Officers

 

President: Barbara Truax
President@cwcmarinwriters.com

Barbara Truax is a founding member of Marin branch and past president of the state-wide California Writers Club. During her state presidency, the California Writers Club accepted a California Legislative Resolution, declaring the third week of October as California Writers Week.

A native of Wisconsin, she and her husband Don "came across the Rockies and never looked back" in 1974. She worked in the medical field for 24 years, signed up for a romance writing class at the local community college "for fun" and a writer was born. Four unpublished novels later, bemoaning her fate, her writing teacher said, "You’re a writer—you can write anything!" Barbara has published short stories and articles and now, after a three year hiatus, has returned to writing. Her latest project is the history of the Carnegie libraries in the United States. She credits her seventh grade teacher Sister Emily for her ability to still diagram sentences. Bad writing, typos, and grammatical errors drive her crazy.

 

Vice President/ Programs: Tanya Egan Gibson
Programs@cwcmarinwriters.com

Tanya Egan Gibson lives in Marin County California. How to Buy a Love of Reading is her first novel.

 

 

Secretary: Kara Levine
Secretary@cwcmarinwriters.com

 

 

Treasurer - Susan Keller
Treasurer@cwcmarinwriters.com

 

 

Central Board Representative - Sasha Futran
CBRep@cwcmarinwriters.com

 

 

Membership Chair - Mary Jane Essex
Membership@cwcmarinwriters.com

Mary Jane Essex is past President of the Marin Branch of CWC: Mary Jane taught English at University of Cincinnati, Xavier University, and Thomas More College, her alma mater. She has retired from teaching to work with developmentally disabled adults and to write. Having grown up in Ohio and lived most of her life in California, Mary Jane feels she has a foot on each side of the country. Sometimes that can be a bit of a stretch.

Her literary models are Jane Austen, Barbara Pym, Agatha Christie, Susan Conant, Susan Wittig Albert, William Shakespeare, Sarah Graves, Geoffrey Chaucer, and David Lodge, not necessarily in that order. She is still working on getting her first book published, but lives in hope.

 

Member at Large - Cindy Pavlinac
MemberAL@cwcmarinwriters.com

Cindy A. Pavlinac is a writer and photographer specializing in the power of place. She works on location throughout Europe and North America visiting historic sites and prehistoric sanctuaries. Her travel writing and photo essays have appeared in over 600 publications, including Time Magazine’s Pictures of the Year, Martha Stewart TV, Where San Francisco, Forbes Magazine, Spirituality and Health, Family Circle, Delicious, Self, Healthy Living, Glamour, Body Mind Spirit, Site Saver, Environment and Art Letter, Women of Power, Whole Person, Northern California Home and Garden, Marin Magazine, Utne Reader, and as Principal Photographer in the books Labyrinths and Sanctuaries of the Goddess. She wrote a chapter for Earthwalking Sky Dancers: Women's Pilgrimages to Sacred Places and was an editor of Shaman's Drum Magazine and Editor-in-Chief of Artists Dialogue. Her writing awards include Gourmet Magazine for Travel, Maupintour Travel International, KINSA Kodak Journalism, Maynard Owen Williams (National Geographic Founder) Award, P.O.W. (Power of Women Writers), and Young Writers Conference Cranbrook, Michigan with Joyce Carol Oates.

Cindy earned a Masters Degree in Arts and Consciousness Studies focusing on the use of art and story for healing in ancient cultures, and a B.A. in Photography, minoring in astrophysics, with foreign study in Athens and Rome in archaeology. She has been visiting special places ever since Apollo hollered at her in Delphi, Greece in 1977, striving to bridge the ancient with the modern and to inspire people through images, words, music, and performance.

Cindy lives in Marin Country, California with her collaborators, musician husband, Martin Gregory and their magical pup, Merlin. She has a studio in San Rafael and creates site specific interactive installations with storytelling and imagery for labyrinth walk events and overnight Dream Quests, projecting hundreds of photos onto 50 foot hanging silk veils. Cindy is chauffeur and typist for Merlin's Road Trip blog and maintains a website at CAPavlinac.com

 

 

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www.susansearway.com (415) 499-8314

Photography provided by Cindy Pavlinac
www.CAPavlinac.com