SDWI

San Diego Writers, Ink is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. We offer classes, groups, workshops, readings and other literary events at The Ink Spot and other locations throughout San Diego County.

Our Mission:

San Diego Writers, Ink, nurtures writers and fosters a literary community by

• Serving as a hub for the literary community
• Promoting literature
• Providing artistic development for writers at all levels, and
  
• Facilitating artistic collaboration

You can read our San Diego Writers Ink Annual Report 2011 and 2012 for more detailed information.

Our Staff:

Programs Director: Kristen Fogle
Media, Marketing and Communications Coordinator: Kim Keeline

Publications Associate: Anthony Bonds

Our Board Officers:

President: Drusilla Campbell

Vice President: Sandra Younger
Treasurer: Justin Salas
Secretaries (co): Grant Barrett & Dean Nelson

Board Members:

Kathryn Fehrman

Jim Ruland

Patrick Stewart
Ellen Yaffa

Advisory Board Members:

Sue Diaz
Olga Garcia
Michael Steven Gregory
Diane Malloy
Margo Miller
Steve Montgomery
Linda Ravden
Amy Wallen
Megan Webster

Staff bios:

Kristen Fogle, Programs Director 
Kristen Fogle is a freelance editor, writer, instructor, tutor, teaching artist, and theatrical performer/director. Over the last decade she has been the Editorial Director for three national college entertainment publications (Warning, ForUs, and CLIQ). She earned a BA in Communication Studies from California State University, Northridge and MA in Rhetoric and Writing Studies (Teaching emphasis) from San Diego State University. She also recently received a Teaching Artist training certification from Young Audiences San Diego. You can find her weekly theatre reviews at www.sdtheatrereviews.com.

Kim Keeline, Media, Marketing and Communications Coordinator
Kim Keeline is a freelance writer and publicist who has been working in marketing and social media for several local arts nonprofits. She discovered her love of the field while she was teaching college composition and literature courses and she started pursuing it as she finished her Ph.D. in English Literature at the University of Southern California. She was awarded a 2012 STAR award from the SD Performing Arts League for marketing and event planning work with the San Diego Shakespeare Society. Her favorite recent freelance gig was as an editor for the second edition of the St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture where she not only edited and updated hundreds of articles but also wrote new articles on topics like Google, Twitter, and the film trilogy of the Lord of the Rings.  More info can be found at: www.keeline.com/portfolio.

Anthony Bonds, Publications Associate (Since November 2012)
Since 2008, Tony Bonds has worked as a book designer and layout artist with such local organizations as San Diego State University and the non-profit Los Bilingual Writers. He founded the Writers Collective at SDSU, an organization dedicated to publishing a yearly anthology of writing by MFA candidates in creative writing. In 2010, he co-founded the cooperative press Calypso Editions, where he currently serves as Creative Director. Calypso Editions’ books have been praised by the Times Literary Supplement and have appeared on The New Yorker’s Bookbench blog, to name a few highlights. Until earlier in 2012, Tony was the editor for Rainbow Publishers, a San Diego-based children’s book publisher. His role there was to generate new titles and usher each publication through the process of production, from approving the initial manuscript to proofing the final book.

 

Board Bios:

Drusilla Campbell – President
Drusilla Campbell was elected to the Board in September 2009 and chosen as President in July 2010. Before settling in San Diego, she lived and worked in Australia, London, Central America, California and Appalachia. After receiving her MA she worked for WAMU-FM, the NPR affiliate in Washington, DC where she was an on-air personality. She’s published more than sixteen novels including the best selling Blood Orange and, most recently, The Good Sister. Drusilla is the creator of NovelCram, two day boot camp for aspiring novelists. She frequently speaks at writing conferences and has taught classes in crafting the novel at UC Fullerton, University of California at San Diego, The Writing Center, The Writer’s Room and San Diego Writers, Ink. Drusilla is married to the poet and law professor, Art Campbell. They have two children, two rescued dogs and four horses. http://drusillacampbell.com/

Sandra Younger – Vice President
Sandra Millers Younger is a veteran journalist, a marketing and communication professional, and an emerging author. As founder and principal of Editorial Excellence, she writes and consults for colleges and universities, businesses, and nonprofits.

Sandra has written or edited hundreds of published articles for titles ranging from academic journals to seventeen magazine, and she regularly contributes as editor emerita to San Diego State University’s award-winning 360 magazine. With the help of SDWI critique-group colleagues, she recently completed her first book—a first-person, narrative nonfiction account of San Diego’s 2003 Cedar Fire, the biggest wildfire in California’s recorded history.

A native Southerner, Sandra is a Phi Beta Kappa journalism graduate of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She later risked frostbite to earn a master’s degree in magazine journalism at Syracuse University, where she studied on a Syracuse Graduate Fellowship.

Grant Barrett – Co-Secretary
Grant Barrett is co-host and co-producer of the nationally distributed public radio program A Way with Words, heard by more a quarter million people each week. The show was born and nurtured in San Diego, and is still produced and distributed here. Grant is also a dictionary editor specializing in slang and new words, author of the Oxford Dictionary of American Political Slang and the Official Dictionary of Unofficial English and contributor to many more, and he is an officer of the American Dialect Society, an academic organization founded in 1889 in devotion to the study of English. He lives in San Diego with his wife, also a linguist and dictionary editor, and their young son.

Dean Nelson – Co-Secretary
Dean Nelson is the founder and director of the journalism program at Point Loma Nazarene University. He writes occasionally for the New York Times, the Boston Globe, Christianity Today, Sojourners, and several other national publications. He has won several awards from the Society of Professional Journalists for his reporting, and has written or co-written 14 books, mostly on spirituality themes. Nelson is a frequent speaker at writing workshops and conducts retreats that focus on spiritual depth.

He has traveled throughout the world covering stories of human interest. Nelson also hosts the annual Writer’s Symposium By The Sea, where prominent writers come to discuss the craft of writing. Nelson has interviewed Amy Tan, Anne Lamott, Gay Talese, Anchee Min, Ray Bradbury, George Plimpton, Otis Chandler, Kathleen Norris, Donald Miller, Bill Moyers, Jim Wallis, Chitra Divakaruni, Joseph Wambaugh, James Fallows, Barbara Brown Taylor, Eugene Peterson, Philip Yancey, Michael Eric Dyson, Bill McKibben and dozens of others. Many of those interviews are viewable on the interviews tab of this site and on UCSD-TV’s website. They have been broadcast nationwide.

Nelson came to San Diego from Minneapolis, where he was working as a business writer. He has a Ph.D. in journalism from Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri at Columbia, and a bachelor’s degree in literature from MidAmerica Nazarene University in Kansas City. He grew up in Minnesota, is a die-hard hockey player and fan, is married to his college sweetheart, Marcia, and has two adult children, Blake and Vanessa. Visit his website to read more.

Kathryn Fehrman
Kathryn is a legal skills professor at California Western School of Law in San Diego. She was Deputy Director of the State of Michigan’s Department of Human Services, and served as Director of the Bay County Michigan Public Defender’s Office. She is an editorial board member of the Michigan Child Welfare Law Journal.

Before becoming a lawyer, Kathryn studied voice at New England Conservatory, theatre at the National Theater Institute and Hartman Theater Conservatory, and performed in theaters throughout the United States. Then after beginning her legal career in the US Navy JAG Corps, she moved to civil litigation and appeals, representing businesses in real estate, energy, and contract cases at Luce Forward (now McKenna Long) in San Diego. She continued Naval Reserve duties as a Military Magistrate, among other missions.

Following a move to Michigan to raise her remarkable daughter Martha, Kathryn continued to be set in her eclectic ways. She heard cases as a hearing referee for the Michigan Civil Rights Commission, worked as a prosecutor, taught as an adjunct faculty member, and became deeply involved in children’s law and policy. She served on many task forces and work groups of the Michigan Supreme Court. Before Governor Jennifer Granholm appointed her to the Michigan Department of Human Services, Kathryn was a member of two gubernatorial transition teams. She was also a member of the Governor’s Task Force on Children’s Justice and the Governor’s Finance Committee.

Kathryn writes academic and news articles, and poetry, music, and lyrics. Her publications and presentation topics worldwide include the international treatment of children, foster care, juvenile justice, human trafficking, veterans’ issues, and various aspects of the scholarship of teaching and learning.

Jim Ruland
Jim Ruland was stationed in San Diego in 1986 and when he left two years later, swore he wouldn’t be back. After attending Radford University in Radford, Virignia and Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona he returned to California. In 2004 he met his wife and she lured him back to San Diego for good. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including a NEA literature fellowship and a Bread Loaf scholarship. His work has recently appeared in Annalemma, Keyhole, Mississippi Review, New Delta Review, and the Normal School. He writes book reviews for the Los Angeles Times, interviews for Hobart, and a column for Razorcale. He is the author of the short story collection, Big Lonesome, and the host of the L.A.-based reading series Vermin on the Mount. http://www.vermin.blogs.com/

Patrick Stewart
Patrick is the Executive Director of Words Alive, a local nonprofit specializing in the development of literary enhancement programs for large education partners. Prior to this, Patrick has been the Producing Artistic Director for Sushi Performance & Visual Arts, the Executive Director for the Atlas Performing Arts Center in Washington, DC, and the Managing Director for the theatre and performance programs for the San Diego Center for Jewish Culture.

In addition to his managerial roles at nonprofit arts and culture organizations, Patrick has maintained a prolific career as a presenter, producer and director of performance and visual art. A specialist in new work and contemporary art, Patrick has led the presentation of regional and world premieres, as well as a rich history of presenting international artists and art work. Patrick has represented the Unite States through a shared cultural exchange program in Australia with the Australian Embassy, is a current committee member for Space 4 Art’s programs, sits on the board of directors of Rebuild Global, and works in close partnership with the region’s cultural community providing curating and creative consulting services. Patrick earned his bachelor’s degree in Philosophy from San Diego State University with distinction, and graduated from the Executive Non-Profit Management Program at Georgetown University’s School of Public Policy in Washington, DC.

Ellen Yaffa
Ellen Yaffa joined the SDWI Board in 2010, having become a regular at Thursday Writers, Dime Stories, and other SDWI activities. An enthusiastic champion of the organization and its mission, Ellen first got involved with SDWI as part of a New Year’s Resolution to explore creative writing as a welcome addition to the organizational writing she had done professionally for over 20 years. Ellen has worked at SAY San Diego since 1996, serving as Development Director since July 2009. Prior to her employment with SAY, Ellen was a communications consultant for school districts and nonprofit organizations. She has published parent handbooks and other materials that have been translated into Spanish and Somali, showing parents how to promote academic achievement. A community leader for quality public education, Ellen has served as campaign consultant to several school board candidates. She holds a BA from Tufts University and an MSW from San Diego State University.