How do I contact an author?  I want to book Anne Lamott for a
booksigning/talk at the retreat center where I work, but cannot find a
direct contact for her, or an agent. If there is a general way to
find, this would be very helpful, as we are hoping to expand into more
booksignings in the future, and I'd like to pursue other
California-based authors, like Judith Ryan Hendricks, Marthe Cohen,
and Firoozeh Dumas.

Hi peahen,

Searching for contact information for authors is sometimes quite easy,
other times not so easy. The following is my search strategy in which
I was able to locate the agent for Anne Lamott:

Searching for "Anne Lamott" using Google led me to this website:
http://www.notesinthemargin.org/lamott.html
On that page you will see: The Anne Lamott Site
http://www.typo.com/lamott/welcome.html This website proved to be a
dead link so I entered it in the Wayback Machine and got these
results: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.typo.com/lamott/welcome.html

I then clicked on the date "Jul 22, 2004" and this is what I found:

About/Contacing Anne Lamott
If you would like to find out more information about Anne Lamott, book
her for an event or check her schedule, please check her agent's site:

The Steven Barclay Agency
12 Western Avenue 
Petaluma, CA 94952
TEL 707-773-0654
FAX 707-778-1868
toll free in US 888-965-7323
www.barclayagency.com
email: sjbarclay@aol.com 

I double checked the website http://www.barclayagency.com/ to make
sure they are still the agents for Anne Lamott. They are. You will
find her name in the authors listed there. See also:
http://www.barclayagency.com/lamott.html


Many times authors have their own web sites and use their own names as
part of the URL. This was how I located the contact information for
two other authors that you are looking for:

Judith Ryan Hendricks
http://www.judihendricks.com/

Available contact information: 
Email: contact@judihendricks.com

=========================================

Firoozeh Dumas
http://www.firoozehdumas.com/

Available contact information: 
Email: author@firoozehdumas.com


I hope the information provided is helpful. If you have any questions
regarding my answer please don?t hesitate to ask before rating it.

Best regards,
Rainbow

Exactly what I was looking for, thank you!