Therese Francis, PhD, an NWU member from New Mexico, led an informative and timely session, Taxes for Writers, on January 7 in San Francisco. NWU’s Northern California Chapter and the Mechanics’ Institute Library and Chess Room co-sponsored the workshop. A writer, publisher and accountant, Francis kicked off the current tax season with the lunchtime event […]
Archives for February 2016
Reading and Feeding Writers
“You’re here to help get writers read, the NWU’s here to help get writers fed.”~ NWU member September Williams Hundreds of writers, editors, and publishers met in the city for the 13th annual San Francisco Writers Conference, February 11-15. New and established writers attended workshops with well-known authors, learned about publishing options, speed-dated with agents, […]
Global Protests Against Trans Pacific Partnership
More than three-dozen activists gathered outside the New Zealand Consulate in Midtown Manhattan as part of worldwide protests February 4 following the signing of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal in Auckland, New Zealand. It is the largest trade agreement ever attempted. The treaty, negotiated in secret, gives multinational corporations the right to gut […]
Signatures Qualify Sanders for NY Ballot
A presidential candidate must have 5,000 signatures to qualify for the Democratic primary ballot in New York. Unpaid volunteers for Bernie Sanders in New York State collected 85,000 signatures. On the steps of New York City Hall, about 80 Sanders volunteers stood in drizzling rain February 3 to celebrate their achievement in front of 26 […]
HELP THOSE HURTING IN FLINT
An environmental crisis rages in Flint, Michigan. The buck stops with Governor Rick Snyder (R), who plunged the economically depressed city into a federal state of emergency after switching its water source from Lake Huron to the less expensive, but polluted Flint River. The city’s population is largely black and also poor, since the downsizing […]
TAKE AUTHORS SURVEY, BOOST NWU
What is the easiest way to support your union? Completing an Authors Coalition survey. Each response can generate the same income for the NWU as gaining one new member. In 2015, your participation helped us accrue nearly $160,000 in non-title specific royalty payments. This amount is directly linked to the number of completed surveys. However, […]
POTENTIAL BLOW TO UNIONISM
In June, the Supreme Court will make an important decision regarding unionism when it rules on Friedrichs vs. the California Teachers Association. The case stands to reverse a 40-year precedent established in the 1977 case of Abood vs. the Detroit Board of Education. That ruling established public-sector unions’ right to collect “fair-share fees” from all […]
ROBERT ALTMAN: IN THE AMERICAN GRAIN
In July 2010, I pitched a book idea: a critical examination of film director Robert Altman’s work to Reaktion Books of London. Why Reaktion? Why Altman? Reaktion publishes a Critical Lives series, which deals with cultural figures. I was interested in writing about film, so I drew up a short list of directors whose work […]
SOME THEFT IS LEGAL
Members have told us that they’ve pitched an idea for an article, and a similar article turned up under someone else’s name. They say they wrote books about teenage vampires or nerdy supervillains, and then watched other people make millions from their plot lines. They think that copyright law should protect them. In most cases, […]
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