Monthly Mentoring Sessions

Group Mentoring Session is on vacation

SF/Peninsula Writers will be enjoying their summer and return to monthly meetings and mentoring sessions in September.

Guest Mentors wanted for Group Mentoring Sessions If you are a current member of the SF/Peninsula branch of CWC and wish to be a guest mentor, please submit your proposal to Joyce Robins and Teresa LeYung Ryan, co-chairs for Group Mentoring Program. They are accepting proposals to fill November through June sessions. Group-Mentoring (usually 12:30-1:30PM) follows the general meeting of 10:00-noon. Why would you want to be a guest-mentor? To practice submitting proposals and competing for a spot; To learn how to publicize your session and prepare hand-outs; To polish your presentation skills; To share knowledge with fellow members; To receive feedback from participants. What to put in your proposal: Your name and contact info (include your email address); Title of your presentation (15 words or less); Description of your presentation (50 words or less). Presentation should be 20 to 30 minutes, with the remaining time for questions and answers, discussions, and for participants to fill out evaluation forms (supplied by Joyce and Teresa; Guest-Mentor will get to review and keep these); How would your audience benefit from your session (20 words or less); Your bio (50 words or less); Where and when you've delivered this presentation before, if applicable; When are you available? (Our sessions fall on the third Saturday of each month, except when noted.) Perhaps in lieu of delivering a presentation which you've designed . . . You've attended a conference and have an audio or video tape of a 30 to 45-minute session OR you have notes from a workshop that you wish to share with fellow members. Submit your proposal, following above guidelines, but also let us know what conference, when, and who created and delivered the presentation and in what format you will be sharing this material. You'll need to bring your own audio/video equipment. Email your proposal as a WORD document attachment to both Joyce and Teresa at JoyceLenny@hotmail.com and Info@LoveMadeOfHeart.com. Put "Proposal for CWC Group Mentoring" in the subject line. If your proposal is chosen, you will be asked to email your photo in jpg and an outline of your talk; these items must be received by Joyce and Teresa at least 7 weeks before your event date. This new format in Group Mentoring is to further prepare CWC members in the fiercely competitive industry. We thank past Co-Chairs Martha Clark Scala (creator of CWC Mentoring) and Patty Block for having paved the road for us. We hope you will take advantage of this one (of many) membership benefit.

Following each month's meeting, we hold a Group Mentoring Session from 12:15 to 1:15 pm.  The group is open to 10 individuals with a passionate interest in writing. We meet to support each other, discuss mutual triumphs and challenges and learn about the craft and business of writing. 

Want to participate?

Want to be a Guest Mentor?

Co-Chairs for
Group Mentoring

Teresa LeYung Ryan, author and career coach for writers, enjoys delivering presentations at libraries, schools, bookstores, conferences and community events. She advocates compassion for mental illness, and has been a keynote speaker during Domestic-Violence-Awareness Month and Sexual-Assault-Awareness Month. Teresa's mother-daughter novel Love Made of Heart is now archived at the San Francisco History Center at the main branch of the San Francisco Public Library. Love Made of Heart is recommended by the California Reading Association and California School Library Association, and is read in Sociology classes and Advanced English-as-a-Second-Language classes. As a career coach for writers, Teresa helps her clients identify their themes, polish their manuscripts, find the right agents or publishers. www.LoveMadeOfHeart.com.

Teresa LeYung Ryan is a past-president of California Writers Club-San Francisco Peninsula Branch. She is a board member of Women’s National Book Association-SF Chapter.
Teresa is a 2004 recipient of the Jack London Award for her services to California Writers Club

Joyce Robins says, "I have been writing stories and poems since childhood and have just completed a manuscript, a memoir in episodic style of growing up in Toronto in the 1920’s and i930’s. My earliest influences were my grandmother, my mother, six aunts and two uncles, a large co-operative, creative, story telling family who all lived together. My mother was the oldest of grandmother’s nine children and I was the precocious child in their midst- an observer and participant. Men were scarce in our family as men tended to die early. My stepfather was a teacher, folklorist, a writer who in spite of everything had a profound influence on my development as a writer.

"My first piece of literary writing “An American Wife in Madrid” was published in ‘The Reconstructionist’ in 1959. In the mid 1960’s I wrote a series of articles for 3 Peninsula newspapers based on my experiences at W. & J. Sloanes’s on El Camino in Los Altos and Breuners Design Studios on Sutter Street in San Francisco. I had a by-line and the editor dubbed the column “Decorator’s Casebook.”

"Fast forward to 1972 when I obtained a California Clinical Social Work License which I still maintain. All continuing education credits now focus on writing as a transforming and healing art. 

"I look forward to co-chairing the mentoring group and meeting the writers who join us after the general meeting."