Festival U

Festival U – A Fundraiser benefiting the San Diego Writers Festival
 One Day ~ Online ~ 6 Amazing Workshops ~ $60

Festival U Schedule

Session 1 (10 am to 11 am PT)
Books that Change the World – How Authors with a Cause Can Impact Us All with Winnie Li and Valena Beety. Moderated by Anastasia Zadeik

Session 2  (11 am – 12 pm PT)
On Memory and Metaphor – Bringing the Past to Life with Sue William Silverman

Session 3  (12 – 1 pm PT)
The Art and Craft of Middle Grade Fiction with Award Winning Author, Chris Baron

Session 4  (1pm – 2pm PT)
Historical Fiction: Keeping it Real While Keeping it Interesting with Jennifer Coburn

Session 5 (2 pm – 3 pm)
Nothing is Wasted – The Art of How the Writer Brings It All Together with Judy Reeves 

Session 6 (3 pm to 4 pm)
Ask An Agent  – An Hour to Ask Any Question You Have Ever Had! With Lilly Gharhamani

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PRESENTERS:

Chris Baron

Chris Baron is the award-winning author of Novels for young (and young at heart) readers including All Of Me an NCTE Notable Book, The Magical Imperfect a Sydney Taylor Book Award Notable Book/ a SLJ Best Book of 2021 & the forthcoming novels, The Gray (23) Forest Heart (24) from Feiwel & Friends/Macmillan, and The Secret of the Dragon Gems, a Middle Grade novel co-authored with Rajani LaRocca from Little Bee Books (23) and editor of ON ALL OTHER NIGHTS: A MIDDLE GRADE PASSOVER ANTHOLOGY, from Abrams (24), He is a Professor of English at San Diego City College and the director of the Writing Center. He grew up in New York City, but he completed his MFA in Poetry in 1998 at SDSU. He lives in San Diego with his family. 

Valena Beety

Valena Elizabeth Beety is an innocence litigator, a law professor, and a former federal prosecutor. She teaches at Indiana University in Bloomington, and previously served as the Founding Director of the West Virginia Innocence Project. Beety has successfully exonerated wrongfully convicted clients, obtained presidential grants of clemency for drug offenses, and served as an elected board member of the National Innocence Network. Her experiences as a federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C., and as an innocence litigator in Mississippi and West Virginia, shape her research and writing on wrongful convictions, forensic evidence, prosecution, and incarceration. She is the co-editor of The Wrongful Convictions Reader and author of the award-winning book Manifesting Justice: Wrongly Convicted Women Reclaim Their Rights. valenabeety.com.

Jennifer Coburn

Jennifer Coburn is the author of Cradles of the Reich, a historical novel about three very different women living at a Nazi Lebensborn breeding home at the start of World War ll.

She has also published a mother-daughter travel memoir, We’ll Always Have Paris, as well as six contemporary women’s novels. Additionally, Jennifer has contributed to five literary anthologies, including A Paris All Your Own.

Jennifer lives in San Diego with her husband, William. Their daughter, Katie is currently in graduate school. When Jennifer is not going down historical research rabbit holes, she volunteers with So Say We All, a live storytelling organization, where she is a performer, producer, and performance coach. She is also an active volunteer with Reality Changers, a nonprofit that supports low-income high school students in becoming the first in their families to attend college. She specializes in college essay development and interview prep.

Winnie M. Li

Winnie M Li is an author and activist. Her latest novel Complicit draws from her earlier career in the film industry. It was a New York Times’ Editors’ Choice, and listed among the Best Crime Novels of 2022 by CrimeReads and The Irish Times. A Harvard graduate, she previously wrote for travel guidebooks, produced independent feature films, and programmed for film festivals. Her debut Dark Chapter won The Guardian’s Not The Booker Prize, was nominated for an Edgar Award, and was translated into ten languages. She is currently adapting it for the screen. Driven by her own experience of rape, Winnie advocates publicly around sexual violence and consent, and holds an honorary doctorate of law from the National University of Ireland in recognition of her writing and activism. A New Jersey native, Winnie has lived and worked abroad for over 20 years, primarily in England. (She does come to Southern California once a year, though!) http://winniemli.com.

Lilly Ghahremani

Lilly is co-founder of Full Circle Literary, “a Literary agency representing a diverse and inclusive family of authors & artists whose books break barriers and stand the test of time.” Lilly is a graduate of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, UCLA School of Law (JD), and San Diego State University’s School of Business (MBA). Happy to be back in San Diego after a few years living in Seattle, she can be found strolling in the sun, drinking too much coffee at her local coffee shop, driving and singing with the windows down, or reading with her daughter, a bookworm in training.

Judy Reeves

Judy Reeves is an award-winning writer whose books include A Writer’s Book of Days and Wild Women, Wild Voices. In addition to her books on the craft of writing, she has also published fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. When Your Heart Says Go is her first memoir. A long-time instructor of creative writing, she teaches at writing conferences internationally and at San Diego Writers, Ink, a nonprofit literary center she cofounded. Judy lives and writes in San Diego, amid bulging bookshelves and an ancient Underwood typewriter that claims its own social media fan base. You can find Judy and her Underwood on her website, judyreeveswriter.com.

Sue William Silverman

Sue William Silverman is an award-winning author of eight works of nonfiction and poetry. Her forthcoming book, available for pre-order, is Acetylene Torch Songs: Writing True Stories to Ignite the Soul. Her previous book, How to Survive Death and Other Inconveniences,won the gold star in Foreword Reviews Indie Book of the Year Award and the Clara Johnson Award for Women’s Literature. Other books include Love Sick: One Woman’s Journey through Sexual Addiction, made into a Lifetime TV movie; Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You, which won the AWP Award; and The Pat Boone Fan Club: My Life as a White Anglo-Saxon Jew.She teaches at the low-residency MFA in Writing Program at Vermont College of Fine Arts.www.SueWilliamSilverman.com