January 7, 2015 THE 7th ANNUAL PASADENA FESTIVAL OF WOMEN AUTHORS TO BE HELD ON SATURDAY, MARCH 7, 2015 Four Award-Winning Women Authors Will Be Featured: NoViolet Bulawayo, Joyce Maynard, Lisa See, and Mona Simpson Pasadena, Calif. – The 7th Annual Pasadena Festival of Women Authors will be held on Saturday, March 7, 2015. This prestigious event, featuring four award-winning women authors – NoViolet Bulawayo , Joyce Maynard, Lisa See, and Mona Simpson-- will take place at the Pasadena Senior Center, 85 East Holly Street, Pasadena, Calif. Kate Gale, cofounder and Managing Director of the Red Hen Press and Editor of the Los Angeles Review, will be the kickoff speaker. In addition to their individual talks, the four authors will participate in a panel discussion led by Georgia Jeffries, a tenured professor at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts and the writer/producer of a host of Emmy Award-winning television and film dramas. In addition to her series work, Ms. Jeffries has been honored with two Writers Guild Awards, the Humanitas Prize, the Inter-Guild Merit Award and two Golden Globe nominations. The Pasadena Festival of Women Authors brings together a group of diverse and internationally recognized women authors to discuss their works with an enthusiastic audience whose love of literature inspired the event. The authors’ works include fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. The festival has become known for providing an intimate setting where authors and guests are able to interact with each other. NoViolet Bulawayo’s astonishing debut novel, We Need New Names, was selected for the 2013 Man Booker Prize shortlist, making her the first black African woman and the first Zimbabwean to be shortlisted for the prize. We Need New Names went on to win the Etisalat Prize for Literature and the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. NoViolet Bulawayo has also been named one of the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35.” Currently a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford, she was born and raised in Zimbabwe and moved to Michigan as a teenager. The New York Times called We Need New Names, “A deeply felt and fiercely written debut novel. The voice Ms. Bulawayo has fashioned for [Darling] is utterly distinctive.” Joyce Maynard first burst on the national scene when she was a freshman at Yale with her New York Times cover story “An Eighteen-Year-Old Looks Back on Life.” Since then she’s written two best-selling memoirs, Looking Back and At Home in the World, and eight novels. Two of her novels have been made into movies – To Die For, starring Nicole Kidman, and Labor Day, starring Kate Winslet and Josh Brolin. Her essays have appeared in the New York Times, Vogue, More, and O Magazine, and have been widely anthologized. The Washington Post called Maynard’s latest novel, After Her, “convincing and poignant.” Maynard is a fellow of the MacDowell Artists’ Colony and Yaddo. Lisa See is the author of the beloved New York Times bestsellers, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, Peony in Love, Shanghai Girls and Dreams of Joy. The Washington Post said of her latest novel, China Dolls, “This emotional, informative and brilliant page-turner resonates with resilience and humanity,” while O magazine called it “a spellbinding portrait of a time burning with opportunity and mystery.” Ms. See has been a journalist, with articles appearing in Vogue, Publishers Weekly, Self and More; a librettist for an opera based on her bestselling non-fiction book, On Gold Mountain; and a guest curator with exhibits appearing at the Autry, Smithsonian and Chinese American museums. Mona Simpson’s first novel, Anywhere But Here won the Whiting Prize and was made into a movie starring Susan Sarandon and Natalie Portman. Four award-winning novels later, she brings us Casebook, named an Amazon Best Book of the Month. NPR called it “a sort of cross between The Catcher in the Rye and Harriet the Spy. But it is very much its own book, singular and haunting.” Mona Simpson is a professor of English at UCLA and the Sadie Samuelson Levy Professor in Languages and Literature at Bard College. Her awards include the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize, the Lila Wallace Reader’s Digest Prize, a grant from the NEA, a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University, and most recently, a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Kate Gale is a leading light in the literary world recognized for her creative work, critical insights and leadership ability. She’s the cofounder and Managing Editor of Red Hen Press, Editor of the Los Angeles Review, an award-winning poet, a fiction writer and a blogger for the Huffington Post. She also served as President of the American Composers Forum, Los Angeles, from 2006-2014. Dr. Gale teaches in Low Residency MFA programs around the country and is on the boards of A Room of Her Own Foundation and Poetry Society of America. Her six librettos include Rio de Sangre, with composer Don Davis, which premiered at the Florentine Opera in Milwaukee. Her latest poetry collections are The Goldilocks Zone and Echo Lights. Proceeds from the event will benefit the Pasadena Senior Center and the Pasadena City College Writer-in-Residence program. In the last six years, the Pasadena Festival of Women Authors has generated over $175,000 in donations. Tickets for the festival are $95 per person and include lunch. Reserved tables of 10 are $1,500. Visit www.pasadenafestivalofwomenauthors.org for more information. Press Contact: Ann Erdman (626) 375-2742