![\"Uniting](\"https:\/\/lamesacourier.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Orange-Is-the-New-Black-bookcover.jpg\")
<\/a>The organizers have a vision for the event that explains the burgeoning interest in all things literary. In this time of social and political division, the festival is intended to unite diverse people \u201cthrough storytelling and to give a voice to those who often feel voiceless.\u201d<\/p>\n
The need for such opportunities, however, is not new.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy co-director and co-founder and I were thinking about doing something like this for a couple years. Festivals and writers conferences often have a price \u2026 and that\u2019s just not accessible to everybody,\u201d Thompson explained. \u201cWe want to make it free and open to the public so everyone can come. We want people to know, yes, your voice matters.\u201d<\/p>\n
The voices that will be part of the festival include a vast array of writers, literary genres, and performances intended to celebrate \u201call races, genders, religions and abilities.\u201d<\/p>\n
The keynote speaker is Piper Kerman, whose memoir about her year in federal prison, \u201cOrange Is the New Black,\u201d launched both an award-winning Netflix series and the author\u2019s campaign for justice reform.<\/p>\n
There will also be panel discussions, literature-based performances, a variety of writing workshops for adults, activities for children, 10-minute agent and producer pitches, and presentations by experts on various literary and publishing topics.<\/p>\n
Topics include finding an agent, building an author\u2019s brand, writing to heal, memoir, science fiction, romance, humor, screenwriting, indie comic books, graphic novels, children\u2019s books, and \u201ckid-friendly\u201d poetry. There will even be a \u201cChildren\u2019s Poetry Slam.\u201d<\/p>\n
Understanding the importance of storytelling, and a community that honors it, is evident in Thompson\u2019s enthusiasm for the festival and many of its panel themes: \u201cBlack Stories Matter, Breaking Down the Walls \u2014 The Power of Immigrant Stories\u201d and \u201cINCOMING: Stories from the Veteran Writers Division of So Say We All,\u201d a local nonprofit organization.<\/p>\n
Thompson, who has a book marketing company, has been reaching out to local organizations and associations that have \u201canything to do with writing,\u201d to garner their support and involvement in the event.<\/p>\n
Committed organizations include many well-known and admired participants in San Diego\u2019s literary community, including San Diego Writers Ink, Publishers and Writers of San Diego, San Diego Writers and Editors Guild, San Diego City College, Point Loma Nazarene University, Border Voices Poetry Program, San Diego Memoir Writers Association, La Jolla Writers Conference, Roustabout Theater Company, and Romance Writers of America San Diego.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been this really amazing experience,\u201d Thompson said, \u201cIt\u2019s been blossoming into this very beautiful experience that is in and of itself creating community.\u201d<\/p>\n
While excitement about the festival is mounting, the event\u2019s commitment to diverse storytelling bears an important, explicit lesson: Storytelling is a shared experience and a shared responsibility that requires both telling and listening, the latter of which is critical, because, according to Thompson, you cannot have empathy for another \u201cuntil you hear another\u2019s story. In order to understand one another, we have to listen to one another,\u201d she explained. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of people yelling at each other right now and not listening. When people don\u2019t feel heard, they feel disenfranchised, and anger and pain come out. Storytelling, it changes both the teller and the listener.\u201d<\/p>\n
There will be plentiful opportunities to listen at the San Diego Writers Festival. The day begins at 10 a.m. on April 13 with a taiko drum performance. Concurrent workshops, panels and other activities are scheduled during the day in various venues throughout the San Diego Central Library. The festival concludes with literary performances from 7 to 9:30 p.m.<\/p>\n
The library is located at 330 Park Blvd., and the organizers recommend using public transportation to avoid the challenges of parking Downtown.<\/p>\n
For more festival information, visit SanDiegoWritersFestival.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u2014 Kit-Bacon Gressitt formerly wrote for the North County Times. She is the publisher of <\/em>WritersResist.com and a contributing co-editor of \u201cWriters Resist: The Anthology 2018.\u201d She also hosts Fallbrook Library\u2019s monthly Writers Read author series and open mic and teaches Women\u2019s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies in the Cal State system. Reach her at <\/em>kbgressitt@gmail.com<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Kit-Bacon Gressitt Free literary conferences are popping up all over the county, from Fallbrook Library\u2019s annual event in the far north, to the recent Centering the Margins: Conversations with Writers of Color in San Diego. And now, the latest: San Diego Writers Festival.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":844,"featured_media":226032,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11548","_seopress_titles_title":"Uniting a community with a festival of words","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11547,11548,11551],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-226031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-la-mesa-courier","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/844"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226031"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226031\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/226032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}