October 20 Guests

ANARA GUARD
Anara studied writing at the Urban Gateways Young Writers Workshop of Chicago, the Idyllwild School of Music and the Arts, and the Bread Loaf Writers Conference in fiction. She attended Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, and Simmons College Graduate School of Library and Information Science in Boston. The Sound of One Body is her first collection of fiction. Her poetry has been published in Typog, Touch II and Hika: A journal of the arts, sciences and humanities.  She has published nonfiction on a variety of subjects, including: Guidelines for Developing Educational Materials to Address Children Unattended in Vehicles (2008);  “Heat-related deaths to children in parked cars: An analysis of 171 fatalities—US, 1995-2002.” (2005);  Web-based screening and brief intervention for the spectrum of alcohol problems (2004); Violence and teen pregnancy (1997); and Subject headings for fiction (1991).  Anara lives in Boston and Sacramento.

Her fiction in the The Sound of One Body is characterized by quiet moments that explore the relationships between people: one’s self and one’s spouse, one’s self and one’s friend- ultimately, the self and the stranger. In clear, unaffected prose, she details the relationships between her believable but faceless characters, showing how our connections with others can interfere with the perception we have of ourselves.

JENNIFER LINDSAY
Jennifer Lindsay is a two-time Emmy nominee. She worked at ABC-TV’s San Francisco affiliate for three years where she was senior producer and online journalist, leading to her graduate studies at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, where she earned her masters degree. Prior to being recruited by ABC, she was a pioneer in new media (or emerging media), translating television newscasts into an interactive format.

She was also a Peace Corps volunteer in Turkmenistan and later freelance news correspondent in the region; a reporter, producer and executive producer for the CBS affiliate in Fresno, California; an intern for CNN’s San Francisco bureau; published articles and editorials in countless magazines and newspapers, and was a college radio personality in Berkeley and Davis, California as well as Lund, Sweden, where she was an exchange student. She is also an accomplished singer, actor and performer.

She currently lives in the San Francisco Bay area where she has co-founded ResumeMastery.com , a resume-writing company which partners with small to mid-size recruiting firms and consults with individuals. Jennifer now provides strategic counsel on social media to organizations of all kinds – committed to helping her clients achieve maximum benefit from their social media investment. She is also a prominent speaker at conferences and events, as well as at organizational and educational gatherings, affirming her personal commitment to empower through knowledge.