Interested in Speaking?
Are you interested in speaking at one of our monthly Coastal Dunes CWC meetings? We are always looking for new speakers. Here is more information for you, including topics, our members, location, and venue details.
Speaking topics:
-We are the Coastal Dunes Branch of the California Writers Club, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Our mission is to educate writers of all levels of expertise in the craft of writing and the marketing of their work. Our branch’s focus is Practicing the Craft of Writing.
-Our attendees are looking for information and inspiration from our speakers; they want to learn something that will help their writing, and be inspired to keep going.
-Our author-speakers usually talk about a specific topic related to their books or genre, and/or their “writing journey” that led to the development and publishing of their book(s). In addition, we’d appreciate it if your presentation includes some lessons learned from your own experience that will help our members practice their craft of writing. To get an idea of the range of topics from our speakers, visit the Event Calendar page of our website: Event Calendar
About our members:
-For our meetings, we have anywhere from 20 to 25 people attend in-person.
-Our members and attendees span all ages and genres (fiction, short story, memoir, fantasy, Young Adult, children’s, poetry, history, essay, some humor, other nonfiction.) We have published four anthologies of our members’ work, and one more is in progress.
-About half our members are published authors and half are aspiring.
-We have 40+ paid members, and 170 people on our emailing list for our meeting announcements. We have a mix of paid members and non-members at our meetings.
-People who attend our meetings live in the northern part of Santa Barbara County, or in San Luis Obispo County (Lompoc on the south, all the way up to Paso Robles on the north.) Nipomo is situated in the middle, so that’s where we are headquartered.
Venue details:
We meet at the Nipomo Public Library the first Saturday of each month (unless a holiday weekend, then the 2nd Saturday). The address is: Nipomo Library, 918 West Tefft Street, Nipomo, CA. Our meetings are open to the public, and admission is free.
The meeting room has a “smart” flat-screen TV, and we have microphones. If you are using slides, we request that you bring a laptop with you for library presentations.
Times:
10:00 – 10:30: Check-in and networking
10:30-10:45: CWC Business and Announcements
10:45 – 12:15: Featured speaker – you!
12:15 noon – 12:45: Q&A, Book signing if appropriate
Honoraria/Fees:
We don’t have a lot of money in our Treasury because we are a non-profit, but if you plan on speaking in person. we could certainly reimburse you for mileage from wherever you live locally – to Nipomo – at the current mileage rate.
Also, you can sell your books after our meetings at our lunch venue (not at the library, though). Our attendees usually buy a fair number of books from our presenter authors! If you’re participating via Zoom, you can promote your books or website in Chat, and we email out the recorded Zoom session to attendees after the meeting, so you have that promotional opportunity.
How to Contact:
Go to our Contact page and put “Speaker Inquiry” in the Subject line of the form. Our Program Committee will take it from there. Please note that our Program Committee books our speakers several months in advance.