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Award-winning author Deborah Jackson Taffa is the author of the bestselling memoir, "Whiskey Tender," a 2024 National Book Award Finalist that was a longlisted title for a 2025 Carnegie Medal. Named a top book of 2024 by The Atlantic, Time Magazine, NPR, Elle, Esquire, The NY Times, The New Yorker, Audible, The Washington Post, Oprah Daily, and Publisher's Weekly, Whiskey Tender won, both, a Southwest Book Prize and an International Latino Book Award, and was an Amazon Editor’s Best Choice Book for the year as well. A citizen of the Quechan (Yuma) Nation and Laguna Pueblo, Taffa earned her MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. She later taught Creative Nonfiction at Webster University and Washington University in Saint Louis. She also served as an Executive Board Member with the Missouri Humanities Council where she was instrumental in creating a Native American Heritage Program in the state. Her first manuscript, a memoir about growing up on the Yuma and Navajo reservations, was awarded the Santa Fe Writer's Literary Award by Carmen Maria Machado in 2019. She co-wrote "Digadohi: Lands, Cherokee, and the Trail of Tears," a documentary that debuted on PBS in August, 2020. Currently working on her second story collection, Deborah Jackson Taffa today lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico and serves as the director of the MFA CW Program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. Come to this author's reading, Q & A, and book selling/signing event!

A Chicago native, poet and novelist Phillip B. Williams is the author of two chapbooks and four full-length poetry collections, including "Thief in the Interior" (Alice James Books 2016), winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and a Lambda Literary Award; and "Mutiny" (Penguin 2021), a finalist for the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry Collection and the winner of a 2022 American Book Award. Winner of France’s Prix du Premier Roman Étranger, his debut novel, "Ours" (Viking 2024), was named Oprah Daily’s most anticipated title of 2024, as well as Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker, People, Los Angeles Times, and NPR. Williams's newest collection of poems, Lift Every Voice, is scheduled for release this year on Penguin Books. In addition to being finalist for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literature (Poetry) and twice awarded the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry, Phillip B. Williams is also the recipient of a 2017 Whiting Award, a 2013 Ruth Lilly Fellowship, a Kenyon Review Writers Workshop fellowship, and fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and the National Endowment for the Arts. His work explores Black surrealism, folklore, and spirituality, along with themes of identity, social change, and the connection between language and corporeality. He currently teaches in the MFA in creative writing program at New York University and is founding faculty of the Randolph College Low-res MFA. Come attend this author reading, Q & A, and book selling/signing!

Poet and essayist Jason Schneiderman is the author of five poetry collections, most recently "Self Portrait of Icarus as a Country on Fire" (Red Hen, 2024), as well as a book of essays "Nothingism: Poetry at the End of Print Culture" (University of Michigan Poets on Poetry, 2025), and the craft book "Teaching Writing Through Poetry: An Introduction to Poetic Form" (Bloomsbury, 2025). He is Professor of English at CUNY’s BMCC in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. This will be a dynamic reading and Q & A with the author! Stay after to meet him and get a book copy signed. This event is offered in collaboration with Grossmont College Librarian Nadra Farina and the Americans and the Holocaust traveling exhibit, which is sponsored by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the American Library Association.

New reporting has led to the guilty please of two men behind a charity scam at San Diego stadiums. Plus, Mexicali farmers are fighting for compensation for water conservation. And, the hosts of KPBS' Port of Entry break down what it's like to make a show about living along the border.

When a police officer is found dead in her home with a bullet between her eyes, who investigates?

Both Ciara Estrada and her boyfriend were San Diego police officers. They went with friends to a New Year’s Eve party. Pictures from that night show the smiling couple. The next day, Ciara was dead … discovered on her bathroom floor with her gun in her lap.

Her own department investigated the death and quickly ruled it a suicide. Investigators, who were her colleagues, made no arrests. Identified no suspects.

But her family says there’s more to her story – tragic circumstances that should have prompted a more thorough investigation. They don’t think the police dug deep enough into the death of one of their own.

The Justice Department's opinion challenges civil rights protections that have long treated the institutionalization of disabled Americans as a last resort.

First, we’ll tell you how a long-standing tradition was manipulated by two locals. Then, the mental health impact of ICE detaining kids and their parents. Also, we dive deeper into the cost of transportation and offer some ideas on how to save a buck. And, a local exhibit that takes inspiration from the artist's Iranian childhood. We will also tell you about some weekend events happening across the county.

As CMS project manager, Michael Wayne is responsible for the planning, development, and implementation of KPBS' digital technologies, focusing on the website's content management system.

President Trump's beautification project of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has become plagued with a robust algae bloom, despite a $14 million investment and a coating of "American flag blue."