California Writers Club, Sacramento Branch
Dedicated to Educating Writers of all Levels
Sherie Labedis was born in Los Angeles, California, in 1946. She discovered a passion for civil rights when her 10th grade English teacher asked his students what they were willing to die for.
She was only eighteen in 1965 when she joined Martin Luther King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference registering black voters in Pineville, South Carolina. She and the SCLC group successfully registered 580 new voters. She now tries to spend some time in Pineville each year to visit friends she made there.
At the end of the summer of 1965, she enrolled for a semester at Allen University, a historically African American Methodist Episcopal college in Columbia, South Carolina, where she was the only white student on campus. She later returned to the University of California, Berkeley, where she earned a bachelor’s degree and teaching credential.
She taught English and Social Studies for thirty-five years, most of it with at-risk high school students, before retiring to write You Came Here to Die, Didn’t You, based on her 1965 journal, which she published herself.
Labedis was featured in Ann Curry’s “We’ll Meet Again” series in February of 2018.
She lives in Roseville, California with her husband Joe and dog Zoe.
I consider myself an aspiring writer. My genre is memoir. I’ve been writing—short stories and one novel—since 1996. However, it is only since I retired at the beginning of 2016 that I’ve been writing stories with consistent effort. Because I interviewed his mother in 2005, my first cousin, Ken Neywick of Richardson, Texas, decided I should transcribe the manuscripts of our maternal grandmother, Hazel Willhite Cornellisson. I did so, and distributed copies to family members. I have since come into possession of some old family letters, dated from the 1900’s to 1933. I believe they are of historical and/or cultural interest, and my current project is to transcribe those letters for publication.
Dierdre Wolownick, aka Dierdre W. Honnold, has been writing professionally since 1981. Professor of foreign languages since 1971 (retired). Climber, musician, runner, artist, speaker. Published books: Memoir (title to come), 2019, Mountaineers Books, Seattle; Allez! Foundations in Beginning French, 2019, Cognella Publishers, San Diego. Past books: English for Foreign Language Students and Je Parle Français, 2015; Sacramento with Kids, San Jose with Kids, English with Ease (published in 8 countries), 3 Chicken Soup books, 2 novels: Gold Country and Legacy of Love. Published in magazines around the world, since 1981. Multiple awards for books and short stories.
Just became the oldest woman ever to climb El Capitan, the 3,000-ft wall in Yosemite Nat’l Park (subject of her ’19 Memoir). Has lived and taught in 3 countries, and can help with foreign language questions in various languages, or grammar questions. Founded and conducted the West Sacramento Community Orchestra (1990-1994), and can help with any musical questions. From New York City, currently resides in Carmichael, CA, a suburb of Sacramento.
Her fb page: https://www.facebook.com/DierdreWolownick/
Her web page/blog: http://dierdrew.us
Jenifer Rowe writes short stories, essays and memoir. Her work has been published in Scarlet Leaf Review, Crack the Spine, Wildflower Muse, Liars League NYC, the Sacramento Bee, and the 2018 and 2019 issues of California Literary Review. She earned Finalist distinction in the New Millennium Writings 46th Literary Awards. Jenifer is a board member of California Writers Club – Sacramento. She lives in El Dorado Hills with her partner Richard. Her first novel Unexpected Findings earned Finalist distinction in the 2021 Next Generation Indie Book Awards.