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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.

We hear from a legal expert on the birthright citizenship case in front of the Supreme Court. Then, Catholics gathered outside of the Federal Courthouse downtown as a reaffirmed commitment to accompany migrants inside. Also, we’ll tell you about two middle-schoolers who won first place for their documentary.

Ahmad Joudeh once danced under the threat of ISIS in a Syrian refugee camp. Now he performs on world stages. He shares how survival became art, how he reclaimed his story and what it takes to live fully as a dancer.

U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) Deputy Administrator Bill Briggs visited the Tijuana River Valley to hear from small business owners on how the ongoing sewage crisis is affecting their establishments.

A jury last week found Meta and Google liable for causing mental harms to a woman who had been using social media since the age of 6. On Midday Edition Wednesday, we talk about how core social media features like infinite scrolling and autoplay can lead to problematic social media use.

Gas prices have passed $4 a gallon nationally — the highest since 2022. Here in California, we're seeing even higher prices.

First, San Diego county jail ICE transfers tripled last year, we’ll tell you why. Also, with some citing concerns over a lack of oversight, state auditors say they will now conduct audits of law enforcement’s so-called “fusion centers.” Then, three local non-profits were awarded with new electric vehicles. Finally, a tour and visit to the Navy Seal Museum.

Compulsion Dance and Theatre stages a new play about the night the Vietnam War draft lottery began.