The Berkeley Branch of the California Writers Club is excited to welcome Carole Stivers for our September Speaker Series event!
When scientist Carole Stivers began writing science fiction, she dreamed of readers she’d never met, enjoying and discussing her work. But she also dreamed of acceptance in “literary circles.” She secured an agent unfamiliar with sci-fi who saw cross-over potential for her debut novel, The Mother Code. What happened next was a crash course in the impact of genre classification on book marketing.
Carole will tell you what she wished she had known before embarking on the ever-shifting seas of literary genre, and offer tips on how you might keep your own head above water when “writing outside the lines.”
About Carole Stivers
Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Carole Stivers received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She went on to post-doctoral work at Stanford University before launching a 30-year career in medical diagnostics.
She now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she’s combined her love of writing and her fascination with the possibilities of science to create science fiction.
Her debut novel, The Mother Code, was launched in 2020 to rave reviews, including a Publishers Weekly starred review and a nomination for the 2020 Goodreads Choice Award in Science Fiction. It was sold to 15 foreign publishers, and the U.S. paperback was released in 2021.