WORDS AND IMAGES : Signing Woman : One of America’s best-known feminists, Gloria Steinem, will autograph her new book at a bookstore Wednesday.

Is it possible to imagine Gloria Steinem, acknowledged as one of the 25 Most Influential Women in America by the World Almanac for nine consecutive years, grappling with lack of self-esteem? You’ll have an opportunity to discuss that and many other things with America’s best known feminist when she visits our neck of the woods (well, just up the road in Santa Barbara). Steinem will sign her book “Revolution From Within,” which is about self-esteem, at 7 p.m. Wednesday in Chaucer’s Bookstore, 3321 State St.

The book is a groundbreaking work in which Steinem reveals her own quest for security and self-confidence and includes profiles of celebrities who have suffered from lack of self-esteem.

The co-founder of Ms. Magazine in 1972, Steinem continues to write articles, essays and columns for national and international magazines and newspapers. Her previous books “Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions” and “Marilyn” were bestsellers and her awards and honors are too numerous to name.

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Richard Kern will narrate “Journey to the Everglades” as part of the Oxnard Civic Auditorium film series. It screens at 2:30 p.m. Sunday at 800 Hobson Way. Tickets are $6.50. Call 496-2424.

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Tony Gibbs, who has written his third nautical mystery, entitled “Landfall,” will speak to the Ventura County Writers Club at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday. A Santa Barbara resident, Gibbs was executive editor of the New Yorker magazine and is now senior editor at Islands Magazine. He has written dozens of articles and 10 nonfiction books about sailing and boating. He will focus on what editors want from writers. The club meets at Pleasant Valley Baptist Church, 1101 E. Ponderosa Drive in Camarillo. Guest fee is $4. Call 642-6130 for details.

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“The best time for planning a book is while you’re doing the dishes,” so said Agatha Christie, who would undoubtedly (were she alive) be a member of Sisters-in-Crime, the American organization founded in 1986 by women mystery writers “to combat discrimination against women in the mystery field.”

The Thousand Oaks branch of American Assn. of University Women and California Lutheran University Women’s Center are co-sponsoring an evening featuring national officers of Sisters-in-Crime. Moderated by Kathleen Sullivan, senior librarian at Thousand Oaks Library, panelists include Carolyn G. Hart, Jean Hager and Marilyn Wallace, three of the most prolific mystery writers in the nation.

The event is scheduled at 7 p.m. Feb. 11 at the Preus-Brandt Forum on the CLU campus, 60 W. Olsen Road, Thousand Oaks. The $10 fee will go toward scholarships. Reservations must be in by Monday. Contact Arlene Coffman at 497-3495 or Barb Wilson at 493-2179. Membership in SIC is open to women and men interested in reading or writing mysteries. Contact Beth Wasson, National SIC, P.O. Box 442124, Laurence, Kansas 66044, or the Los Angeles chapter at P.O. Box 3457, Lakewood, CA 90712.