Wednesday, March 29, 2023 5:30pm – 7:30pm i n honor of Women’s History Month, Sausalito Books By The Bay presents Celebration of Women: Mind, Body & Soul, a special panel discussion exploring female autonomy, health and well-being - at work, at home, in our body and mind.

How have things changed for women over the decades? What are the current challenges? How do we counter these challenges while maintaining a healty balance and thrive? It promises to be an inspired discussion with a dynamic panel of talented, accomplished and diverse Bay Area authors, educators and activists—guided by the luminary community bookstore Sausilito Books By The Bay

Acharya Shunya: author of three books (Avurveda Lifestyle Wisdom, Sovereign Self and Roar Like a Goddess) honoring Vedic roots while breaking shackles of tradition.

September Williams: physician-writer, bioethicist, and filmmaker. Author of Chasing Mercury (a novel) and The Elephant in the Room: Bioethical Concerns in Human Milk Banking.

Cathy Rath: educator at SF State [womens heath and community health organizing); social justice activist advocating for public health and prevention for violence against women; novelist (Ripple Effect).

Lara Bazelon: USF law professor, writer (author of the non-fiction book Ambitious Like a Mother: Why Prioritizing Your life is Good for Your Kids), on-camera commentator for CNN, Good Morning America and NPR.

Rachel Lehmann-Haupt: author of two books on modern family planning & reproductive science and choices (In Her Own Sweet Time and Reconceptions).

Free to attend but RSVP through Eventbrite here

Celebrate LOVE and Women's Empowerment this weekend with books!

This is the launch party for Kathleen Taylor's suspense novella Death by Arrangement, about a woman who dreams of being a torch singer and thinks she's found love. However, will she be able to live her dreams - and avoid capture by a serial killer?

An open mic on the theme of women's empowerment (open to everyone of all genders) will follow Kathleen's author talk and reading. September Williams will read at open mic from Weighing Lead ( Book #2 of the Chasing Mercury Toxic Trilogy)

BOOKS LIKE THIS: MANIFESTING THE DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS readings and panel by Alan Lessik, Lyzette Wanzer, and Dr. September Williams of the National Writers Union at the Shuffle Collective Event " WOW —WEEKEND of WORDS"   on May 9, 2020, at 11 AM. The festival runs from May 8th - May 10th, 2020 | Online | Registration Open for this Free Book Festival. Register here to reserve your spot.

This panel of Authors will read from their fiction, essays, and articles about Human Rights as manifested in Victor Hugo’s preface to Les Miserables referencing the roll of “Books Like This…” and embodying the work of the subsequent Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Excerpt from The Preamble of Les Miserables

"So long as there shall exist, by virtue of law and custom, decrees of damnation pronounced by society, artificially creating hells amid the civilization of earth, and adding the element of human fate to divine destiny; so long as the three great problems of the century—the degradation of man through pauperism, the corruption of woman through hunger, the crippling of children through lack of light—are unsolved; so long as social asphyxia is possible in any part of the world;—in other words, and with a still wider significance, so long as ignorance and poverty exist on earth, books of the nature of Les Misérables cannot fail to be of use…"

Victor Hugo—HAUTEVILLE HOUSE, 1862.

Presented by Northern CA Chapter of The National Writers Union (AFL-CIO/UAW 1981)/International Federation of Journalists, who has represented the interests of the full range of U.S. authors, from bloggers to playwrights. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), a milestone agreement that the United Nations General Assembly endorsed as a set of fundamental, global human rights, reinforces authors’ freedom to write about a broad range of concerns, whether popular or unpopular. Despite the current presidential administration’s attempts to minimize and sever many of the UDHR’s principles, writers nationwide continue to sustain and agitate for these basic human rights. This panel features three NWU members reading from their work, examining how different genres deliver the UDHR’s message via selected articles.

See you at WOW!
https://wow.shuffle.do/talks/panel-books-like-this-manifesting-the-declaration-of-human-rights/

September Williams will be at California Breastfeeding Coalition Gala honoring Pauline Sakamoto, MS, RN, PHN, being held in  Sacramento as a part of the California Breastfeeding Summit. Pauline Sakamoto is retiring as executive director of Mothers’ Milk Bank, San Jose after 25 years. Human Milk Bank -SJ was the flagship,  Mothers’ Milk Bank in the USA.

(Photo: Pauline Sakamoto, September Williams, Book Passage, Corte Madera, CA, and Susan Martinelli (BCLC, Marin County Clinics) at a reading of The Elephant in the Room: Bioethical Concerns in Human Milk Banking at Book Passage, August 3, 2019 )

September Williams will be at California Breastfeeding Coalition Gala honoring Pauline Sakamoto, MS, RN, PHN, being held in  Sacramento as a part of the California Breastfeeding Summit. Pauline Sakamoto is retiring as executive director of Mothers’ Milk Bank, San Jose after 25 years. Human Milk Bank -SJ was the flagship,  Mothers’ Milk Bank in the USA.

(Photo: Pauline Sakamoto, September Williams, Book Passage, Corte Madera, CA, and Susan Martinelli (BCLC, Marin County Clinics) at a reading of The Elephant in the Room: Bioethical Concerns in Human Milk Banking at Book Passage, August 3, 2019 )

The National Writers Union is a union that supports Freelance Writer, illustrators, editors and our working conditions and those of other working people. Join me and others at the National Writers Northern ( AFL-CIO/UAW 1981) California table at the Zine Book Fair. As you all may have noticed - our parent union is under seize as are working women and men from Teachers in Chicago to Factory Workers struggling to hold onto those gains in working/life conditions and to make them better.

Using her book , The Elephant in the Room: Bioethical Concerns in Human Milk Banking, September Williams MD- Author and Bioethicist will guide the class through the process of bioethical analysis and the power of Narrative Bioethics. She will apply these to the crisis associated with inadequate access to human breast milk— by focusing on inadequate time, place and space for breastfeeding fostering a vicious cycle of heath disparities.

September Williams, author of Chasing Mercury and the Elephant in the Room: Bioethical Concerns in Human Milk Banking, will be at the California Writers Club/Berkely chatting about the use of Science and Medicine in Fiction related to Humanitarian and Environmental Justice. Additionally she will explain how membership in the National Writers Union ( UAW 1981/FLCIO International Federation of Journalists support her writing FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT the CWC Speakers Chair at: speakers.cwc.berkeley@gmail.com

MARK YOUR CALENDAR: I'm Bringing THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM:BIOETHICAL CONCERNS IN HUMAN MILK BANKING to the independent book store community beginning at the guiding light of community based readers BOOK PASSAGE CORTE MADERA, on Saturday, AUGUST 3, 2019, at 4PM. Joining me will be Pauline Sakamoto the founding director of Mothers Milk Bank San Jose — the organization to whom the proceeds from the sales will be allocated and Susan Martinelli of the California Breastfeeding Coalition—who is a lactation consultant with the County of Marin— my own home county.. Please join us, kids welcome, as we celebrate and promote the international WORLD BREAST FEEDING WEEK

Nov 02 2018 - Nov 30 2018 Opening Reception: Fri, Nov 2, 6-9PM Talk at 7:00 PM Pro Arts Gallery

I’ve been invited by my talented sister Asya Abdrahman (http://www.asyaabdrahman.com) To participate in And StillThey Persist — the opening of a a show of the Protest Art of the 2017 Women’s March. Join us at the opening reception - drop me a note here or at https://www.facebook.com/asya.abdrahman and let me know you are coming!YOU MAY EVEN GET A READING OF CHASING MERCURY out of it.

Pro Arts Gallery will be the exclusive San Francisco Bay Area venue for the touring exhibition STILL THEY PERSIST: Protest Art of the 2017 Women’s Marches, on view November 2, 2018, through November 30, 2018. With the aim of keeping the words and images made and deployed by human rights advocates who took to the streets of cities around the country in January, 2017 circulating within the public sphere, FemFour, a group of Cincinnati-based artists and arts advocates, put together a traveling, ever-evolving archive of posters and placards, sculptures, textiles, and photo documentation from the day collected by the arts philanthropist and collector Sara M. Vance Waddell.

Event date: 

Friday, June 8, 2018 - 7:00pm

Event address: 

How can a novel about love in the time of mercury poisoning,, which held a top 10 position in Amazon’s international mystery and crime category for 5 weeks, qualify as Comfort Literature? Come hear! Apparently Chasing Mercury is Perfect summer reading!

FOR YOUR CALENDAR  May 24, 7:30pm, Written Within the Body: A Night of Readings with Lone Morch, Sarah Kornfeld, September Williams and Kristin Kaye, Book Smith/The Bindery, 1644 Haight Street San Francisco, CA  http://www.booksmith.com/event/bindery-written-within-body-night-readings-lone-mørch-sarah-kornfeld-september-williams-and       

FOR YOUR CALENDAR  May 24, 7:30pm, Written Within the Body: A Night of Readings with Lone Morch, Sarah Kornfeld, September Williams and Kristin Kaye, Book Smith/The Bindery, 1644 Haight Street San Francisco, CA  http://www.booksmith.com/event/bindery-written-within-body-night-readings-lone-mørch-sarah-kornfeld-september-williams-and       

HOLD THE DATE: Join us at 4PM in Sausilito May 19, 2018, bites, chat, book signing. Chasing Mercury is available at Book Passage on line and in the store on the date. Book Passage Sausilito has many public parking lots within it’s eyeliner. After a little hanging out in at the Sausilito Book Passage plan to be there. If you haven’t been there — right on the water we in one of the harbors you are in for a treat.

Join us at 4PM in Sausilito May 19, 2018, bites, chat, book signing. BUT IF YOU CAN’T JOIN US I DIDN’T WANT TO LEAVE YOU OUT SO WE HAVE SET UP A SPECIAL PAPERBACK BOOK GIVEAWAY - EVERY 12 person will win one of 10 books. Chasing Mercury is available at Book Passage on line and in the store on the date. Book Passage Sausilito has many public parking lots within it’s eyeliner. After a little hanging out in at the Sausilito Book Passage plan to be there. If you haven’t been there — right on the water we in one of the harbors you are in for a treat.

When seventeen-year-old Jade Reynolds witnesses a violent clash between a protesting tree sitter and a local logger, she runs as far as she can from the battles that plague her home and from the mysteries of the redwood forest. But the ancient redwoods are embedded in her psyche―she feels their call even in the dark and forgotten back alleys of Portland, Oregon where she’s hiding out. She soon becomes entangled with a lovable misfit and a band of radical slackers,

There are multiple incidences where current event coincide with  events associate with storylines, whether films or nonfiction. First Sources sometimes are the only way to get fully relevant understanding of the circumstances leading to specific concerns in fiction. Fiction requires accuracy to be relevant in terms of time, place, prevailing norms of characters and surroundings .... blocking and creating articles and other materials relevant to a nonfiction activity as well as additional publishing can be invaluable. Hence this session at the Mechanics Institute. . As a member of the international Federation of Journalist I have interviewed numerous people around the USA and in Europe to whom I would not as easily had access without a press outlet. Key aspects of Chasing Mercury required deeper evaluation of the life of environmental journalist and activist than on hand information could provide, as well as the history of key movements. Join us at the MIL.

It is a curious phenomenon but often happens. You have an idea for a piece of fiction. Even if it is science fiction or fantasy, model after many cultures combined, real or imagined--you need the facts even to manipulate them. First sources are always a good reference. How do you get to first sources and what do you do with what you learn -- long before Chasing Mercury was finished I found myself  transferring all kinds of knowledge into the settings, place, time and characters. But what about your outlet besides the novel?

April 17, 2018 (Tuesday) 7PM-10PM September Williams Author of Chasing Mercury presents at 'Memento Mori' at Reimagine End of Life Week. Swedish American Hall 

Dr. September Williams will explore themes in her romance-suspense-memoir novel Chasing Mercury which illuminate the concept that 'Grief is Cyclic'. 

I became interested in Civi Corps through a National Writers Union brother Alan Lessik. At the time of the recent fires in Napa and Sonoma I wanted to make a donation to an organization which not only dealt with disasters of fire and floods but also worked to prevent them.

It seemed to me that Civi Corps helping to develop better educated young people who understand things like Climate Change, and who also do work in Recycling and Brush control , not as a school project but as professional trades people -- had a proactive approach to fire prevention and so environmental protection and  environmental justice while providing young people with jobs and education.  I was invited to speak at a community meeting at Civi Corps and I encourage my readers to donate to and support Civi Corps Oakland. https://www.cvcorps.org

We will be celebrating the launch of the print version of Chasing Mercury  at the University of Illinois College of Medicine in Chicago. 

A note from the executive director of Green Action

Twenty years ago, urban, rural and Indigenous communities and grassroots groups came together to form a new organization to be led by frontline communities impacted by pollution, racism and injustice. It’s mission would be to mobilize community power to win victories that change industry and government policies and practices to protect health and promote environmental, social and economic justice….and Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice was born.

Follow MIL and NWU on Facebook/website

https://www.facebook.com/MILibrary/  and https://www.facebook.com/National-Writers-Union-Northern-California-Chapter-1157254427685640/