Announcing our Keynote Speaker:

Piper Kerman, author of Orange Is the New Black!

Headlining the Festival this year is Piper Kerman, renowned for her bestselling memoir, turned into the groundbreaking, Emmy Award-winning Netflix series, Orange is the New Black. Her social-phenomenon literary work chronicles the 13 months she spent in a Federal correctional institution after a brief involvement with drug trafficking sent her to prison on money laundering charges. In her satirical and deeply-insightful book, Kerman explores the experience of incarceration and the lives of the amazing women she met in prison; their friendships and families, their issues with mental illness, their substance abuse and their cliques and codes of behavior. Kerman’s book and the subsequent smash Netflix show pioneered the way we tell stories in the traditional print world as well as in the new age of streaming entertainment. Kerman will give a keynote speech and Q & A as well as an onstage interview with award-winning playwright and festival founder Marni Freedman about Kerman’s legendary book, her memoir teaching, and her work for prison education reform.