San Diego Memoir Writers Association

New Year’s Vision Board Workshop
2026-01-17 12:00 - 14:00 UTC | ZOOM Online, CA, United States
The IMWA and SDWF are inviting you to a special community workshop:
Vision Boards, Inspiration & Rejuvenation
Saturday, January 17, 2026 (see Zoom link below)
12 p.m. PT on Zoom (Just this once, we are gathering at noon.)
We’ll start with a short presentation on Unblocking Creatively in 2026, then shift into a relaxed, supportive create-and-craft session where you can build your vision board and set your creative intentions for the new year.
Choose your format:

Physical vision board: Have on the ready pens, paper, pictures, markers, and anything else that inspires you (magazines, glue, scissors, stickers, etc.).

Digital vision board: We’ll share links on Saturday to help you get started dreaming up your creative new year.

Community share:
During our crafting time, we’ll open the floor for anyone who’d like to share a short inspirational saying, poem, or phrase.
We’d love to see you there—and please feel free to invite a friend. This workshop is open to the whole community.

Talk and Book Signing with Author Janell Strube
2026-01-22 19:00 - 20:00 | CA
Join Author Janell Strube in conversation with Marni Freedman, editor, writing coach and cofounder of the San Diego Writer’s Festival discussing Janell’s new novel, Adelaide: Painter of the Revolution.
January 22, 7:00 PM
Barnes & Noble, Encinitas
1040 N El Camino Real Drive.
Encinitas, CA 92024

In a world where women are seen but rarely heard, Adélaïde Labille-Guiard refuses to be silenced.
The daughter of Parisian shopkeepers, Adélaïde dreams not of marriage or titles but of earning a place among the masters of French art. With Queen Marie Antoinette on the throne and a spirit of change in the air, anything seems possible. But as revolution brews and powerful forces conspire to deny her success, Adélaïde faces an impossible choice: protect her life—or fight for a legacy that will outlast her.
Inspired by the true story of one of the first women admitted to the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, Adélaïde: Painter of the Revolution is a sweeping, evocative portrait of ambition, courage, and resilience in the face of history’s fiercest storm.

Janell Strube makes a mean barbecue sauce. She’s also a world traveler, a baker, and a bicyclist. But when she writes, her identity as an adoptee often steers her attention to topics of alienation, erased history, and displacement.
In 2024, a personal essay of hers was published in the anthology Adoption and Suicidality. Her work has also appeared in Shaking the Tree: brazen. short. memoir and A Year in Ink. Her short memoir, “Taking my Blonde Daughter to a Black Lives Matter Rally,” was selected for the 2020 San Diego Memoir Showcase, an annual live storytelling event.
While much of her writing is personal, she enjoys the freedom that comes with crafting fiction. Her desire to learn about forgotten female artists who shaped the French revolutionary period motivated her to write Adélaïde: Painter of the Revolution.
When not crunching numbers as a tax executive for a hotel chain, she can be found hanging out with Shiloh the Wheaten and plotting her second book.

Writing About Motherhood and Adoption
2026-02-07 14:30 - 16:30 | CA
Motherhood comes in many forms—through birth, adoption, foster care, and reunion. This Saturday, five remarkable memoir writers share their deeply personal adoption stories: a birth mother, adoptees, and an adoptive parent opening up about the courage it took to write what they lived. Join us for an honest conversation about family, secrets, healing, and the challenges all memoir writers face when writing about motherhood in its many complicated forms.

Eat Your Words
2026-03-07 14:30 - 16:00 | CA
Join award-winning poet and author, Jane Yevgenia Muschenetz, for a short reading and generative writing workshop around food and memory. Enjoy a poetic taste test and explore how your own stories about food can invite delicious and evocative writing.

About Jane:
Jane Muschenetz arrived in San Diego as a Jewish child refugee from Soviet Ukraine. She’s been recognized for excellence in poetry performance by the County of San Diego and most recently won the 2025 National Federation of Press Women Communications Award in Creative Verse and the 2025 War Poetry Postcard Prize from Middlewest Press. Jane’s words appear in MIT Technology Review, KPBS, Spoken Word Paris, and numerous other publications. Jane is the Poetry Director for the San Diego Writers Festival and Partnerships Director for San Diego Poetry Annual. Connect with Jane at www.PalmFrondZoo.com.

San Diego Writers Festival
2026-03-28 09:00 - 17:00 | Coronado Public Library, 640 Orange Ave, Coronado, CA, 92118
Join us for the 7th Annual San Diego Writers Festival.
The San Diego Writers Festival is a free, community-based event designed to celebrate the power of writing and storytelling.
Stories transform both the teller and the listener. In whatever form you welcome a story into your life—by reading a memoir or graphic novel, listening to a podcast or a poetry reading, watching a movie or play or going to the theater—stories are our pathways, our links, our bridges to one another.
At the San Diego Writers Festival, we ask two important questions: What if there was a place where all stories could be nurtured and heard? What if we opened up our community to stories from those who have been under-served, disenfranchised, or neglected?
We invite you to join us on our mission to hear one another, be educated and illuminated by one another, and inspired by one another—one story at a time.

2026 Keynote Speaker

Jodi Picoult is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of thirty novels, including By Any Other Name, Mad Honey (co-authored with Jennifer Finney Boylan), Wish You Were Here, The Book of Two Ways, A Spark of Light, Small Great Things, Leaving Time, and My Sister’s Keeper, and, with daughter Samantha van Leer, two young adult novels, Between the Linesand Off the Page. She lives in New Hampshire with her husband.
www.sandiegowritersfestival.com

Anne Lamott and Neal Allen on "Good Writing" in conversation with Marni Freedman
2026-04-01 19:30 - 21:00 | Balboa Theatre, 868 Forth Ave., San Diego, 92101, United States
Join bestselling author Anne Lamott and writer-spiritual coach Neal Allen in conversation with Marni Freedman for an inspiring and entertaining evening that will change the way you think about language.
TICKETS
THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
36 ways to improve your writing
Two writers show you how to turn a worthy sentence into a memorable one. Starting where The Elements of Style leaves off, Good Writing can improve your book, your essay, your memo, your blog post, speech, or script. These essential rules for persuasive language work on any type of writing, and anyone can learn them quickly.
Each rule is accompanied by examples and a lively pair of essays, the first by Neal Allen, who developed the list of tips over the course of his journalism and corporate careers; the second by his wife, Anne Lamott, acclaimed author of Bird by Birdand nineteen other nonfiction works and novels. The authors don’t always agree on the specifics, but they are passionate about making better sentences.
As Neal writes, “These rules economize, favor the plainspoken and the specific, keep the reader’s attention sharp, and in other ways show respect for the audience’s time and desire for novelty.”
Some rules are fundamental: Use strong verbs. Remove the boring stuff. Twist clichés. Some are more subtle: Draw on all five senses. Give your sentence a finale. Along the way, Good Writing addresses practicalities such as finishing projects despite challenges, trusting editors, and knowing when to break the rules to serve your story.
Whether you’re a novice writer or a seasoned author, this entertaining guide will revolutionize your approach to crafting sentences.

Interview with New York Times bestselling author Annabelle Gurwitch
2026-05-02 14:30 - 16:30 | ZOOM Online, CA, United States
Join us for a powerful and deeply human conversation as Annabelle Gurwitch, New York Times bestselling author, sits down with Tracy J. Jones and Marni Freedman to discuss her bold and unforgettable memoir, The End of My Life Is Killing Me.
With wit, irreverence, and surprising tenderness, Gurwitch turns the traditional “cancer warrior” narrative on its head, embracing what she calls the “cancer slacker” philosophy—choosing joy, humor, and presence over perfection and pressure. This conversation explores how storytelling can hold both grief and laughter, how meaning is found in the ordinary, and how memoir can illuminate even life’s most uncertain chapters.
Expect insight, honesty, and moments that will stay with you long after the conversation ends.

Writing About Trauma with Mimi Nichter
2026-06-06 14:30 - 16:00 | ZOOM Online, CA, United States
Join the International Memoir Writers Association on June 6 for a powerful conversation with Mimi Nichter on “Writing About Trauma.”
A finalist for the 2026 Tucson Festival of Books Literary Award in Nonfiction, Mimi will discuss her gripping memoir, Hostage, which recounts surviving the 1970 hijacking of TWA Flight 741 and the lasting impact of trauma, silence, survival, and resilience.
This promises to be an unforgettable discussion about transforming painful experience into meaningful memoir — and how storytelling can become part of the healing process. Join us.
