The San Diego Writers Festival returns on April 5, bringing together established authors, emerging voices and literary enthusiasts for a day of storytelling, discussion and connection.
Held at and co-organized by the Coronado Public Library and also held at the Coronado Performing Arts Center, the free, day-long festival offers 46 events, including panels, workshops and 120 speakers.
Among them are Tembi Locke, author, co-creator and executive producer of Netflix film adaptation “From Scratch,” and bestselling political thriller writer Matthew Quirk, who will discuss the hit Netflix series based on his book, “The Night Agent.”
The themes of this year’s festival span romance, self-help, poetry, screenwriting and the challenges of publishing while being defined as “other” in society — a conversation that extends beyond race to include neurodiversity and unconventional literary forms.
The festival’s director and co-founder, Marni Freedman, said she anticipates a turnout of nearly 3,000, surpassing last year’s attendance of 2,000.
For the past six years, the festival has been fostering a literary renaissance in Southern California.
What began as an effort to unify the region’s scattered writing communities has evolved into a full-fledged celebration of storytelling, resilience and creative connection, Freedman said.
Freedman, a memoir teacher and therapist, described the festival’s origins as a response to a growing need for connection.
“I was going around town, teaching at different libraries and I realized that San Diego had all these incredible independent writing organizations, but they weren’t talking to each other,” she said. “I wanted a place where we could all connect as a community.”
Unlike many literary festivals, where access can range from $50 to well into the thousands, the San Diego Writers Festival is — and has always been — free and open to the public.
“From the very beginning, our mission was to make this kind of talent available to everybody,” Freedman said. “Even the smallest experiences can be life-changing.”
Anastasia Zadeik, the festival’s director of operations, acknowledged the economic challenges faced by many creatives.
“A lot of these conferences are out of reach financially for the very people who bring joy and a sense of connection to the world,” Zadeik said. “We wanted to make sure that high-quality programming was available to them, too.”
Through partnerships with the San Diego Central Library in previous years and now the Coronado Public Library, the festival has been able to maintain its commitment to accessibility. Freedman said the Friends of the Coronado Library played a role in making this year’s event possible.
The logistics of running such an operation “looks polished on the surface,” Freedman admitted, “but it’s really just a small team — myself, Anastasia, and [the festival’s Director of Marketing] Carolyn Gilman — pulling long nights and making it happen.”
Zadeik and Freedman said funding remains a perennial challenge, with the festival often relying on the generosity of guest speakers willing to appear without a fee.
This year, that generosity has manifested in the form of Lee Goldberg, novelist and screenwriter known for his work on “Monk.”
“He’s coming purely out of the goodness of his heart,” Freedman said. “It’s incredible what people are willing to do to share their knowledge and expertise.”
Despite the financial tightrope, the festival continues to grow. More volunteers step forward each year — this year, around 100.
Zadeik said that when they chose this year’s festival theme, “we just wanted to celebrate the people who are willing to step up and change the way that we look at things, despite the current [political] environment and the pushback on DEI.”
This year’s programming includes panels like “Publishing While Black” and “Reclaiming Women’s History,” as well as a discussion with a documentarian focused on telling the stories of marginalized and misunderstood women.
The lineup also features Native American voices, including poet Tommy Pico and crime writer Faith Phillips, reflecting the festival’s dedication to inclusivity and representation.
“From mystery writers to thriller writers to self-help authors, we’re trying to find people who are truly pushing boundaries,” Freedman said.
Zadeik said this year’s programming was shaped by over 170 submissions.
“We wanted to build a program that combined emerging voices with established ones, local talent with national names and genre discussions with more thematic explorations,” she said. “One of our sessions is about writing on mental health across different age groups. We have middle-grade writers, young adult authors and adult fiction writers all engaging in that dialogue together.”
For the organizers, the hope is that the festival will leave a lasting imprint on the San Diego writing community.
“I hope it offers hope and light,” Freedman said, “and (for) people to… get inspired to believe in their voice (and) that what they have to say is worthy of being heard. My goal is to let other communities know that San Diego can be a center of creativity.”
