Writers of Kern

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September Featured Speaker – Lisa-Behrens Smith

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Workshop Title: Pull It Out of Your Life – Overcoming Writer’s Block

Square-shaped event flyer for the Writers of Kern September 2025 meeting featuring speaker Lisa-Behrens Smith. All event details are listed in the main body text below.

When writer’s block freezes your pen, when your ideas flow like mud, when you can’t find the perfect words to start your best excuse for not writing, the answer isn’t in journaling or doodling or reworking a piece you’ve already discarded. It’s in your life. Period.

All writing–all good writing–reveals what it means to be human, and that means “you”. Your simplest musings about a stain on your table, a frustrated cry, or your worst burnt dinner can be the story you’ve been struggling to begin, the beginning of the book you’ve been meant to write. You just need to notice it. Then the writing “becomes”!

This presentation, from a California teacher and independent writer, can show anyone how to begin writing the pieces that present life in its most authentic way. Group participation and discussions will highlight the hour and leave all participants inspired as they learn how to pull those ideas out of their lives.

Lisa’s Bio:

Lisa-Behrens is a two-time award winner at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference and an active member of Writers of Kern.  She has just released her novella Mulberry Seeds, and the memoir of her college life at 40 in the dorms of Isla Vista, including selected fictional work, is in progress.

You can connect with Lisa here:

Website: https://lisa-b-smith.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lostiniv402/
Buy her book, Mulberry Seeds: https://a.co/d/bcFZf7z

Meeting on Saturday, September 20, 2025
Breakfast begins at 8:30 am
The general meeting begins at 9:15 am
Hodel’s at 5917 Knudsen Dr, Bakersfield

Registration for this past event is closed.

August Featured Speaker – Dan Bronson

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Workshop Title: This Writer’s Journey

Square-shaped event flyer for the Writers of Kern August 2025 meeting featuring speaker Dan Bronson. All event details are listed in the main body text below.

Good writers READ obsessively, compulsively, continuously.

Good writers LISTEN to the way people actually talk and to the way locale, education, social status, and personality shape their speech.

Good writers RESEARCH, losing themselves in basement libraries, immersing themselves in the backgrounds of their stories, visiting the settings of those stories and getting to know the people who live there.

Good writers learn to unlock their unconscious minds, escaping the world around them and living in a world elsewhere, the world of their stories.

This writer’s journey…from the written word to the screen image and back again.

The maxims Dan writes by:

1) Show, don’t tell.
2) Action is character.
3) Conflict is drama.
4) Make a virtue of necessity.

Dan’s Bio:

Dan has had many careers: Associate Professor of English at DePauw University, Senior Story Analyst at Universal, Associate Story Editor at Filmways, Executive Story Editor at Paramount, Writer/Producer of HBO’s acclaimed Ed Harris thriller The Last Innocent Man and NBC’s cult classic Death of a Cheerleader, author of the memoir Confessions of a Hollywood Nobody, and of the Jack Shannon mysteries Someone to Watch Over Me and Shout at the Devil, books that critics have compared to the novels of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett.

Dan also has a B.A. in English, Pomona College. M.A., Ph.d. in English and American Lit, Princeton University. Tenured Associate Professor of English, DePauw University. Senior Story Analyst, Universal Pictures. Associate Story Editor, Filmways Pictures. Executive Story Editor, Paramount Pictures. Independent Writer-Producer at the major networks and studios. Memoirist. Novelist.

You can connect with Dan here:

Website: https://dan-bronson.com
Website: https://hollywood-nobody.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100006971839074

Meeting on Saturday, August 16, 2025
Breakfast begins at 8:30 am
The general meeting begins at 9:15 am
Hodel’s at 5917 Knudsen Dr, Bakersfield

Registration for this past event is closed.

Fall Writing Contest

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The Fall Writing Contest is upon us!  This year’s prompt is Joy and Sorrow.  You may write about either one or both.  

Word count is up to 1,200. Fiction or nonfiction. Please use a Word document with no names or other identifying marks. Use Times New Roman, 12pt font, double-spaced, and use the attachment function to send your submission. 

Submissions will be blind judged on the setting, originality, style (including grammar and spelling), voice, character development, and storyline. The rubrics that Writers of Kern uses to judge the Fall Writing Contest can be found on our Rubrics page.

Submissions will be accepted October 1, 2024 through October 31, 2024. Submissions received before or after those dates will not be accepted.  

Prizes are $200 first place, $100 second place and $50 third place.

Prizes, if applicable, will be awarded at the December meeting

The Ready-Set-Go of Open Mic Mondays

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Do you want to become more involved with Writers of Kern and your fellow writers? Want to find a welcoming place to read and share your work?  Beginning Monday, October 5th WOK members are invited to participate in Open Mic Mondays over Zoom.

Open Mics offer a friendly environment of like-minded people for you to share your work with, but you are also welcome to just come and listen to others read.

You may be nervous about reading your work. You may even be thinking, Hey, I’m a writer, not a performer! Daunting or not, public speaking is an important skill for a successful writer. You want to be ready when your award-winning poems and short stories are published or your break-through novel or screenplay is optioned for a film.

So plan ahead for Open Mic Mondays with these steps:

  1. Choose your material. Search your files and find something that:
    • Represents you and your writing well
    • Lends itself to being read aloud
    • Can be read in the allotted time
  2. Take time to prepare your material.
    • Print out your selection. Double space. Use a 14pt. (or larger) font so you can see it easily. Number the pages, but do not staple them together.
    • Read through aloud two or three times. Notice where you stumble, and notice where you want to emphasize or change your inflection. Highlight or use a BOLD font  for those areas before you reprint the page.
    • Check to see if you need to polish anything in your piece.  Do you need to: add or delete a word or two? Rewrite a sentence for clarity?
  3. Rehearse.
    • Read aloud to yourself. Read aloud to your mirror. Read aloud to your pet. Read aloud to another person.
    • Record yourself reading aloud.
    • Check your timing and cut where necessary.
  4. Show up on the first Monday of the month for Open Mic.
    • Be sure to Register for the event each month.
    • The flip side of nervousness is excitement. Feel the nervousness, but transform it into the energy you put into your reading.
    • Be proud of yourself for taking this step in moving your writing career forward.

Writers of Kern is dedicated to assisting writers of all levels in meeting their writing goals, and we’re proud offer Open Mic Mondays for our members.   You can go directly to the Eventbrite site to register by clicking HERE. You must register to attend.

We hope to see you there—as a reader or as part of the welcoming audience.

If you have further questions, contact us by email at events@writersofkern.com.

Meet a Member | Rossely Harman

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An Interview with Rossely Harman by Natalia Corres

Depending on the time and place that you meet Rossely Harman, you might know her as a Criminal Lawyer or a Playwright or an Actress or an Author or a Screenwriter or as a Dominican-American  or even as a Mother-to-be.  She is all of these, and I suspect  there are even more roles she manages in her daily life. She is also an active member of Writers of Kern!

Rossely always loved acting and writing as she was growing up. Her undergraduate degree was in English Literature as she read and absorbed the basic tools for every good writer; learning from the works done by other good and great writers. She went on to a certification program at UCLA for Screenwriting and from there she immersed herself in the Law at Northwestern University.

The program at Northwestern was grueling – and when asked what wisdom she might impart to her younger self if she could go back in time, her answer was this: “Don’t forget that your first love is acting and writing – MAKE the time to do these things! Don’t stifle your creative side.”

She went on to become a criminal lawyer, which she still practices today. And she eventually made the time to pursue her first love with a passion! Her play “The Dark Creature” was voted the best showcased at the “Hear Her Call Caribbean- American Women’s Theater Festival” in New York this past March. She also won the Audience Choice award at that festival.  You can see “The Dark Creature” on Youtube by clicking here and see her introduction video here.

Rossely describes herself as a writer of dark themes with strong elements of horror, yet one of her most exciting accomplishments was a play about Pancho Barnes (an aviatrix in history), which was a comedy. She admits she was slightly intimidated to attempt comedy, and it was definitely out of her comfort zone, but the results were thrilling for her. The elation she experienced from that “leap into the unknown” was amazing as she witnessed the performance and experienced the laughter and the audience’s response to her work. She was exhilarated. She hopes to have all of her plays available online for all to see and experience soon.

Recently she has been working on filming a short that she wrote and is acting in. She is also currently working on two feature length films and a pilot for a television series. All this and still working as a criminal lawyer and due to have her first child in October.

The films have been incubating in her mind for years. One explores the dynamic of racism in the Caribbean, an area where many races were thrown together – many involuntarily; the other film is a children’s story meant to be comedic and animated. The television pilot deals with human trafficking, is based on a real life story and will have her signature horror elements incorporated into the story line. Her projects usually include Latina women or children, challenging us to see these people in a different light, and to understand the circumstances they are in and have been in – the events that make them who they are – to see that they survive tragedy and emerge empowered. 

When asked about how her career as a lawyer has affected her career as a writer, she answered “I think it has made me a smarter writer, a more logical storyteller. Yes, I have been inspired by some of the situations I am exposed to as a lawyer, and also some of the people I see. Study and analysis is part of what I do in both areas of my life – practicing the law or creating a story. “

What else does Rossely want us to know about her?

She says she is a passionate person. She loves people and collaborating with others excites her, as does being a part of a group (like Writers of Kern) that is creative, too! She is both energized and exhausted when writing, and knows that there is a lot of failure in trying new things, but loads to learn that way, too. And when you have a lot to say to the world, you take the risks, make the leaps, and sometimes you get to the thrilling part of seeing your work interpreted and performed by people who understand it differently, giving it new layers of meaning.

Writers of Kern is happy to know you! And we are cheering you in the wings, Rossely!