Author's Spotlight

“Story is My Life” from Bobbie Kinkead

Our long-standing tradition of giving a member the mic before our keynote speaker helps us get to know what our colleagues are working on. Bobbie has the spotlight January 15 at 1:30 before speaker Ericka McIntyre.?Get tickets at CWC Berkeley website.

Bobbie has always created stories

Bobbie Kinkead’s father had a pile of sand delivered to their Colorado Springs backyard, which soon became her childhood village with characters, roads, tunnels, trees, houses, and animals. Fountain Creek was the next best place for stories, and she spent time there checking on the fairies, the frogs, and snakes. She’d meet the spirited folk playing in the warm fields, hiding, or swinging across the water on a mental cable hung by the men who’d built the railroads to Cripple Creek for the GOLD. With friends to find turquoise, Bobbie crisscrossed over dunes left by the smelting. The best place to make up stories was sitting on a swing in the garden while rocking back and forth on warm Colorado nights. In junior high, Bobbie read every fairytale book and female biography she could. She drew her first fairy illustration of a battle in the cottonwoods by the creek. During high school, Bobbie read the classics. With her family, Bobbie traveled all over Colorado on the back roads to fish and visit ghost towns to learn the secret mysteries of silver and gold mining.

To relax and visit her parents on trains traveling through the desert and dramatic mountains of Colorado, Bobbie invented stories. She completed the Storytelling Program at Dominican University in San Rafael and took classes with Stagebridge in Oakland. She hosted the Tale Spinner Swap in Orinda and was a publicist for the Bay Area Storytelling Festival. When an opportunity came for Bobbie to study and tell folktales and myths at the San Francisco Asian Art Museum, she created How Dragons Shaped China, Tiger’s Saga, Vishnu’s Myths, and Sita’s Story, considering this arrival her “Doctorate in Storytelling.” She published stories in several anthologies and on Wattpad, started a lively YouTube channel, several blogs and websites, and a publishing company, As Is Productions, where she published two books, Rhyonna’s Fright and Damsels Overcome: Feminist Empowerment. All the while she continued to draw and paint profusely, show, and sell her artworks and prints, and teaching drawing.

“Story is my life—from my early years fishing and haunting the gold museums in my Colorado, to back woods traveled in Alaska, and then nesting in the richness of diversity in the Bay Area of California. As roads crisscross so does my ART! STORYTELLING! WRITING! Today I use these three skills to compose stories.”

Bobbie Kinkead says, “Damsels are beings who others think are weaker, servants, or to save,” she says. In her latest book, twenty-one folktales show the values and wisdom that damsels use to overcome obstacles and opposition, using skills that can empower everyone. Each story is narrated by the damsel herself."

The Most Important Advice for Writers

We asked Bobbie, What’s the most important piece of writing advice that you could give to other writers? She says,

“Stick with what you want to say and how you write. I am a verbal storyteller and Damsels Overcome is confronting my loss of my verbal narrative. Through the folktales in the book, I solved my problem of not reading out loud to a group or standing and speaking, which caused me to panic and sometimes faint.”

She added one more pivotal story to Damsels Overcome, called Silver Hands, about a damsel with impaired hands (capabilities), and is releasing a new edition this year. She says, “My thanks to all my coteries who bought the first edition and I will try to send the new addendum.”

Bobbie’s CWC Story

“Since 1982 I have been a member of CWC, first going to a conference at Mills College, and later, one at Asilomar. I join the Pleasant Hill CWC because they had lunches and my SCBWI friends belong. This group had many members and special workshops by female writers. Later, I joined the Tri-Valley CWC because one of my best friends Sue Tasker started the group. They had lunches with the membership—again, mostly SCBWI members or retired scientists who wrote interesting memoirs and novels. Mark Coker was often the special guest, talking about his start of Smashwords. After Sue died suddenly, which was tragic to me, I decided to check on the Berkeley CWC group. Early in ’90 the membership was largely male professors with their college vernacular—a bit dry for someone writing in eighth grade language! I ventured back to Berkeley CWC about 5 years ago and change had happened—female writers/authors had pierced the group; I stayed and met many excellent male and female writers/authors/poets.”

Connect with Bobbie

She invites fellow members to share news in her newsletter Eventing. She’d also love to give and receive book reviews, or have lunch just to talk! Connect with Bobbie on LinkedIn, Goodreads, Wattpad, or www.BobbieKinkead.com.

Compiled by Kristen Caven

Get tickets for Sunday 15 at CWC Berkeley website.