Meera Lester has worked in the writing, publishing, and film industries for over 25 years. In 1983, she and her partner launched the Northern California-based organization Writers Connection. Meera planned and ran the writing and publishing seminar programs. She also served as executive editor of Writers Connection’s publications. She directed dozens of conferences each year that featured editors, agents, and successful authors. Over the next decade, she also edited several magazines: High Technology Careers, Future Outlook, Diversity Magazine, and Paul Masson Summer Concert Series.
Relying on insights from her friends and business associates in the Los Angeles film industry, Meera planned and recruited speakers for Selling to Hollywood, a conference she launched in Los Angeles in the 1990s. The conference focused on how to write great scripts and get them into the hands of producers and others who could “green light” them. Her conference networking events provided access to insiders working in all areas of the film industry. The conference rapidly attracted screenplay writers from around the world. After directing the conference for a dozen years, she sold it to the American Screenwriters Association.
As a member of California Writers’ Club (CWC), the oldest professional writing organization in the state, Meera worked with many other CWC members to plan and direct the most successful conference in the 70-year history of the club.
In 2002, Meera began writing mass market nonfiction books for Rockport Publishers, Fair Winds Press, and Adams Media/F&W Publications. She also did ghost writing and created works for hire for her publisher. She has authored more than two dozen books, including Sacred Travels, The Marriage Devotional, The Everything Law of Attraction, 365 Ways to Live Happy, Why Santa Wears Red, and 1001 Ways to Do Good, among others.
Photo credit: Courtesy of Katerina Lorenzatos Makris. Photo of Meera on Corelli’s beach, Kefalonia, Greece
She recently moved to Northern California, east of the San Francisco Bay. She and husband Carlos Carvajal, Dominican-born architect and designer, are renovating a 1947 cottage on acreage she has named the Henny-Penny Farmette. Having been raised on a farm in the Midwest, Meera enjoys keeping an orchard and organic garden and caring for her eight chickens and two sheep named Howard and Sunny.
She is currently writing on a magical realism novel set in 1929 Colombia; The Pastry Shop Murder, a mystery novel; and a new mass-market nonfiction project.
Check out 10 Great Sacred Destinations based on Meera’s travels in USA Today’s Travel section, Dec. 23, 2011.
And don’t forget to visit: www.mysacredworld.com.
