Nonfiction Panel
Thursday, June 25, 4-5 PM
Pacific Ballroom
Matthew Pallamary, moderator, is an award-winning writer, musician, and sound healer who's been studying shamanism all his life. He has books covering several genres. His latest story collection is The Thinning Veil: 13 Twisted Tales.
He explores how art imitates life and reflects our human condition. The veil between the worlds is thinning and the boundaries have become blurred, bringing more weight to the question; what or where are the boundaries between what we believe to be real and what we imagine?
Hendrika de Vries’ second memoir, Open Turns: From Dutch Girl to New Australian, is set in 1950s Australia. It’s a coming-of-age story of a girl who has definite opinions on the woman she intends to be in a new country.
Her life experiences with oppression and resistance in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam, migration, competitive swimming, misogyny in 1950s Australia, and feminism in the US, infuse her writing with historical depth and personal perspective on challenges facing women and anyone deemed other. Her debut title was When a Toy Dog Became a Wolf and the Moon Broke Curfew, an award-winning memoir of her WWII childhood.
Sandy Pearl’s debut memoir, Then the Phone Rang: My Journey from Hitchhiking Hippie to the Hollywood High Life, draws from her adventurous life.
A third-generation native of Santa Barbara, on a whim she moved from Santa Barbara to Los Angeles, where an unexpected series of events launched her 23-year career in the entertainment industry working with companies such as Atlantic Records, Warner Bros. Studios, and Paramount Pictures. After returning to Santa Barbara, she spent two decades in hospitality as a corporate event coordinator and tour director. She has also written two screenplays inspired by true events.
Connard Hogan is an award-winning author of three memoirs. His latest, A Journey of Courage and the Climb Within, a mountain climbing adventure memoir, in which he explores his motivation to engage in that risky activity and features his alter ego, Prim8. In addition, he blogs about his world travels.
His earlier titles are Barbwire, Brothels and Bombs in the Night: Surviving Vietnam, and Once Upon a Kentucky Farm: Hope and Healing from Family Abuse, Alcoholism, and Family Dysfunction.
Lorissa Rinehart’s latest book, Winning the Earthquake: How Jeannette Rankin Defied All Odds to Become America’s First Congresswoman, is the first authoritative biography of this trailblazing female politician in American history. Her writing explores the powerful intersections of women’s history, politics, war, and peace.
Her debut book, First to the Front: The Untold Story of Dickey Chapelle, Trailblazing Female War Correspondent (St. Martin’s Press), received rave reviews from numerous publications. Through her weekly newsletter and podcast, The Female Body Politic, Lorissa offers insightful analysis of contemporary events, drawing on 250 years of women’s engagement in American politics.
Winner of the 2024 PEN/Ralph Manheim translation prize for lifetime achievement, Suzanne Jill Levine has devoted her life to practicing, investigating, and teaching the art of literary translation. The ascent of Latin American literature in the anglophone world since the Latin Boom and the current state of the art of translation are inseparable from her more than fifty years of work. Published by Bloomsbury Press, Unfaithful is an odyssey of this creative translator of Latin American literature, taking us back to the times of a young woman who was learning her art and navigating complex relationships, sometimes audaciously, in a pre #MeToo world dominated by men.
Her translations of critical Latin American authors profoundly impacted and broadened the variety of Hispanic literature in translation with innovative works by such writers as Clarice Lispector, Cecilia Vicuña, Jorge Luis Borges, Manuel Puig, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Carlos Fuentes, Julio Cortázar, and Guillermo Cabrera Infante, and she has championed many gender-fluid and gay authors. A scholar, prolific translator, bilingual writer and poet, and mentor to scores of essential translators active in our field today, Levine’s brilliance, famous sense of humor, and scholarly writing have been crucial to the development of the field of Translation Studies and have left a profound mark on the North-South dialogue.
Cherie Kephart’s newest book, The Upside of Falling: Connecting to the Art and Heart of Being a Writer, is an artfully written expansion of the promise in the title. Raised in Venice, California, Cherie longed to travel and experience the way other people lived. After serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Zambia on a water sanitation and health education project, Cherie returned to the United States with an African souvenir she didn’t expect: a mysterious illness.
She fell severely ill and almost died, leaving her with several symptoms that went undiagnosed for many years. This inspired Cherie to write her memoir, A Few Minor Adjustments: A Memoir of Healing, taking the reader on a powerful but entertaining journey through her adventures and search for life-saving answers. Publisher’s Weekly called it, “a story of gut-wrenching perseverance and determination.” Her other publications include, The Healing 100, Poetry of Peace, as well as essays, short stories, and poems in various literary journals and in more than twenty anthologies. She is a staff workshop facilitator at many writing conferences and retreats and is a two-time winner of the San Diego Memoir Showcase.
