Family Focused Disability Specialist and Inspirational Speaker
Pamela continues to use her voice and forty plus years of experience to champion the cause and protect the role of families of special needs' children and those who's loved one with significant disabilities cannot live in the family home.
Wine Business Coach
Business coaching for vintners of boutique wineries is a niche passion. Founder/Vintner for Stanwood Cabernet Sauvignon. Co-Founder of Jessup Cellars and proprietor/founder of Wine Elevation, where she created a customized and elevated wine experience for collectors and enthusiasts of hidden gems—delivering from the vintner to their door.
Travel and Adventure
Pamela is blessed in this season to travel with her adventurous husband, George Runner. She was challenged to learn a new skill—writing on the fly. She packs her laptop and printer in a small carry-on suitcase. She writes while carving out hours and days away from exploring sites or reading at the pool.
Napa Valley Roots
Napa Valley is her native hometown and the place her children and grandchildren call home, except Jonny, he lives in Sonoma. Wine Country is the natural backdrop for Pamela's memoir writing.
About Pamela Jessup Runner
Learning the Craft of Memoir
With a passion for writing and a determination to learn technique and find her narrator voice, Pamela Jessup Runner invested many years and hundreds of hours in her quest to bring her inspirational stories to life.
Like her other career ventures, she is self-taught, with a zeal to learn. She worked with mentor writing partners, published authors, coaches and completed several memoir specific courses.
Instructors include:
-Adair Lara, SF columnist and author of memoir, Hold me Close, Let me Go
(one on one memoir coaching and 50,000 word summer course)
-Alan Kaufman, SF memoir course, published author (8 week in person course)
-Irene Graham, Ireland, Memoir Writing Club (12-week course)
-Anne Lamont, Marin, Memoirist, Published Author, Bird by Bird workshops
-The Novelist Studio, online writing group- current participant
-Bonnie Prestel, Editor and Published Author Nine 1/2 months (current editor)
Living in a Writing Retreat Environment
Pamela and George spend their time at home in the scenic backdrop of the Lake Tahoe mountains. The beauty of nature, chirping of the blue jays, rushing sound of the American River, crisp fresh air provide the perfect environment for hours of writing solitude.
This is a photo of Pamela and Kate Campbell, her writing partner who sadly passed away a month after a writing day they shared. "Pam, you have at least four books in you, I better go so you can get started!" This photo sits framed next to her computer as a reminder of Kate's inspirational encouragement.
Boy Mom
Pamela became a mother and wife at seventeen years old. At twenty-three, her third son Jonny, was born with CMV (cytomegalic virus) that caused him profound multiple disabilities. All families are unique and hers is no different.
Fighting her insecurities, she found her voice. She was armed with a determination to make life better for other families like hers. Growing from the grief she lived with, she used the resulting grit to make changes in the bureaucratic systems that operated as a medical clinical "do it for you" model, to family friendly service delivery.