Assistance League® Professional Humanitarian Auxiliary Fullerton (ALPHA)presents

32nd Annual A Day of Authors

Saturday, March 22, 2025

at the Titan Student Union, California State University, Fullerton

Main Speaker: Craig Johnson

Craig Johnson, creator of Sheriff Walt Longmire, has written 20 novels set in Wyoming. He has garnered countless awards, including Publisher’s Weekly Best Book of the Year, a Will Rogers Award for fiction, Library Journal’s Best Mystery of the Year, and Le Prix du Polar Nouvel Observateur. The iconic sheriff is back with a newly released adventure, Tooth and Claw. Looking for work in Alaska following service in Vietnam, a young Longmire and his friend Henry Standing Bear find themselves facing off against powerful enemies who will stop at nothing to achieve their objectives.

Main Speaker: Alison Espach

Alison Espach’s latest book, The Wedding People, is entertaining and poses serious questions about life, love, and extravagant weddings. The novel was a New York Times best-seller, a Barnes and Noble book club pick, an NBC TODAY’s “Read with Jenna” book club selection, and the #1 Indie Next Pick for August 2024. Before publication, TriStar won the bidding war to produce a movie of The Wedding People. Espach is a writing professor at Providence College in Rhode Island.

Break-out Speakers

Désirée Zamorano

Désirée Zamorano is an award-winning short story writer and Pushcart Prize nominee whose essays on the invisibility of her demographic have appeared in Publisher’s Weekly. Her novel, Dispossessed, follows the life of Manuel, a boy separated from his family during the 1930s California expulsion of Mexican Americans and Mexican nationals. Manuel struggles to comprehend what has happened to his beloved family; he is adrift without them. Author Hector Tobar states, “Zamorano brings to light the human toll of the mass deportations…and the fortitude of those who endured them.”

Jennifer Torres

Jennifer Torres, winner of the Literacy Hero Award, who writes stories for preschoolers to middle schoolers, has written a book in which “the story’s true treasures are the relationships formed along the way.” (Kirkus Reviews) Vega’s Piece of the Sky is a coming-of-age story involving three characters searching for meteorites near California’s Salton Sea. The adventurers encounter scorpions, coyotes, and flash floods as they seek to find space rocks and make it home safely. Common themes appearing throughout Torres’s writings are at the heart of this book: home, friendship, and courage.

Nancy Cole Silverman

Nancy Cole Silverman’s novels have received numerous honors including the Shamus, Macavity, Anthony, Willa, Agatha, and Lefty awards. Silverman is the author of three acclaimed series—the Carol Childs, Misty Dawn, and Kat Lawson mysteries. The featured Day of Authors novel is the newest Kat Lawson mystery, Murder on the Med. Kat finds herself on a luxury cruise ship for seniors where a person is missing and presumed overboard. There is the possibility that the ship has smuggled ancient artifacts on board, and mysterious events ensue.

Rick Jackson and Matthew McGough

Rick Jackson and Matthew McGough’s new true crime book is Black Tunnel White Magic. Jackson, a retired decorated LAPD homicide detective and an inspiration for Michael Connelly’s character Harry Bosch, recounts the one case he was unable to put behind him. He partnered with McGough, an investigative journalist, lawyer, and author, to co-write this heinous murder case. The two writers carefully reconstruct the clues, immerse the reader in the story, and demonstrate how a murdered college student received justice.

Susan Meissner

Susan Meissner is a USA Today best-selling author of historical fiction. Her novels have received starred reviews from Publisher’s Weekly, the Library Journal, and Booklist. Meissner’s newest book, A Map to Paradise, will be released on March 18, 2025. Set in 1956 Hollywood, three displaced women with no sense of belonging develop a fragile pact. A devastating wildfire threatens their alliance as one woman faces an impossible situation. Author Kate Quinn calls the tale about “complex and damaged women searching for that elusive thing called a home…both tender and touching.”