AAUW Santa Maria (CA) BranchSanta Maria (CA) Branch

March 2013 – AAUW Santa Maria 13th Annual Authors’ Forum

Authors include: Louise Laemmlen, Tony Piazza, Melinda Palacio, and Robert Piccioni

Date: Saturday, March 16, 2013 – 11 am – 2 pm – Historic Santa Maria Inn, 801 S. Broadway, Santa Maria

Meal Choice: Sunburst Chicken Salad, Grilled Salmon, or Eggplant Pasta Caponata Cost: $30.00 per person

4 Great Authors with 4 Great Stories, Great Food, Great Friends, Great Fun for All!

AAUW Santa Maria’s 13th Annual Authors Forum was attended by over 82 wonderful people. Lunch was delicious, with great service by the Santa Maria Inn WaitStaff. The Santa Maria Inn provided a lovely ambiance to support our program.

Each author brought a different topic/subject matter, discussing women’s issues in choosing motherhood over career, a mystery writer’s journey through a Hollywood life, a women’s experience with the immigrant issues in Arizona, and a physicist’s explains the Universe to a lay audience. Each was informative and entertaining.

LOUISE LAEMMLEN

FAILED FEMINIST TO WOMAN WARRIOR, A RISE TO MOTHERHOOD

The Real Story about Stay-at-home-parenting; Love your Family, Love your Life

Louise Laemmlen is a high school English teacher with a Master’s Degree in Literature. She has spent the last ten years as a Stay-at-Home-Mom writing and raising her three daughters now aged 11, 9, and 6. In addition to the serious pursuits of being a good wife and keeping an immaculate house, she enjoys following her girls around the garden while reprimanding them for picking flowers and praising them for their lovely bouquet-making skills in the same breath. She has kept a blog and published some of her work in From the Heart, a Parenting Anthology by WFC Books. She currently lives in Lafayette, California and intends to return to teaching and continue writing.

TONY PIAZZA

BULLITT; ANYTHING SHORT OF MURDER; THE CURSE OF THE CRIMSON DRAGON

Tony Piazza is a Central Coast mystery writer, a member of Sisters in Crime and SLO Nightwriters, film historian, presenter, and a veteran storyteller well-known for his passion about writing and movies.

He is the author of two mystery novels, “Anything Short of Murder” and “The Curse of the Crimson Dragon,” both available through Amazon. Piazza’s new book, “Bullitt Points,” from SansTree, provides a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the classic Steve McQueen movie “Bullitt” and the involvement of the Piazza family in the production.

Piazza worked regularly as an extra and stand-in on multiple Hollywood movies and television shows shot in San Francisco during the 1970′s, including “Towering Inferno,” “High Anxiety,” “Magnum Force,” and “Streets of San Francisco.” He now blogs regularly about his Hollywood experiences at authortonypiazza.com.

His inventory of stories reads like a Who’s Who of Hollywood from that era: Clint Eastwood, Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, Karl Malden, Michael Douglas, Walter Matthau, Fred Astaire, Robert Vaughn and others.

MELINDA PALACIO

OCOTILLO DREAMS; HOW FIRE IS STORY, WAITING

Melinda Palacio grew up in South Central Los Angeles and now lives in Santa Barbara and New Orleans.

She writes a Friday column for La Bloga.com

Palacio holds two degrees in Comparative Literature, a B.A. from Berkeley and an M.A. from UC Santa Cruz. Melinda is a 2007 PEN Center USA Emerging Voices Rosenthal Fellow and a 2009 alum of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers.

Her work has been published in a wide variety of journals and anthologies.

Her first novel, Ocotillo Dreams, (ASU Bilingual Press 2011) is the winner of the Mariposa Award for Best First Book at the 2012 International Latino Book Awards at the Instituto Cervantes in Manhattan and a 2012 PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles award for Excellence in Literature.

Latino Stories named her a Top Ten New Latino Author of 2012.

ROBERT PICCIONI

EVERYONE’S GUIDE TO ATOMS, EINSTEIN, AND THE UNIVERSE; CAN LIFE BE MERELY AN ACCIDENT?; A WORLD WITHOUT EINSTEIN

Robert graduated from Caltech, has a Ph.D. in high-energy physics from Stanford University, and was on the faculty of Harvard.

Robert ran eight high-tech companies and holds patents in medical equipment, microelectronics, and smart energy.

Since retiring, his mission is making cutting-edge science accessible.

Robert teaches at the Osher Institute at UCLA and Cal. State Channel Islands, where he was voted Teacher of the Year.

He is the author of three books that won national and international competitions and have the highest ratings in their categories on Amazon.com.

An important part of our program is always the door prizes, which include a copy of each authors book, and a variety of wine for our winners. This year we had a bonus door prize of writing books, to encourage a member of our audience to start writing their own book!!