10 a.m. on Saturday, September 18, 2010

Women’s Building in the Mission District of San Francisco

Panelists: Judy Wylie, Georgia Hesse and Natalie Galli

Georgia Hesse (photo © John Montgomery)

Where do your best ideas come from? How do you know when you have a winner? How can you gather enough fascinating facts and experiences to make a story sing? These are topics to be covered in our September 18 program: “Stalking the Idea, Styling the Story, Selling the Result.” BATW members and outstanding travel writers Judy Wylie, Georgia Hess, and Natalie Galli, will talk about where their best ideas come from, suggest strategies for finding great angles, and explain how they gather impressions and anecdotes that flesh out a story. Come hear them discuss what it takes to put together a story that makes editors want to buy it and readers want to read it.

Our Panel

Georgia I. Hesse, founding travel editor of the San Francisco Examiner (later the S.F. Examiner & Chronicle), is the author/co-author of 14 guidebooks and has contributed articles to 17 magazines and 19 newspapers. She is also a teacher, lecturer and past radio personality, and holds the French Ordre du Mérite. She claims to have been born on the 28 Ranch, Crazy Woman Creek, at the foot of Wyoming’s Big Horn Mountains.

Natalie Galli’s articles have appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle and the Berkeley Monthly. She won the Gold Award in the “Travel Related Essay/Article in an Anthology” section of the BATW annual awards for her story “Risen,” which appeared in Travelers’ Tales Italy. Her story “La Zisa, La Cuba, and La Cubula” was published in The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2008: True Stories from Around the World. Her work of creative non-fiction, “Three-Cornered Island, details her search for Franca Viola, the first woman in Sicilian history to publicly refuse the tradition of coercive marriage.

Judith Babcock Wylie (Judy) has been published in Travel and Leisure, the London Financial Times magazine and more than 100 other publications. She has written or edited four travel-related books, including The Spa Book (1983), Travelers’ Tales Love and Romance (1998) and Best Places Destinations California Central Coast (2003). She teaches travel writing at U C Berkeley Extension and at NYU’s School of Continuing Studies in Manhattan, and is a destination speaker for several cruise lines.

Judith Wylie

We’ll be meeting at the Women’s Building in the Mission District of San Francisco.  More information to come in your email.

Members, for more information:
Click on “Register here for the next BATW meeting” on the right side of the home page
OR
Click here to sign-in and get more information (and register)
OR
Contact: Sandy Sims
Phone: (408) 269-8440
Email: sansims@aol.com

Thank you to BATW Associate member Rene de los Santos, for assisting our arrangements at the Philippine Social Hall. It is an excellent venue for our meetings and we look forward to holding more BATW events there: convenient location, spacious, fine facilities.

Special thanks to Morton Beebe for saving the day, regarding some tech difficulties!

John, Alena, and I appreciated receiving much positive feedback in your emails!

Following the program on Saturday, about 20 BATW members gathered to discuss future BATW plans, especially leadership needs and roles. Best of all, a number of members are volunteering to move into leadership positions. We are especially pleased to see some of our younger and newer members stepping up.

We are looking for candidates for President, VP, Correspondence Secretary, Treasurer, and Events Coordinator. Descriptions of the positions are available. Just ask me or one of the current Officers. To nominate yourself or someone else (with their permission), contact a member of the Board Development Committee: Suzie Rodriguez (suzierod@gmail), Georgia Hesse (georgiahesse@comcast.net), and Diane LeBow (diane@dianelebow.com)

BATW especially appreciates Elisa Southard and Erin Caslavka taking over the production of the BATW High School Contest, which Bob Ecker created and ran for four years. More information on this project appears elsewhere in this ezine edition.

At the moment, our Treasurer Susan Alcorn (We’re in the Mountains, Not over the Hill: Tales and Tips from Seasoned Women Backpackers, Shepherd Canyon Books) is hiking Washington’s Pacific Crest Trail. Susan somehow always finds a spot to email along her treks and wrote that at 4,500 feet in elevation: “We heard and saw a jet flying towards us, up the mountainside about 50 feet above the power lines. About 50 yards before he was over our heads, he flipped over, flew a few hundred yards upside down, and then righted himself and flew on. Nothing like a personal Blue Angels-type moment!!!… We are somewhat over 200 miles of our 460+ to do.”

My story, “At Home in Afghanistan,” is the Travelers’ Tales’ Editor’s Choice feature beginning August 23, 2010, along with a fun interview. This story won the 2010 Solas Gold Award for Best Women’s Travel Writing 2010, and appears in an edited version under the title “Tea in Kabul” in Best Women’s Travel Writing 2010. (Travelers’ Tales, ed. Stephanie Elizondo Griest)  This past June I gave a reading from this story at the Village Voice Bookstore on the Left Bank in Paris. Most recently I addressed SAY, a Sacramento Afghan American youth group organized out of UC Davis, reading excerpts from this story and discussing my travels in Afghanistan. The Afghan Arts and Culture Festival, with which I am involved, will be held at UC Berkeley in November. They would certainly appreciate your support and participation.

Tim Cahill was brilliant, fun, and inspiring as ever at the 19^th Annual Book Passage Travel, Food, and Photography conference last week. Tim posed the question: If, as we all seem to agree, it feels so darn good to HAVE written something, why is it often so hard to drag ourselves over to the computer and get started? But somehow, we do it. Right?

Mark your calendars for September 18, when Georgia Hesse, Judy Wylie and Natalie Galli tell you their secrets for Stalking, Styling, and Selling Great Story Ideas.

So let’s get on over to that computer!

– Diane LeBow
BATW President

10 a.m. on Saturday, September 18, 2010

Panelists: Judy Wylie, Georgia Hesse and Natalie Galli

Georgia Hesse (photo © John Montgomery)

Judith Wylie

Where do your best ideas come from? How do you know when you have a winner? How can you gather enough fascinating facts and experiences to make a story sing? These are topics to be covered in our September 18 program: “Stalking the Idea, Styling the Story, Selling the Result.” BATW members and outstanding travel writers Judy Wylie, Georgia Hess, and Natalie Galli, will talk about where their best ideas come from, suggest strategies for finding great angles, and explain how they gather impressions and anecdotes that flesh out a story. Come hear them discuss what it takes to put together a story that makes editors want to buy it and readers want to read it.

Our Panel

Georgia I. Hesse, founding travel editor of the San Francisco Examiner (later the S.F. Examiner & Chronicle), is the author/co-author of 14 guidebooks and has contributed articles to 17 magazines and 19 newspapers. She is also a teacher, lecturer and past radio personality, and holds the French Ordre du Mérite. She claims to have been born on the 28 Ranch, Crazy Woman Creek, at the foot of Wyoming’s Big Horn Mountains.

Natalie Galli’s articles have appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle and the Berkeley Monthly. She won the Gold Award in the “Travel Related Essay/Article in an Anthology” section of the BATW annual awards for her story “Risen,” which appeared in Travelers’ Tales Italy. Her story “La Zisa, La Cuba, and La Cubula” was published in The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2008: True Stories from Around the World. Her work of creative non-fiction, “Three-Cornered Island, details her search for Franca Viola, the first woman in Sicilian history to publicly refuse the tradition of coercive marriage.

Judith Babcock Wylie (Judy) has been published in Travel and Leisure, the London Financial Times magazine and more than 100 other publications. She has written or edited four travel-related books, including The Spa Book (1983), Travelers’ Tales Love and Romance (1998) and Best Places Destinations California Central Coast (2003). She teaches travel writing at U C Berkeley Extension and at NYU’s School of Continuing Studies in Manhattan, and is a destination speaker for several cruise lines.

We’ll be meeting at the Women’s Building in the Mission District of San Francisco.  More information to come in your email.

Members, for more information:
Click on “Register here for the next BATW meeting” on the right side of the home page
OR
Click here to sign-in and get more information (and register)
OR
Contact: Sandy Sims
Phone: (408) 269-8440
Email: sansims@aol.com

Saturday, October 16, 2010

The Bay Model in Sausalito

The October meeting will be at the Bay Model in Sausalito and the program is Mary Cary from VideoBlogMarketing with a presentation on video blogging, focused on needs of travel writers.  More information will arrive in your email.

Members, for more information:
Click on “Register here for the next BATW meeting” on the right side of the home page
OR
Click here to sign-in and get more information (and register)
OR
Contact: Sandy Sims
Phone: (408) 269-8440
Email: sansims@aol.com

Saturday, October 16, 2010

The Bay Model in Sausalito

The October meeting will be at the Bay Model in Sausalito and the program is Mary Cary from VideoBlogMarketing with a presentation on video blogging, focused on needs of travel writers.  More information will arrive in your email.

Members, for more information:
Click on “Register here for the next BATW meeting” on the right side of the home page
OR
Click here to sign-in and get more information (and register)
OR
Contact: Sandy Sims
Phone: (408) 269-8440
Email: sansims@aol.com

November 20, 2010

BATW meets at the Marine Mammal Center for a general meeting and a talk and tour of this new facility.  More information will come in your email.

Members, for more information:
Click on “Register here for the next BATW meeting” on the right side of the home page
OR
Click here to sign-in and get more information (and register)
OR
Contact: Sandy Sims
Phone: (408) 269-8440
Email: sansims@aol.com

November 20, 2010

BATW meets at the Marine Mammal Center for a general meeting and a talk and tour of this new facility.  More information will come in your email.

Members, for more information:
Click on “Register here for the next BATW meeting” on the right side of the home page
OR
Click here to sign-in and get more information (and register)
OR
Contact: Sandy Sims
Phone: (408) 269-8440
Email: sansims@aol.com

Jeremy O’Brien Liberty Ship, San Francisco Bay

December 11, 2010

More information about this private event for BATW members will come in your email.

Members, for more information:
Click on “Register here for the next BATW meeting” on the right side of the home page
OR
Click here to sign-in and get more information (and register)
OR
Contact: Sandy Sims
Phone: (408) 269-8440
Email: sansims@aol.com

Jeremy O’Brien Liberty Ship, San Francisco Bay

December 11, 2010

More information about this private event for BATW members will come in your email.

Members, for more information:
Click on “Register here for the next BATW meeting” on the right side of the home page
OR
Click here to sign-in and get more information (and register)
OR
Contact: Sandy Sims
Phone: (408) 269-8440
Email: sansims@aol.com