Rancho Mirage Writers Festival

Coming to RMWF 2022: Frederick J. Ryan Jr. might be best known today as CEO and publisher of The Washington Post, but he also founded prize-winning political journalism outfit Politico. He began his career as an attorney with the Los Angeles law firm of Hill, Farrer & Burrill. He joined the White House staff in 1982 as Assistant to the President of the United States, one of the youngest people ever to serve in such a position. From 1989 until 1995, he served as Chief of Staff... to President Ronald Reagan. Ryan is Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library Foundation and also Chairman of the Board of Directors of the White House Historical Association. Growing up in Italy and California, he developed an early interest in wine and its production, studied winemaking and its history, and now participates in a joint winemaking venture in Napa Valley. See more

Sneak Peek of the 2022 Festival: The world population is expected to grow to almost 10 billion by 2050. With 3.4 billion more mouths to feed, and the growing desire of the middle class for meat and dairy in developing countries, global demand for food could increase by 98 percent. This means that agriculture around the world needs to step up production and increase yields. But scientists say that the impacts of climate changehigher temperatures, extreme weather, drought, inc...reasing levels of carbon dioxide and sea level risethreaten to decrease the quantity and jeopardize the quality of our food supplies. Climate change will not only affect cropsit will also impact meat production, fisheries and other fundamental aspects of our food supply. Our passionate, informed panelists Jonathan Safran Foer and Amanda Little with moderator Patt Morrison will have a frank discussion on the state of the earth’s food supply and what we can do about it. See more

Coming to RMWF 2022: Anne Sebba is a biographer, lecturer, journalist, former Reuters foreign correspondent and author. Most of her books are about strong women who have carved out a life against the odds from Enid Bagnold, to Mother Teresa and Laura Ashley. Her journalism focuses on women who have fought for their own rights or the rights of others. Her book about Paris from 193949 through women’s eyes, Les Parisiennes: How the Women of Paris Lived, Loved and Died in the 1940’s was the winner of the Franco-British Society prize. Her biography, That Woman, the Life of Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor, was a bestseller on publication Australia and the subject of a documentary, based on her work. She is a Trustee of the National Archives Trust and a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research.

Coming to RMWF 2022: William J. Bratton is one of the world's most respected and trusted experts on risk and security issues. During a 46-year career in law enforcement, he instituted progressive change while leading six police departments, including seven years as Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department and two nonconsecutive terms as the Police Commissioner of the City of New York. He is the only person ever to lead the police agencies of America's two largest cities. Propelled by extraordinary results, Bratton had a dazzling rise, and ultimately a dazzling career, becoming the most famous police commissioner of modern times. His new book, The Profession: A Memoir of Community, Race, and the Arc of Policing in America, is the story of that career in full.

Festival favorite Dave Barry is returning for the 2022 Festival! For many years he wrote a nationally syndicated humor column for the Miami Herald which appeared in more than 500 newspapers. Barry won a Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 1988 for "his consistently effective use of humor as a device for presenting fresh insights into serious concerns." Barry has written more than 30 books, including the novels Big Trouble, Lunatics, Tricky Business and Insane City. He has also w...ritten a number of books with titles like I'll Mature When I'm Dead, which are technically classified as nonfiction, although they contain numerous lies. Dave plays lead guitar in a literary rock band called the Rock Bottom Remainders, whose other members include Stephen King, Amy Tan, Ridley Pearson and Mitch Albom. They are not musically skilled, but they are extremely loud. See more

Coming to RMWF 2022: Eileen Pollack is a graduate of Yale University with a BS in physics. Pollack later earned an MFA from the University of Iowa. Her early publications include The Only Woman in the Room: Why Science Is Still a Boys’ Club and Creative Nonfiction: A Guide to Form, Content, and Style, with Readings. She has written novels, short fiction, creative nonfiction, essays, articles and reviews. Pollack has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Michener Foundation, the Rona Jaffe Foundation, and the Massachusetts Arts Council. A longtime faculty member and former director of the Helen Zell MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of Michigan, she now lives and works in Boston.

Coming to RMWF 2022: Walter Isaacson in The Wall Street Journal What Gene Editing Can Do for Humankind: The new biotechnology called CRISPR offers the prospect of defeating lethal viruses and curing genetic diseases, even as it raises serious moral questions. Read the full article at: https://www.wsj.com//what-gene-editing-can-do-for-humankin

Coming to RMWF 2022: Emmy winner Mo Rocca is a humorist, journalist and actor. He is a correspondent for CBS Sunday Morning and a frequent panelist on NPR’s hit weekly quiz show Wait, WaitDon’t Tell Me! Rocca spent four seasons as a correspondent on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. He created and hosted Cooking Channel’s My Grandmother’s Ravioli, in which he learned to cook from grandparents across America.

Coming to RMWF 2022: Rikki Klieman has a reputation as one of the nation’s most celebrated lawyers and legal authorities. Klieman is currently a contributor and legal analyst for CBS News. She was an anchor at the Courtroom Television Network from 19942010 and a contributor for the CBS Early Show, the NBC Today Show as well as the E! Network. She has also appeared as a legal analyst on NBC’s Nightly News, CBS Evening News, ABC, CNN, CNBC and MSNBC. She was named one of the f...ive most outstanding women trial lawyers in the country by TIME magazine. Her autobiography, Fairy Tales Can Come True: How a Driven Woman Changed Her Destiny, was a Los Angeles Times bestseller. She has published numerous articles on criminal law and was a columnist about legal issues for the popular LA Confidential Magazine. She currently writes for The Daily Beast. See more

In his most recent book, Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own, Eddie S. Glaude Jr. bears witness to the difficult truth of race in America today. It is at once a searing exploration that lays bare the tangled web of race, trauma, and memory, and a powerful interrogation of what we all must ask of ourselves in order to call forth a new America. Jon Meacham's latest book is His Truth Is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope. Lewis was arguably a saint in our time, risking limb and life to bear witness for the powerless in the face of the powerful. In many ways he brought a still-evolving nation closer to realizing its ideals, and his story offers inspiration and illumination for Americans today who are working for social and political change.

Coming to RMWF 2022: Junot Díaz was born in the Dominican Republic and raised in New Jersey. He is the author of the critically acclaimed Drown; The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award; and This Is How You Lose Her, a New York Times bestseller and National Book Award finalist. He is the recipient of a MacArthur Genius Fellowship, PEN/Malamud Award, Dayton Literary Peace Prize, Guggenheim Fellowship, and PEN/O. Henry Award. A graduate of Rutgers College, Díaz is currently the fiction editor at Boston Review and the Rudge and Nancy Allen Professor of Writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Coming to RMWF 2020: Teddy Abrams is the widely-acclaimed music director of the Louisville Orchestra and music director and conductor of the Britt Orchestra, as well as an established pianist, clarinetist, and composer. A tireless advocate for the power of music, Abrams continues to foster interdisciplinary collaboration with organizations including the Louisville Ballet, the Center for Interfaith Relations, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the Speed Art Museum and the Folger Shakespeare Library.

Coming to RMWF 2022: Walter Isaacson is an author, journalist, and professor. He has been the President and CEO of the Aspen Institute, a nonpartisan policy studies organization based in Washington, D.C., the chair and CEO of CNN, and the editor of TIME. All 2022 Festival attendees will receive a free copy of Isaacson’s latest book, The Code Breaker, a gripping account of how biochemist Jennifer Doudna and her colleagues launched a revolution with an easy-to-use tool that can edit DNA. Known as CRISPR, it opened a brave new world of medical miracles and moral questions. Her story is a thrilling detective tale that involves the most profound wonders of nature, from the origins of life to the future of our species.

We hope you can join us today! New panels at 10:00AM, 11:30AM, 1:00PM and 2:30PM PST. Link to register: https://usc.zoom.us/webi/register/WN_HYcLhIBsRPiojFUwM8JyQA

Coming to RMWF 2022: Rick Atkinson is the author of the Liberation Trilogy, a narrative history of the liberation of Europe in World War II. The first volume, An Army at Dawn, received the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for history. Atkinson’s awards include the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting and the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for public service. He is winner of the 1989 George Polk Award for national reporting, the 2003 Society for Military History Distinguished Book Award, the 20...07 Gerald R. Ford Award for Distinguished Reporting on National Defense, the 2010 Pritzker Military Library Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing, the 2013 New York Military Affairs Symposium award for lifetime achievement, and the 2014 Samuel Eliot Morison Prize for lifetime achievement from the Society for Military History. His latest book, The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777, is the first volume of his intended Revolution Trilogy, a history of the American rebellion through 1783. See more

Join us tomorrow, 10/13 at 10AM! Link to register: https://usc.zoom.us/webi/register/WN_HYcLhIBsRPiojFUwM8JyQA Featuring leading political figures, journalists, and scholars, the Warschaw Conference on Practical Politics will offer insider perspectives into the presidential election and its aftermath. Participants from across the political spectrum will engage in discussions, ranging from how the winning candidate prevailedif we know who won by thenand the future of the lo...sing partyif we know who lost by then. We will explore the country’s hyper-polarization and the challenges ahead for the next four years. Each panel will conclude with an audience Q&A session. Panelists include some of the stars of the Rancho Mirage Writers FestivalJames Carville, Bret Stephens, Douglas Brinkley, Karl Rove, Gloria Borger, Rick Stengel and more!