moderated by Tobi Harper, Deputy Director, Red Hen Press

Jim Tilley is the author of multiple collections of poetry but AGAINST THE WIND (September 2019), a story of six characters' second chances to make things right, is his debut novel.

Ralph, a successful environmental lawyer who represents big energy companies, is forced to reevaluate his work and personal beliefs when Lynn, his former love and a high school English teacher asks him to take up her environmental cause. To complicate matters, Jules, Lynn's child and the product of a rape by an acquaintance of Ralph in high school, is a transgender adolescent male with engineering aspiration who struggles to excel in a world hostile to his kind. Other principal characters include a French-Canadian political science profressor, an accomplished engineer drawfed by his father's success, and a Quebec separatist party's Minister of Natural Resources.

AGAINST THE WIND, brings to question topics of environmental activism, family and gender identity, rape, and unresolved rivalries, to name a few. 

Ron Koertge is South Pasadena's Poet Laureate and his poem "Negative Space" inspired the Oscar-nominated animated short. Ron's latest book is OLYMPUSVILLE (April 2018), is a collection of illustrated poems that satirizes the Greek gods in comic form: sexy Aphrodite, gorgeous Adonis, Ares the warmonger, Artemis the huntress, wise Athena, bitter Demeter, and the like.