So You Want to Write a Book? An Alumni Panel, Moderated by Robbie Kellman Baxter

If you’ve ever considered becoming an author, this event is perfect for you.

You will have the opportunity to hear about the book writing journeys of several alumni authors, including [Alex Lewin](https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B0072JJI28) AB’90, [Abigail Hing Wen](https://www.amazon.com/stores/Abigail-Hing-Wen/author/B08373GS3F?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true) AB’99, [HiIary Zaid](https://www.amazon.com/stores/Hilary-Zaid/author/B01M11VSXZ?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true) AB’90 and [Joe Menn](https://www.amazon.com/stores/Joseph-Menn/author/B001HD1MF6?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=truen&qid=1677190255&s=books&sprefix=joseph+menn%2Cstripbooks%2C139&sr=1-1) AB’88,  and moderated by author [Robbie Kellman Baxter](https://www.amazon.com/stores/Robbie-Kellman-Baxter/author/B00OYDWZU2?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true) AB’90.  

**Topics will include the following:**

* Why or why not to write a book
* How to make writing a habit
* Getting an agent
* The pros and cons of self-publishing 
* Writing a book proposal
* How to market your book
Don’t worry—there will be plenty of time for your questions too!

We are building a list of HCSV authors on Goodreads and they should go here to ask to join: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1210724-hcsv-authors

If you know of additional SF Bay Area Alumni who have published a book (or two), please send the details to us, so we can compile a list (**robbieb@post.harvard.edu**)

**Full Bios**


**Abigail Hing Wen** works at the intersection of storytelling and technology. She is a New York Times Best Selling Author, woman-in-tech leader specializing in artificial intelligence, a filmmaker as well as a mother of two. She writes and speaks about tech, AI ethics, women’s leadership, implicit bias, equity, and transforming culture.
Abigail penned the New York Times Best Selling and National Best Selling novel, Loveboat, Taipei and companion novels, Loveboat Reunion and Loveboat Forever. She is executive producing the book-to-film adaptation starring Ashley Liao as Ever Wong and Ross Butler as Rick Woo, with ACE Entertainment and Lionsgate. She and her work have been profiled in Entertainment Weekly, The Hollywood Reporter, NBC News, Forbes, Fortune, Cosmopolitan, Bloomberg, Seventeen, Google Talk, People en Espanol, South China Morning Post and the World Journal, among others.
Abigail holds a BA from Harvard, where she took coursework in film, ethnic studies and government. She also holds a JD from Columbia and MFA in writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. In her career in tech, she has negotiated multibillion dollar deals on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley, worked in venture capital and hosted Intel’s Artificial Intelligence podcast.
Abigail lives with her husband in the San Francisco Bay Area. She enjoys long walks, and hanging out with friends and family. She loves music and dances to it when no one is watching.


**Alex Lewin** is the author of “Real Food Fermentation: Revised and Expanded”, and the co-author of “Kombucha, Kefir, and Beyond”. He grew up on the East Coast of the US. His interests include food, health and fitness, computers, music, mysteries, and two-wheeled vehicles. In his evolving journey on the earth, he has discovered that one of his gifts is the ability to co-exist side-by-side with friendly microbes. While others struggle with microbes, Alex embraces them.

A graduate of Harvard, the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts, and the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, he seeks to create a healthier and tastier world by spreading the good news about fermentation and real food. He leads fermentation classes and workshops in the US and abroad. He has helped organize the Greater Boston Kimchi Festival, the Boston Public Market, and the Boston Fermentation Festival. He currently serves on the advisory board of The Fermentation Association. He programs computers. His favorite computer language is Python, and he is not very open-minded. He is bicoastal, spending his time in Oakland and Cambridge.


**Joseph Menn** was a security journalist for more than two decades, Joseph Menn is the author of the bestseller “Cult of the Dead Cow: How the Original Hacking Supergroup Might Just Save the World,” first published in 2019. It revealed that then-presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke had belonged to the oldest surviving and most influential group of U.S. hackers and explained the origins of hacktivism and ethical security work. The New York Times Book Review called it “a hugely important piece of the puzzle for anyone who wants to understand the forces shaping the internet age.” It was named one of the 10 best nonfiction works of the year by Hudson Booksellers as well as one of the five cybersecurity books everyone should read by the Wall Street Journal, and it was inducted into the Cybersecurity Canon project’s Hall of Fame.

Based in San Francisco, Menn now covers digital threats for the Washington Post, having joined in early 2022 after working at Reuters, the Financial Times and Los Angeles Times. Menn also wrote the 2010 bestseller “Fatal System Error: The Hunt for the New Crime Lords Who Are Bringing Down the Internet,” a real-life thriller that brought the modern face of cybercrime to a mainstream audience. Fatal System Error revealed collaboration between major governments and organized crime, especially in Russia. It was placed on the official reading list of the US Strategic Command, while the New Yorker magazine compared it to the “Dragan Tattoo” novels of Stieg Larsson. Before that, Menn wrote the definitive inside account “All the Rave: The Rise and Fall of Shawn Fanning’s Napster,” named one of the best three books of the year by Investigative Reporters & Editors Inc. He speaks regularly at security conferences including Def Con, Black Hat and RSA. He is on Twitter as @josephmenn and Mastodon as @josephmenn@infosec.exhange.


**Hilary Zaid** is a 2017 Tennessee Williams Scholar at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Hilary Zaid is also an alumna of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers and the Tin House Writers’ Workshop. Her short fiction has appeared in print and online venues including Lilith Magazine, The Southwest Review, The Utne Reader, CALYX, The Santa Monica Review, and The Tahoma Literary Review and have been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize. An alumna of Harvard and Radcliffe, she holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Berkeley, and works as a freelance editor. Hilary lives in the Bay Area with her family. For more information, visit www.paperiswhite.com


**Robbie Kellman Baxter** (Moderator) helps companies leverage subscription pricing, digital communities, and freemium models to build deeper relationships with customers.
Over the past 21 years, she has worked with over 100 organizations in over 20 industries like the National Basketball Association, The Wall Street Journal, and Microsoft.
As a keynote speaker, she has presented globally at major conferences, association meetings, trade shows and elite universities as well as to private audiences at many of the world’s most well-known companies.
She hosts the podcast, “Subscription Stories,” where she sits down with business leaders to discuss how they’re using subscription pricing and membership models to redefine the biggest industries and generate predictable recurring revenue. Robbie has also developed and taught nine video courses for LinkedIn Learning on business topics ranging from innovation to customer success and membership.
Her first book, “The Membership Economy: Find Your Superusers, Master the Forever Transaction & Build Recurring Revenue,” anticipated and defined the massive transformation from ownership to membership and the rise of subscription pricing. It was named a top 10 marketing book of all time by BookAuthority.
Her second book, “The Forever Transaction,” takes readers through every step of the subscription business process – from initial start-up or testing of a new model to scaling the operation for long-term growth and sustainability.
Prior to launching Peninsula Strategies, Robbie was a strategy consultant at Booz-Allen & Hamilton, a New York City Urban Fellow, and a Silicon Valley product marketer. She received her MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and graduated with honors from Harvard College.