Local Authors Panel

Meet your local authors at the Village Well for a panel on telling stories across genres, the business of writing books, and more!

Local Author Panel at the Village Well

Join us for a fun and casual evening with some amazing local authors sharing their stories and insights. This is a great chance to hear about their journeys, ask questions, and get inspired—all in person at the cozy Village Well. Whether you're a book lover or just curious, come hang out with fellow readers and discover new literary voices in your community!

About the participants:

Andrew Rubin is a filmmaker, writer, and cofounder of the mental health education company Symptom Media. A graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, where he studied Film Production and History, he has spent over a decade in the trenches of Hollywood development as a screenwriter. Andrew codirected the inspirational documentary Ride with Larry, about Parkinson's, inspired by his father's battle against the disease. The film’s segment exploring Parkinson's and medical marijuana received global attention, and helped spark a broader conversation about dignity, treatment, and the role of alternative medicine. He is also the cofounder and president of Symptom Media, an innovative mental health education platform used by over 500 universities, hospitals and medical schools worldwide to help train students and clinicians and destigmatize mental illness. Andrew lives in California, where he divides his time between San Diego and Los Angeles.

Christopher Farnsworth is a novelist, screenwriter, and journalist. His latest book, Robert B. Parker's Buried Secrets, featuring the iconic Jesse Stone, was an instant USA Today and Publishers Weekly bestseller. His other works, including Blood Oath, The President's Vampire, Killfile, and Flashmob, have been published in more than a dozen countries, translated into ten languages, and optioned for film and television. He was born and raised in Idaho and now lives in Los Angeles with his family. His next novel, Robert B. Parker's Big Shot, will be out February 10.

Ken Pisani is an Emmy-nominated producer and screenwriter, novelist, playwright, and comic book creator. (Ken needs to learn how to focus.) His debut novel, Amp'd, published by St. Martin’s Press, was a Los Angeles Times bestseller and runner-up to Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime for the Thurber Prize for American Humor, and optioned for television. He’s also the writer-creator of the Geekie Award-winning sci-fi graphic novel Colonus, published by Dark Horse Comics, and the quirky murder mystery novella 4 Corners, also optioned for TV. Ken has sold network pilots and feature screenplays, events that expired with little fanfare. His credits include a screenplay co-written with David Seidler, Oscar-winner for The King’s Speech, and a PBS documentary on the early career of US Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens that he hopes to develop as a feature. His fiction was short-listed for the 2025 HG Wells Prize and he's also contributed to The Saturday Evening Post, The Louisville Review, Salon, Publishers Weekly, Huffington Post, Literary Hub, Carve, American Writers Review, and other publications, as well as the anthology More Tonto Short Stories, published in the US and UK. Ken has a new novel, The Defection and Subsequent Resurrection of Nikolai Pushkin (no pub date) and is currently working on a short story collection and a variety of film and TV projects. He lives in Los Angeles with his beautiful wife, Amanda.

Ryan Elizabeth Penske is a mix of a Midwest and Southern California upbringing, where she discovered her love for snowy Halloweens in Michigan and the everlasting California sun, but most importantly her love for reading in her early teens. Now, after writing her debut YA novel The Dreamers, she completed her MA in English Literature from Chapman University where she also received her BA in English Literature, Rhetoric, and Cultural Studies Between moments of writing and her academic pursuits, Ryan spends her days with her best buddy Indy, her Australian Shepherd. Together they enjoy hiking, going to bookstores, traveling, spending exuberant amounts of time of “BookTok,” and of course dreaming.

Stefanie Leder is author and TV showrunner and writer whose credits include the MTV teen dramedy Faking It, TBS comedy Men at Work, Netflix’s Boo, Bitch, and ABC Family comedy Melissa & Joey. She is also a frequent guest lecturer on television writing at the Low Residency MFA at UCR. Bilingual in English and Spanish, she spent a year abroad in Costa Rica, and has worked for a nonprofit on Fair Trade Coffee and anti-sweatshop campaigns. Love, Coffee, and Revolution is her first novel. You can also read her award-nominated short story, “Not a Dinner Party Person” in Eight Very Bad Nights; A Collection of Hanukkah Noir, or in The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2025.

Susan Walter is a recovering screenwriter and film director who started writing books to kill people because it was frowned upon in real life. Her first two novels, Good as Dead and Over Her Dead Body are set in the movie business, but then she discovered there are places that are even more dangerous. She is now murdering people on airplanes, on ski hills, and in safehouses while on the run from organized crime. Her Netflix movie All I Wish, which she also wrote, stars Sharon Stone and Tony Goldwyn and won a screenwriting award that you have never heard of, but that she is proud of nonetheless. You can learn more about Susan at www.susanwalterwriter.com.