottrell, 2026 Prose Anthology Editor
Amrita Blaine, Newsletter Poetry Editor
Les Bernstein, Poetry Anthology Editor
Robin Gabbert, Writers Salon
Pamela Heck, Conference Volunteers Chair
Carol Jacobsen, Get Lit Coordinator
Crissi Langwell, Website Editor
Shawn Langwell, Speakers, Communications & PR Director, and Conference Chair
Linda L. Reid, Writers Circle, Poetry Anthology Party
Board meetings are held 6:30-8:00 p.m. on the second Tuesday of each month unless otherwise noted and are open to any member in good standing. Contact president@redwoodwriters.org to receive an invitation.
Please note: The next board meeting will be on the 3rd Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025, 6:30-8 p.m.
| | | | |
