Cooking Up Stories

by Liz Hickok

  Lianne Card has been a writer since childhood. Her enjoyment of food experiences dates from family outings in the middle of the night to a Chinese restaurant in her birth city, Winnipeg, Canada, with all its rich multicultural offerings. Lianne now lives in Sunnyvale, where hundreds of restaurants beckon within a five-mile radius. She and her husband Doug continue to explore many international cuisines. Lianne has published poems in multiple anthologies as well as articles and reviews for many newsletters.

  Patricia Collins holds a B.A. in philosophy and mathematics from Dickinson College and an M.S. in electrical engineering from Stanford University. She studied in the MFA program in creative nonfiction at San Jose State University. She has retired from a career in high-tech research and software engineering and management teaching and research at Carnegie Mellon University. She is most prolific in researching and writing topical and non-technical academic essays. She is an accomplished regional cuisine cook and designed and created her California native plants gardens.

  Ann Davison grew up on a homestead farm in rural Kentucky where she learned gardening techniques, food preparations and preserving. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in music from the University of Louisville, Kentucky and a Master’s of Education from the University of Minnesota. She spent six years in the classroom teaching elementary education in Atlanta, Georgia. While teaching, she received the Golden Carrot award for creatively introducing food and cooking in her classroom. She also received a Namaste grant to create a bilingual cookbook with her students. Currently she is a food blogger and writes about the gluten free and vegan lifestyle. Her blog is: Unmeasured Inspiration. She is married with two young boys and enjoys spending time traveling and cooking with them.

  Heather Fong is currently an information technology major at University of California, Irvine, though she was born and raised in the Bay Area. She is always fascinated by food, whether it be reading about the memories and traditions that surround a culturally significant dish, or a new flavor combination to try in the kitchen. Her current focus is on her blog, Delicious Not Gorgeous, where she writes about dessert and occasionally vegetables.

  Elizabeth Forsyth currently lives in London with her fiancé and a neglected house plant. Previously a bookstore events and marketing manager, she now is exploring the United Kingdom and focusing on her writing projects. She has been published in A Year in Ink: Volume 8, and has won an award from the SDSU Writer’s Conference for a novel excerpt. In her free time, she enjoys baking, traveling, and procrastinating.

  Nancy LaRonda Johnson has written short stories, poetry and personal journals most of her life, and received her first writing award in elementary school for a psychological thriller short story. Her first book, Anticipation of the Penitent, is a Christian novel about a serial killer and his mother. Prior to being published, it reached the finals in the 2012 San Francisco Writer’s Conference Indie Publishing Contest, and in 2014, became a Readers’ Favorite Novel Contest winner. Her second publication, Salted With Fire, a book of short stories and poetry, also achieved high acclaim. She is working on several projects, including a continuing story to her first novel and a psychological thriller/mystery. A probation officer by day, writing books and stories about redemption moves her most, along with providing eye-opening takes on controversial human circumstances. She has a B.A. in Sociology from University of California, Santa Cruz and a law degree from the University of San Francisco School of Law. Learn more about Nancy’s other publications and awards by visiting her website at nancylarondajohnson.com.

  Pooja Kale was born and raised in Bombay (now Mumbai) of the 90s. She is a content writer with a Master’s degree in Psychology. Her writing usually explores interpersonal relationships which, she believes, bridges the distance between her academic training and chosen career.

  Gauri Khanolkar likes writing short stories and poems, and enjoys reading fiction, memoir and poetry. She recently earned a doctorate in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Southern California and lives and works in Sunnyvale.

  Joyce Kiefer is writer, former Stanford administrator and event planner, and active volunteer in the communities where she has worked and lived her life. She is a life-long Bay Area resident. Joyce has written promotional material, poetry, non-fiction, columns, and is trying her hand at short fiction. She won the first place poetry prize in 2003, awarded by the Red Wheelbarrow Literary Magazine and has had poetry published in the award-wining collections Cradle Songs: An Anthology of Poems on Motherhood, and Lavandaria, A Mixed Load on Women, Wash an Word. Joyce has had feature pieces published in the San Jose Mercury News and was a regular contributor to The Columnists, an online publication by a group of newspaper writers. She contributes travel pieces to the online publication Bay Area Family Travel. Her memoir piece appeared in By the Bay, the 2015 BALE publication. Joyce enjoys writing memoir, travel experience, and wry commentary on the small things in life that turn out to be bigger than we think. She is currently writing about her ongoing experience as the wife of a cancer patient. Read her blog: Life in the Pursuit.

  Susan Lange was born in Pasadena but lived many places growing up, including six years in Lima, Peru. She finished high school in Portland, graduated from Stanford, married an engineer, and was a Den Mother when her two sons were Cub Scouts. She learned accounting in middle age, dabbled in the workforce, enjoys tutoring literacy and translating casual Spanish as a volunteer. Susan has always liked to write, but this is her first published piece, except for a couple of letters in the San Jose Mercury News. She's totally enjoying the Memoir-writing class at the Cupertino Senior Center (the story here is abridged from "Domestic Arts") and a casual neighborhood writing group in Sunnyvale. She learned to play the trumpet at 50, and likes furry, purry cats and good jokes.

  Allen R. Rosenberg’s interest in storytelling began when he swapped tall tales and ripping yarns with a friend on a cross-country road trip from San Francisco to Western New York. It was that experience that convinced him he was destined to write stories. He began by writing screenplays, but when Hollywood strung him along to no avail he put his pen down and sought honest employment. Soon after, a good friend and published author encouraged Rosenberg to try his hand at novel writing. Eighteen months later, Flower City Blues was launched and Rosenberg hasn’t done an honest day's work since. Rosenberg's inventive vision can be experienced in the following novels: Flower City Blues, The Calendar Killings, Lethal Devices, and The Raphael Caper. Rosenberg's recent offering, Sneaky Pete's, is a short story of suspense, crime, and cooking. When asked to describe his creative process, Rosenberg claims that good procrastination skills are the key to good authoring. He can be found most days either writing or catnapping at his computer to avoid the appeal of social media. Rosenberg lives in Northern California in the heart of Silicon Valley and is married to the luckiest woman alive.

  Cindy Sakihara is relatively new to writing and has enjoyed experimenting with story ideas and styles on a fanfiction website under the penname, fanofthisfiction. As a medical professional, wife, and mother, writing has been an enjoyable way to explore her creative side and indulge her playful imagination. While writing on a story series (Naruto), she recognized that feedback is a valuable asset that can help all writers to improve, and in 2015 she founded the Fanfiction Review Movement (FRM), whereby members agree to leave positive, constructive criticism on the stories they read. Currently the FRM includes pledges from members in over 13 countries and has continued to steadily grow. In the future, she aspires to finish an ongoing multi-chaptered story she started on her fanfiction site and to continue to challenge herself by trying out new genres and story plots. She is honored to be included in the anthology and looks forward to continue sharing stories with the public.

  Nisha Malani was born in India, grew up in Thailand, and now lives in Sunnyvale, California. In 2011, her passion for cooking and writing made her publish a food blog Spusht, where she shares her food stories, delicious recipes and useful tips. After the birth of her twi
n babies, she launched Kesh Alish, a lifestyle blog focusing on motherhood and her children. She loves writing poetry in her leisure time.

  Lisa Scott is a Bay Area native and graduate of San Jose State University. She has been writing stories since she was in first grade, but she especially enjoys writing non-fiction and personal narratives. Ms. Scott credits her junior high teacher Mr. Glaeseman for inspiring her to write as a means of self-expression. Her first published pieces appeared in Habibi, a belly dancing periodical. This busy grandmother likes to cook and share food – naturally – and is currently working on a cookie cookbook. When not writing, Ms. Scott also enjoys biking, reading, quilting, and knitting. She knows the way to a person’s heart is through the stomach!

  Pam Wong writes about Chinese immigrant experiences using historical events as backdrops. Coming of age in San Francisco and Palo Alto when realtors still turned away prospective Chinese buyers and when less than 3% of the faces in her graduating high school class looked Asian, Pam strives to preserve stories about the Chinese historical experience for future generations. She provides narratives that enrich history and help us understand that we stand on the shoulders of our predecessors.

  Green comes from a childhood memory of a comfort food relished during hard times. Pam is finalizing a self-published biography about a granduncle who left China as a poor farmer and made a fortune in Australia. She has written about her father’s experience designing wooden gliders for a crucial, strategic Army project in WWII and is investigating her in-laws’ immigration files for future narratives. Bird watching and hiking provide Pam with meditative counterpoints for writing. Pam lives on the Peninsula and participates in monthly genealogical writers’ group evaluations.

  Krithika Yegneswaran lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. She works for the Sunnyvale Public Library. She has a Master’s Degree in English Literature from University of Madras, India. She loves British and Indian Literature. In British Literature, she loves the works of William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, and the poetry of Keats. Among Indian writers, her favorite writer is Rabindranath Tagore. She likes writing articles, short stories and poems. Lately, she has taken up to writing Haikus, as she finds it very interesting and challenging to create and convey within a format. She has translated from Tamil to English, Short Stories for Children penned by the renowned Tamil writer/poetess, NCERT Award winner, Ms. Mathioli Saraswathy. These have been published in India. She has always adored reading books and been a very proficient writer since very early in her childhood. As she has been busy as a wife, supporting her husband's demanding career as a Silicon Valley techie, and as a mother, raising her beautiful daughter, she has not been able to pursue writing aggressively. But whenever she can, she loves to put pen to paper and let her heart and mind take flight!