Story Makers Show

Web series and feature films are all about collaboration, and Florencia, who’s been at the helm of both as a writer/ director, goes into the good, the bad, the ugly . . . and the pleasures of that process, from generating ideas and developing characters to co-writing to getting strong readers to working closely with a trusted editor. She gives us some great tips and tools from marinating to using index cards and notebooks to building community, finding a support network and writing your own mission statement. We discussed writing intuitively and taking risks, breaking rules and going against mainstream expectations. Getting honest about struggling with a lack of confidence, this award-winning filmmaker tells us her secret to getting past that, and what she most needs now as an artist of color. Part of her mission is about expanding the conversation around what a woman can be. If you want the nitty gritty about creating the stories you want to see, Florencia shares it here.

Links

 Rialto Cinema

Guinevere Turner

Dyke Central 

Mynah Films

Dyke Central on Facebook

Mira Nair on Yoga 

Florencia Manovil is a feminist filmmaker passionate about independent film, social justice, environmentalism, and queer identities. Born and raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Florencia moved to the U.S. at the age of 18 to pursue film studies, eventually settling in the San Francisco Bay Area after living in Boston and New York for several years. A translator and subtitler, writer, filmmaker and mother, Florencia is committed to bringing underrepresented communities to the screen, as well as showcasing Oakland and the Bay Area at large.

Fiona’s Script (2008), a film about a young bisexual woman finding her footing in life, was Florencia’s feature directorial debut. The film played at several national and international festivals. Development of her next feature was put on hold so that she could focus on Dyke Central, a “queer dramedy” episodic Florencia co-created. In 2011, she directed and produced the pilot episode, which went on to screen at several film festivals. In 2013 she resumed the production of Dyke Central, shooting 4 more episodes, all of which were selected for film festival screenings in 2014. That year she went to on complete production of 5 more episodes of the popular series.

Under Mynah Films, she also produced the pilot episode of Throw Like a Girl, a queer web comedy, and co-produced the pilot of Fairytale Fail, a comedy about the cutthroat behind-the-scenes world of theme park actors.

Florencia just completed the full first season of Dyke Central, and has two shorts ("Encuentro" and a children's film) and two features (Leche and Star-Crossed) in development.

Story Makers is a podcast that features in-depth conversations with accomplished writers, filmmakers and industry experts about story craft, technique, habit and survival--everything you need to know to stay inspired, connect to your creativity, find others’ wonderful stories and your own success.

The hosts:

Elizabeth Stark is a published, agented novelist and distributed filmmaker who teaches and mentors writers at BookWritingWorld.com.

Angie Powers is a distributed filmmaker and published short story writer with an MFA in creative writing and a certificate in screenwriting from UCLA who teaches story structure at BookWritingWorld.com.

Nina LaCour just finished her fourth YA novel when we sat down to talk about everything from traumatic grad school workshops to tips for getting an agent to the difference between writing under contract and writing before publication. Nina’s first novel, Hold, was banned in some places and in others assigned by entire high schools. We discussed controversy. “Books are a wonderful place to start conversations,” Nina says. Offering encouragement to write the story you really feel compelled to tell, Nina shared about her year of rejection and her magic week of yes, about writing after becoming a mother, about turning her first novel into a screenplay and then into a film, and what she learned about structure from that experience (including the hilarious litmus test Nina stumbled upon for telling how your scenes are too long). She gave us great tips for writing for a YA audience, including not writing off their experience as less true, including the possible longevity of high school romance. We discussed breaking out of conventions, breaking rules, intuition v structure and pulling short stories out of novels. Nina laid out how she uses questions to drive her story, and gives us juicy, helpful details about her revision process and her writing group. This was a really fun, honest conversation with a wonderful, productive author.

LINKS

@nina_lacour

Ninalacour.com

The Checklist Manifesto

Adele When We were Young lyric: "We were sad of growing old."

Pitch Wars

Victor LaValle

Purity by Jonathan Franzen

WattPad

Nina LaCour is the author of three critically acclaimed young adult novels published by Dutton Books: Hold Still, The Disenchantments, and Everything Leads to You. You Know Me Well, a novel written in collaboration with David Levithan, is forthcoming from St. Martin's Griffin in June, 2016.

She has tutored, taught, and guest lectured in various places, including Berkeley City College, Maybeck High School, Stanford University, and Mills College, where she received an MFA in Creative Writing in 2006. Her novels have been Junior Library Guild selections, ALA Best Books for Young Adults, and have appeared on many state and regional lists. Nina won the 2009 Northern California Book Award for Children’s Literature, was featured in Publishers Weekly as a Flying Starts Author, and was a finalist for the William C. Morris award. She loves teaching, reading work by emerging and established writers, and talking about the craft of fiction.

She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her wife, photographer Kristyn Stroble, and their daughter.

Story Makers is a podcast that features in-depth conversations with accomplished writers, filmmakers and industry experts about story craft, technique, habit and survival--everything you need to know to stay inspired, connect to your creativity, find others’ wonderful stories and your own success.

The hosts:

Elizabeth Stark is a published, agented novelist and distributed filmmaker who teaches and mentors writers at BookWritingWorld.com.

Angie Powers is a distributed filmmaker and published short story writer with an MFA in creative writing and a certificate in screenwriting from UCLA who teaches story structure at BookWritingWorld.com.

We delved into the history of “The New Journalism,” the way journalism has changed and is changing and the return of longform journalism and the way that surprised expectations after the advent of the Internet.

A rousing and inspirational discussion of the business side of writing included loving your work as a way to approach pitching and marketing. Heather offered great advice as a former business coach for writers. She didn’t skirt the challenges of selling stories that have women at the center, and the delicate work of understanding the differences between the maximal story, the minimal story, and the story that's really there. So many tips, from using spreadsheets for timelines to making unlikable characters likable, and much more.

Links and books discussed

@HeatherBoerner for Twitter

www.HIVlovewins.com

Positively Negative on Facebook

Sweet Valley High

John McPhee

Tom Wolfe

Jacqui Banaszynski’s Aids in the Heartland

The Daily Beast

Gilmore Girls

Andrew Solomon Far From The Tree

Joan Didion Slouching Towards Bethlehem: “Dreamers of the Golden Dream” (first essay in the collection)

Truman Capote in cold blood

The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

Gone Girl

San Francisco-based journalist Heather Boerner is the author of Positively Negative: Love, Pregnancy and Science’s Surprising Victory Over HIV. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Daily Beast, The San Francisco Chronicle and elsewhere.

Story Makers is a podcast that features in-depth conversations with accomplished writers, filmmakers and industry experts about story craft, technique, habit and survival--everything you need to know to stay inspired, connect to your creativity, find others’ wonderful stories and your own success.

The hosts:

Elizabeth Stark is a published, agented novelist and distributed filmmaker who teaches and mentors writers at BookWritingWorld.com.

Angie Powers is a distributed filmmaker and published short story writer with an MFA in creative writing and a certificate in screenwriting from UCLA who teaches story structure at BookWritingWorld.com.

"Part of your job is to be rejected," Steve Goldbloom says, and offers great inspiration for developing chutzpah and surviving failure and thriving. This far-ranging conversation talks about social media and handling feedback on your work, the collaborative effort of film-making and why Steve will never again direct, write and act in one film, the secrets of great interviews, long form v. short, comedy and tension, nano-budget filmmaking, the golden age of television (i.e. now), improving and taking risks as a performer, looking back at old, old work, and strategies for trusting yourself and really going for it. Loads of humor and fire-you-up motivation.  Further topics include: mining autobiographical material and using exaggeration, believing you have something to offer, and ignoring both props and barbs when it comes to your creative work.

Links:

Pilar Alessandra: http://www.onthepage.tv/

Ken Vansickle, photographer: http://www.sinobarr.com/ken/life_bio_ken.htm

Nanou Matteson and Heather Haggarty http://sparklightfilms.com/

Danny Strong: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0834960/

Mark Maren WTF http://www.wtfpod.com/

Transparent

Fargo

Your show of shows, Sid Caesar

Saturday night live

Mel Brooks

Elizabeth Bowen

Films shot with available light and moving cameras:

Wild (the film): http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2305051/

Children of Men: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0206634/

Jenni Konner: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1493255/

Jim Uhls: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0880243/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1

Safehouse: https://screenwritingfromiowa.wordpress.com/2015/07/29/start-your-own-writeractor-workshop/

Steve Goldbloom:

http://www.briefbutspectacular.com/

@SteveGoldblum for Twitter: https://twitter.com/stevegoldbloom

Remember Me the movie: https://www.facebook.com/RememberMeAMovie

Steve Goldbloom is a writer, producer, and performer based in Los Angeles.

In 2015, he created "Brief but Spectacular" a weekly interview series for PBS NewsHour. Guests include Michael Lewis, Robert Reich, Marina Abramović, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Carl Reiner, the stars of "Broad City" and many more. "Brief" is a Facebook-First series with segments published on NewsHour's page every Thursday morning and broadcast nationally in the evening.

Previously, he created and hosted "Everything But the News" for PBS Digital Studios. The satirical show lampooned Silicon Valley and public broadcasting. USA Today ranked the show as Best Web Series of 2014.

Since 2014, Steve has also served as a Special Correspondent for the PBS NewsHour. He has primarily covered tech and culture in California for the national broadcast based in Washington.

Steve is currently in post-production on his first feature film "Remember Me" which he wrote and directed. The film stars Oscar Winner Rita Moreno and was produced by Sparklight Films in Berkeley, CA. The feature will premiere in 2016.

Steve has a new satirical variety series with AOL’s Engadget, which will be released in February of 2016.

Originally from Halifax, Nova Scotia — Steve is a dual citizen of Canada and the US. He runs his production company Second Peninsula LLC out of Los Angeles.mpshire.

Story Makers is a podcast that features in-depth conversations with accomplished writers, filmmakers and industry experts about story craft, technique, habit and survival--everything you need to know to stay inspired, connect to your creativity, find others’ wonderful stories and your own success.

The hosts:

Elizabeth Stark is a published, agented novelist and distributed filmmaker who teaches and mentors writers at BookWritingWorld.com.

Angie Powers is a distributed filmmaker and published short story writer with an MFA in creative writing and a certificate in screenwriting from UCLA who teaches story structure at BookWritingWorld.com.

Anthony Lucero is the writer/ director of the indie feature hit East Side Sushi, and he joins us to talk about storytelling in film. We discuss the differences between the storytelling processes for a short and a feature, character arc, the necessity of backstory, and the joys of research for fictional work. With a background in editing and special effects, Anthony talks to us about the advantages an editor has in becoming a writer/ direction, and the differences between the display of special effects and the simple power of story. Tips abound, about plot point grids, what to do when you are tired of your characters, reordering your scenes to create the right arc, and the importance of index cards. We talked about avoiding Hollywood endings, the contrast between the screenplay on the page and what ends up happening at the shoot, how much feedback is too much, and when and how to keep the audience in mind. Anthony made the excellent point that you can’t test a screenplay--you only really know what you have when you are editing it! And of course we talked about sushi and sushi competitions, and how East Side Sushi is the Rocky/ Creed of gourmet raw fish . . .

Links

Eastsidesushifilm.com

https://www.facebook.com/eastsidesushi/

Anthony's shorts The Ballerina and I Need My Mocha

SFWeekly article about Anthony Lucero

Pulp Fiction

21 Grams

Sushi champion Tomoharu Nakamura

Documentary called the King of Kong

Micheline Aharonian Marcom

Bay Area filmmaker Anthony Lucero’s newest project reflects a fusion of cultures and flavors in East Side Sushi, an original screenplay that tells the story of a Latina working-class single mother who strives to become a sushi chef. As with many of his other films, Lucero’s inspiration for the story came from his observations of people from all walks of life. “I’ve always liked lesser-known stories of everyday people,” he says. “I wonder what their life is like. And I often want to pick up a camera, and follow them, ask them questions about their lives. It’s my documentary background.”

He writes and directs films involving subjects ranging from comedic to deeply serious, such as the poignant 2007 documentary film Angels and Wheelchairs. This intensely personal slice-of-life short film won Best Drama/Documentary and Best Overall Film awards at the Alice 5th Annual Independent Film Festival in San Francisco and played in numerous film festivals around the world. Some of Lucero’s other award-winning projects include 2011’s San Francisco Is… and 2005’s I Need My Mocha, which captured Best Short Film at the San Francisco International Latino Film Festival and screened at numerous film festivals throughout the country. It was also selected as one of the top short films and aired on the Independent Film Channel (IFC). These films can be seen on his website at http://www.lucerofilms.com.

Lucero’s evolution as a filmmaker reflects a diverse path traveled. After receiving his B.A. in Film from San Francisco State University, Lucero worked as a commercial editor for several years with clients such as Nike and Yahoo. His move into the visual effects world for companies such as Lucasfilm’s Industrial Light and Magic and Tippett Studio has led him to work on such blockbusters as Star Wars - Episode II, Pirates of the Caribbean, Iron Man and The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn. Keeping a balance between more commercial films and projects with social commentary and a focus on community, Lucero has also worked as a cameraman and editor on documentaries such as the PBS series Not In Our Town. East Side Sushi marks his feature film directorial debut.

Story Makers is a podcast that features in-depth conversations with accomplished writers, filmmakers and industry experts about story craft, technique, habit and survival--everything you need to know to stay inspired, connect to your creativity, find others’ wonderful stories and your own success. The hosts: Elizabeth Stark is a published, agented novelist and distributed filmmaker who teaches and mentors writers at BookWritingWorld.com. Angie Powers is a distributed filmmaker and published short story writer with an MFA in creative writing and a certificate in screenwriting from UCLA who teaches story structure at BookWritingWorld.com.

Our conversation with Nina takes place as she launches into the writing of a new novel, beginning by exploring whether it is, indeed a novel--or a short story. We discuss the differences, including revelation, character change, build and transformation. Where do new ideas come from and how do they develop? We dig into readers’ shifting expectations through the centuries and what today's reader wants. Other topics include watching (or not watching) the market, pushing the boundaries, entering into new territories, looking for what hasn't been said. We examine the fascination of unlikable characters and the role of strong, cutthroat women in fiction. Tips include creating a scene list, looking at the character web or cast of characters, how to find and stay true to the beating heart of your book, writing out of chronological order and going back to create a build and consequence, structuring a revision, tracking reader question, and developing theme and character arc. We talk about getting feedback from readers who are not writers, and about style, sentences and dialog. A far-ranging and deep discussion.

The Painter by Nina Schulyer

Dragon Ball Z

http://www.ninaschuyler.com/

The Translator won the 2014 Next Generation Indie Book Award for General Fiction and was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Writing Prize. It was named a Recommended Book by the San Francisco Chronicle,  and has been translated into Hebrew, Taiwanese and Chinese.

Nina Schuyler's first novel, The Painting, (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2004), was a finalist for the Northern California Book Awards. It was also selected by the San Francisco Chronicle as one of the Best Books of 2004, and dubbed a “fearless debut” by MSNBC and a “great debut” by the Rocky Mountain News. It’s been translated into Chinese, Portuguese, and Serbian.

Her stories have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and her poems and short stories have appeared in ZYZZYVA, Santa Clara Review, Fugue, The Meadowland Review, The Battered Suitcase, and other literary journals. She writes a column for Fiction Advocate that focuses on stunning sentences and reviews books for   The Rumpus and The Children’s Book Review. She teaches creative writing at the University of San Francisco and writing classes at Book Passage.

She attended Stanford University for her undergraduate degree, earned a law degree at Hastings College of the Law and an MFA in fiction with an emphasis on poetry at San Francisco State University.

Story Makers is a podcast that features in-depth conversations with accomplished writers, filmmakers and industry experts about story craft, technique, habit and survival--everything you need to know to stay inspired, connect to your creativity, find others’ wonderful stories and your own success.

The hosts:

Elizabeth Stark is a published, agented novelist and distributed filmmaker who teaches and mentors writers at BookWritingWorld.com.

Angie Powers is a distributed filmmaker and published short story writer with an MFA in creative writing and a certificate in screenwriting from UCLA who teaches story structure at BookWritingWorld.com.

Lea Page is a wonderful writer and long-time Book Writing World student whose first book--Parenting in the Here and Now: Realizing the Strengths You Already Have--was recently published by Floris Press. She has also written two moving and evocative memoirs. In our conversation, we discuss juggling writing projects and developing a daily writing practice. Lea, who has placed many short pieces for publication, shares great insights about the benefits of the submission process (besides occasional publication) as well as how to persist, cheer rejection, and succeed! We covered resistance, inspiration v. planning, and some structure questions you can ask yourself. Finally, we looked at finding your beginning and your ending in memoir, the power of story and how to think about memoir as taking steps on your arc. We learned a lot from this promising and disciplined writer.

Links Discussed:

Creative Writing Opportunities Group List: https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/CRWROPPS-B/info

Joan Gelfand, submissions coach: http://www.joangelfand.com/

Find Lea, her blog and her parenting book at: http://www.leapageauthor.com/

Lea Page has mentored Steiner-Waldorf homeschooling mothers for a decade and has many years experience as a La Leche League leader. She and her husband homeschooled both their children in rural Montana. Lea has studied education, literature and leadership. She now lives and writes in New Hampshire.

Story Makers is a podcast that features in-depth conversations with accomplished writers, filmmakers and industry experts about story craft, technique, habit and survival--everything you need to know to stay inspired, connect to your creativity, find others’ wonderful stories and your own success.

The hosts:

Elizabeth Stark is a published, agented novelist and distributed filmmaker who teaches and mentors writers at BookWritingWorld.com.

Angie Powers is a distributed filmmaker and published short story writer with an MFA in creative writing and a certificate in screenwriting from UCLA who teaches story structure at BookWritingWorld.com.

We met with Carolina just after she sent her work-in-progress to its first, early readers. The main questions she had, she told us, was: is it a book? This led into a wonderful discussion when  a work is ready for readers and when it needs to be kept private. We talked about early writing, the need to let it be bad--even trying for bad--and then the deep and powerful art of revision. She talked about the gap between what the book wants to be and what it is on the page, and how to develop the muscles to get through that gap. The key word in this conversation was risk.

We also delved into research, especially for fiction--ways to go about it, how to fill the well, when to start writing . . . and the imaginative leap and the mysterious mirror that fiction can be in our lives. Each of Carolina’s three books had a different journey and relationship to structure and she laid that out for us. We talked about the importance of telling undertold or silenced histories and stories and the importance of steadfastly showing up. Carolina had some inspiring tools for tracking her writing work. And of course we touched on the nuanced portrayal of sexuality in The Gods of Tango, Carolina’s enthralling third novel.

Books and authors discussed:

Carolina De Robertis/The Gods of Tango

Edward P. Jones/ The Known World

Elizabeth Strout/ The Burgess Boys

Gertrude Stein/ The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

Carolina De Robertis/Perla

Carolina De Robertis/The Invisible Mountain

Toni Morrison

Jerry Seinfeld/ chain of exes

Links:

http://www.carolinaderobertis.com/

Carolina De Robertis is the internationally bestselling author of The Gods of Tango, Perla, and The Invisible Mountain, which was a Best Book of 2009 according to the San Francisco Chronicle, O, The Oprah Magazine, and BookList. She is the recipient of Italy’s Rhegium Julii Prize and a 2012 fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her work has been translated into seventeen languages. Her writings and literary translations have appeared in Zoetrope: Allstory, Granta, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. She is also the translator of Alejandro Zambra’s Bonsai, which was just made into a feature film, and Roberto Ampuero’s The Neruda Case.

Story Makers is a podcast that features in-depth conversations with accomplished writers, filmmakers and industry experts about story craft, technique, habit and survival--everything you need to know to stay inspired, connect to your creativity, find others’ wonderful stories and your own success.

The hosts:

Elizabeth Stark is a published, agented novelist and distributed filmmaker who teaches and mentors writers at BookWritingWorld.com.

Angie Powers is a distributed filmmaker and published short story writer with an MFA in creative writing and a certificate in screenwriting from UCLA who teaches story structure at BookWritingWorld.com.

Mary is a master of many forms, and we discuss and compare writing screenplays, poetry and novels. She tells us about compartmentalization, visual plot and character. In film, Mary says, character is demonstrated by what you do in difficult circumstances when you are given a choice.  Mary is a retired professor, and we get into day jobs and PhDs. On the other hand, we also delve into liminal states, transcendental meditation and that article in the New Yorker about psychadelics. Does writing require an altered state and how do we get there? Robert Olen Butler talks about the “Dream State” for writing. Mary writes across many genres and has written for many decades. We discuss science fiction, feminism, the role of reading in writing, and  editing: ruthless cutting, reading aloud, motivation, evoking world and more.

Books Discussed

Travelers with No Ticket Home

Shop Indie Bookstores

Remembrance of Things Past by Proust

Station Eleven

From Where You Dream by River Olen Butler

Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell

Time and Again by Jack Finney

From Time to Time by Jack Finney

The Writing Life by Annie Dillard

Links

Mary Mackey is a bestselling author who has written six volumes of poetry including Sugar Zone winner of the 2012 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award for Literary Excellence. She is also the author of thirteen  novels some of which have appeared on The New York Times and San Francisco ChronicleBestseller Lists. Mackey’s novels have been translated into twelve languages including Japanese, Russian, Hebrew, Greek, and Finnish. Her poems have been praised by Wendell Berry, Jane Hirshfield, Marge Piercy, and Dennis Nurkse for their beauty, precision, originality, and extraordinary range. Garrison Keillor has featured her poetry four times on The Writer’s Almanac. Also a screenwriter, she has sold feature-length scripts to Warner Brothers as well as to independent film companies. Mackey sometimes writes comedy under her pen name “Kate Clemens.” She has a B.A. from Harvard College and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from The University of Michigan and is related through her father’s family to Mark Twain. At present, she lives in northern California with her husband Angus Wright. ” In Spring 2014, Marsh Hawk Press will publish a new collection of her poetry entitled Travelers With No Ticket Home.

Story Makers is a podcast that features in-depth conversations with accomplished writers, filmmakers and industry experts about story craft, technique, habit and survival--everything you need to know to stay inspired, connect to your creativity, find others’ wonderful stories and your own success.

The hosts:

Elizabeth Stark is a published, agented novelist and distributed filmmaker who teaches and mentors writers at BookWritingWorld.com.

Angie Powers is a distributed filmmaker and published short story writer with an MFA in creative writing and a certificate in screenwriting from UCLA who teaches story structure at BookWritingWorld.com.

Talking with Meliza Banales is like riding some amazing, brightly-colored roller coaster through the church of creativity. What? She’s just inspiring, whether she’s talking about reframing the promotion process as part of the creative process, being willing to fail, living with lupus as a writer, or launching her new novel into the world.

She gave us terrific tips on using separate spaces to juggle different aspects of writing, and she never forgot that everyone doesn’t have the luxury of living alone. She talked about committing to your writing (“Give it what it needs or walk away”), getting help, going on art dates with yourself, and reading your work in public as you go. About this last, she really urged writers to pitch your work to the street and stay current with your readers. This might reflect her status as a former Poetry Slam champion. Poetry Slam is a boot camp for writers: “It’s all about telling a story and you only have three minutes to do it.” Drawing on her filmmaking experience, she looked at the practice of writing in pieces the way filmmakers shoot films and then building the plot and the sequence with the time frame around the core concept.

Reading, she reminded us, is integral to being a writer. She urged us to look at books “as a refuge rather than work.

Some of the books and authors we discussed:

Micheline Aharonian Marcom

Charles Bukowski

Lynn Breedlove

We also talked about:

Chicana feminism

punk rock chick coming of age

character growth

inherent conflict

writing as refuge

Find Meliza at missyfuego.com, get her novel, Life Is Wonderful, People Are Terrific and her chapbook, You Smell Like Danger, and more.

Meliza Bañales aka Missy Fuego is the author of Say It With Your Whole Mouth (poems, Monkey Press) and has work in Without A Net: The Female Experience of Growing-Up Working Class (edited by Michelle Tea), Baby, Remember My Name: New Queer Girl Writing (edited by Michelle Tea), The Encyclopedia of Activism and Social Change, Word Warriors: 35 Women Leaders of the Spoken-Word Movement (edited by Alix Olson), Lodestar Quarterly and Ladybox Books.  She was the first Chicana/Latina on the west coast to win a poetry slam championship in 2002, has toured with Sister Spit and Body Heat, and gained national recognition for her appearances on NPR and The Lesbian Podcast.  Her short film with J Aguilar entitled “Getting Off” won the Jury Award at TG Fest: The Los Angeles Transgender Film Festival in 2011.  Her second book, a work of fiction titled Life Is Wonderful, People Are Terrific, will be out in June 2015 on Ladybox Books an imprint of Broken River Books.  She has a spoken-word album, And Now Introducing Missy Fuego, expected to be released on Crunks Not Dead Records in 2015.  She is a community builder with Con Fuerza Collective, a radical, Xicana Feminist collective in the heart of East LA.  She lives in Los Angeles.

Story Makers is a podcast that features in-depth conversations with accomplished writers, filmmakers and industry experts about story craft, technique, habit and survival--everything you need to know to stay inspired, connect to your creativity, find others’ wonderful stories and your own success.

The hosts:

Elizabeth Stark is a published, agented novelist and distributed filmmaker who teaches and mentors writers at BookWritingWorld.com.

Angie Powers is a distributed filmmaker and published short story writer with an MFA in creative writing and a certificate in screenwriting from UCLA who teaches story structure at BookWritingWorld.com.