Sibylline Authors Share Their Wisdom and Books at The Book Jewel in Westchester, CA
What does it take to get your book published in the youth focused publishing industry? Come hear about how four women conquered this hurdle with grit, perseverance, and a publisher dedicated to publishing the brilliant work of women over 50, Sibylline Press. And book lovers will enjoy the discussion about four fabulous books, two fiction, two memoir. Featuring:
Chick Singer: A Novel by Lorraine Devon Wilke
Who Nun It? The Convent Mysteries by Susan Mattern
Giving Up the Ghost: A Daughter’s Memoir by Samantha Rose
Foghorn: The Nearly True Story of a Small Publishing Empire by Vicki DeArmon (moderator and publisher of Sibylline Press)
Books will be available to purchase at the event! For more information, please visit The Book Jewel’s events page here.
EVENT INFORMATION:
Friday, April 25th @ 7pm
The Book Jewel
6259 W 87th St.
Friday, April 25th @ 7pm
The Book Jewel
6259 W 87th St.
Westchester, CA
About Chick Singer:Rock & roll stardom is something you dream about when you’re young, but for Libby Conlin the ‘80s and all their wild promise are ancient history.
What pulls her attention now is the unexpected arrival of Bridget, her newly divorced daughter, home again despite their historically fractious relationship and the chaos it inspires. Life quickly turns upside down when Bridget’s application to a local art school involves anonymously posting Libby’s old music online, music that’s good enough to garner the attention of industry gatekeepers. When Libby’s mysterious past—and all its dark secrets—comes roaring into the present, the reconfiguration of everything and everyone in her orbit is both bittersweet and life changing. Chick Singer explores a complex mother/daughter relationship against the backdrop of music, dreams, and love—and the art of redefining all three.
What pulls her attention now is the unexpected arrival of Bridget, her newly divorced daughter, home again despite their historically fractious relationship and the chaos it inspires. Life quickly turns upside down when Bridget’s application to a local art school involves anonymously posting Libby’s old music online, music that’s good enough to garner the attention of industry gatekeepers. When Libby’s mysterious past—and all its dark secrets—comes roaring into the present, the reconfiguration of everything and everyone in her orbit is both bittersweet and life changing. Chick Singer explores a complex mother/daughter relationship against the backdrop of music, dreams, and love—and the art of redefining all three.
About Lorraine Devon Wilke:Lorraine Devon Wilke is a writer of screenplays, stage plays, articles, editorials, short stories and novels. In 2010, she launched her “arts & politics” blog, Rock+Paper+Music, and in 2011 became a popular contributor to HuffPost and other media sites. Her essays have been reprinted and excerpted in academic tomes, nonfiction books, and literary journals. She maintains a column at Medium and a popular Substack titled Musings of a Creative Loudmouth. Her previous novels include After the Sucker Punch (2014), Hysterical Love (2015), and The Alchemy of Noise. Devon Wilke lives in Los Angeles with her family, including her husband, attorney/writer/producer, Pete Wilke.
About Who Nun It?: In a 1960s convent, Kristen, a first-year nun, and her teacher, Sister Inez, stumble over a dead body in the basement of the motherhouse late one night.
The woman is dressed like a nun, but no one knows her. The police are called and begin their investigation, but Sister Inez, ever the busybody, insists that she and Kristen will solve the murder. Complicating everything is Kristen’s attraction to the young detective assigned to the case. Their investigation is harmless enough until Kristen gets a threatening letter from the murderer telling her to stop, and she begins to worry for her life. Was it another nun in the motherhouse who committed the crime? Will they solve the murder? Will her infatuation for the detective ruin her vocation? Kristen will solve three cases in this first book of the Who Nun It? Mystery Series.
About Susan Mattern:Susan Mattern spent six years as a nun in the late 1960s in St. Louis, and this has formed the background material for the new Who Nun It? Mystery Series. A classical musician for most of her life, since retirement, Susan has published two ebooks. The first, Out of the Lion’s Den, won the Writer’s Digest Grand Prize last year. The second book, Poverty, Chastity, and Disobedience, is a memoir about her six years in a Catholic convent.
About Giving Up the Ghost: Samantha Rose, a New York Times best-selling ghostwriter steps out of the shadows to unravel the mystery surrounding her mother’s suicide.
What begins as a solitary journey of grief shifts form when her mother emerges from the darkness beyond to reconcile her irreversible choice. Raw, resilient, and with surprising humor, Giving Up the Ghost explores the layered complexity of mental health, the love between mothers and daughters and how, in the aftermath of inconceivable loss, we can release our inner ghosts and write a new story for ourselves.
What begins as a solitary journey of grief shifts form when her mother emerges from the darkness beyond to reconcile her irreversible choice. Raw, resilient, and with surprising humor, Giving Up the Ghost explores the layered complexity of mental health, the love between mothers and daughters and how, in the aftermath of inconceivable loss, we can release our inner ghosts and write a new story for ourselves.
About Samantha Rose:Samantha Rose is an Emmy-award winning television writer and author of The Package My (not-so) Glamorous Transition from Single Gal to Instant Mom that premiered on the San Francisco Chronicle Bestseller List. Additionally, she’s a New York Times and internationally bestselling ghostwriter who collaborates with celebrities, experts, entrepreneurs and industry leaders who represent a wide category of titles, including some that have been selected as Reese’s Book Club Picks and excerpted in the WSJ, Time.com and Harper’s Bazaar. She is the principal of YellowSkyMedia, a boutique editorial agency in Petaluma, California, where she lives with her son.
About Foghorn: The Nearly True Story of a Small Publishing Empire:The heyday of small press publishing in San Francisco lives again!
This is the never-before-told story of a unique time in San Francisco as well as in book industry history, when Bay Area small presses—armed with arrogance and personal computers—took the publishing field. At Foghorn Press, Vicki Morgan was an ambitious woman publisher, young and brash, coming-of-age while quixotically building a book publishing company from scratch with her eccentric brother to help.
As part of their optimistic Morgan heritage, the siblings strive to grow Foghorn Press with no capital, 100-hour work weeks, cheap beer, irrepressible belly laughs, and no book publishing experience. They assemble a cast of preposterous authors and resistant staff while surviving a drunken ex-husband, a con artist, calculating distributors, a fleet of good ol’ boys, terrible cash flow, and their own differing aspirations. Books are brought to market and miraculously sell from their offices in the Boiler Room. Foghorn is soon a resounding success with sales, media, acclaim. But in the end, there are costs, to relationships, to family, and maybe even to the truth.
About Vicki DeArmon:Vicki DeArmon has been in the book industry for forty years as a respected publisher, bookseller, and innovator. She started her San Francisco publishing company Foghorn Press with a small advance on her credit card when she was twenty-five, growing it to a $2 million enterprise before selling it fourteen years later. She worked as the marketing and events director at Copperfield’s Books for eight years and as consultant to California’s independent bookstores. She’s also a writer whose short stories and essays have won awards and appeared online and in print. Vicki is one of the founders of Sibylline Press and serves as its publisher. She lives in California.
