Keynote Speaker Jack Ohman will challenge attendees with his interpretation of “At Wit’s End.” Photo courtesy of California Writers club of Sacramento

 

SACRAMENTO REGION, CA (MPG) - Seven awardees will be recognized at the “100 Years of Writing Excellence in Sacramento” Gala on Oct. 18, when the California Writers Club Sacramento hits its century mark and celebrates at North Ridge Country Club in Fair Oaks.

The award recipients are 916 Ink, Capital Storytelling, Jan Haag, Ginger Rutland, Sacramento Poetry Center, Sacramento Press Club and Under the Gum Tree.

While recognizing that literary service abounds in our area, a Blue Ribbon Panel identified the above for nurturing the development of talent and appreciation for the written word and contributing to a larger purpose influencing Sacramento’s literary reach in children and adults.

The Oct. 18 Centennial will bring writers, reporters and historians together to learn about early writing and publishing in Sacramento. Partners and friends include the Crocker Art Museum, the California State Library, the Center for Sacramento History and the Sacramento Public Library

Keynote speaker and Pulitzer Prize winner Jack Ohman will talk about “At Wit’s End.”

A star-studded line-up featuring Rich Ehisen of Capitol Weekly, literary agent Sandra Proudman, Sacramento journalist at local CBS affiliate Alison Linton, Pushcart Prize nominee Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas, cultural historian Maryellen Burns and documentary filmmaker Al González will entertain. 

Kiyo Sato, 102 and the William Saroyan International Writing Award winner for “Dandelion through the Crack” (renamed “Kiyo’s Story”) will attend. Her book is on display at the Smithsonian Institute. Attendees can bring along a copy of her book if they want an autograph. 

Rare books from early California Writers Club members will be displayed at the gala. Many books were made into movies or popular TV series. One movie was nominated for an Academy Award. Also displayed will be a 1913 woodcut of the club logo designed by University of California, Berkeley professor Perham Nahl, nephew of Charles Christian Nahl, whose work hangs in the Crocker Art Museum. 

The celebration includes a buffet, the Jazz Band “Syncopating Sea-Monkeys” of River City High School, and a no-host bar, including a Jack London “Glass in Hand.”  

The California Writers Club is a nonprofit organization. For information on the event, buying tickets or sponsoring this literary event, visit online sacramentowriters.org.

Kiyo Sato, 102 and the William Saroyan International Writing Award winner for “Dandelion through the Crack” (renamed “Kiyo’s Story”) will be at the gala. Sato’s book is on display at the Smithsonian Institute. Bring along a copy of her book if you desire an autograph. (Books will not be for sale at the event.) Photo courtesy of California Writers club of Sacramento

2025 Greater Sacramento Literary Awardees

916 Ink is a creative writing and literacy nonprofit organization since 2010 that provides workshops and tutoring to transform youth into strong readers, confident communicators and published authors. Programs increase literacy skills, improve vocabulary, teach empathy, positively impact social and emotional learning, and expand communication skills. Partnerships are with school sites and community groups serving marginalized students, including economically-disadvantaged, system-impacted youth and English Language Learners. 916 Ink has transformed more than 6,000 youth into authors in 300-plus professionally published anthologies.

Capital Storytelling is an arts education organization in Sacramento that empowers individuals to share their personal stories and, in doing so, to foster connection, empathy and compassion across race, gender, religion, abilities, orientation and political affiliations. This is accomplished through classes and workshops and special programs, including an Immigrant Storytelling Program, which empowers first- and second-generation immigrants to share their stories, and a Story Ambassador Program, which trains leaders to lead storytelling workshops.

Jan Haag was a writing professor at Sacramento City College and journalism department chair, advising the student newspaper, literary journal and nonfiction magazine. Before that, she was a copy editor and feature writer for the Sacramento Bee, covered the capitol for United Press International and was editor of Sacramento Magazine. Haag has had many poems, essays and fiction published in journals and anthologies. Her poetry collection, “Companion Spirit,” is comprised of poems about her late husband. She is co-publisher of a Sacramento publishing company, River Rock Books. She publishes daily poems on her website (janishaag.com) and is working on a poetry collection and a novel set in Sacramento in the 1950s and 1970s. She hosts writing groups, including a monthly Writing as Healing group in Elk Grove.

Ginger Rutland spent 17 years as a reporter with KCRA TV in Sacramento and then with KRON TV in San Francisco as that station’s capitol bureau reporter. She earned a local Emmy at KRON for her documentary, “Showdown at Diablo,” about the controversy surrounding the nuclear power plant’s building and commissioning at Diablo Canyon in San Luis Obispo County. Rutland wrote and produced a play, “When We Were Colored, A Mother’s Story,” adapted from her mother, Eva Rutland’s, memoir. The play is about a middle-class Black family’s journey from the segregated south before World War II to post-war California, through the Civil Rights era and Black Power Movement to the racially-blended families of today.

The Sacramento Poetry Center, founded in 1979, offers readings, workshops, writers' conferences, publications and a lending library. “Landing Signals, released on Oct.26, 1986, was the first major anthology (print and audio) of Sacramento poets. The center’s annual writers’ conferences and Poetry Month celebrations have featured some of today’s leading poets, including Pulitzer Prize winners Gary Snyder and Philip Levine, former U.S. Poets Laureate Juan Filipe Herrera and Robert Hass.

The Sacramento Press Club, established in 1961, is a nonprofit educational organization dedicated to supporting the next generation of journalists through scholarships for college students. The scholarship program is paid for through member donations and ticket sales to regular events with California and national newsmakers. The Sacramento Press Club annually awards nearly $60,000 in scholarships to a proudly diverse array of students.

Under the Gum Tree is a reader-supported, quarterly literary arts magazine publishing creative nonfiction and visual art. It champions the mantra of telling stories without shame since 2011. The mission is sharing stories that remind readers of shared humanity. Each issue includes seven to 10 original nonfiction stories and personal essays, one photo essay and one cover artist whose work is featured throughout the interior pages. The magazine nominates for the Pushcart Prize every year and essays published have been listed as notable in the Best American Essays.