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Join us Monday, August 25, for First Page Critiques with Jonathan Maberry and Zoe Ghahremani
Our August 25 meeting will be an in-person meeting at 6:30 p.m. at St. Andrew’s Lutheran Church, 8350 Lake Murray Blvd, San Diego, CA 92119. This is the same location we held our December holiday event.
The event had originally been planned for both in-person and Zoom participation, but the Board of Directors reluctantly decided to change the meeting to in-person only because of a scheduling challenge.
To take part in the readings, format your first page submission according to the following guidelines:
- Margins 1" on all four sides
- Spacing: Double spaced
- Font Type and Size: Courier or Times New Roman, Size 12
- Omit name of author or any identifying information.
Send submission to mardiewho@yahoo.com by August 16, 2025.
Our critiquers, Jonathan and Zoe, are honorary members of SDWEG in recognition of their publishing credentials and support for writers in the San Diego area. We are extremely fortunate to have their expertise for this event.
Bios:
JONATHAN MABERRY is a New York Times bestselling author, 5-time Bram Stoker Award-winner, 4-time Scribe Award winner, Inkpot Award winner, anthology editor, writing teacher, and comic book writer. His vampire apocalypse book series, V-WARS, was a Netflix original series. He writes in multiple genres, including suspense, thriller, horror, science fiction, epic fantasy, and action; and he writes for adults, teens, and middle-grade. His works include the Joe Ledger Thrillers, Kagen the Damned, Ink, Glimpse, the Rot & Ruin series, the Dead of Night series, The Wolfman, X-Files Origins: Devil’s Advocate, The Sleepers War, NecroTek, Mars One, and many others. Several of his works are in development for film and TV.
He is the editor of high-profile anthologies including Weird Tales: 100 Years of Weird, The X-Files, Aliens: Bug Hunt, Out of Tune, Don’t Turn out the Lights: A Tribute to Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, Baker Street Irregulars, Nights of the Living Dead, and others.
His comics include Black Panther: DoomWar, The Punisher: Naked Kills, Bad Blood and many others. His Rot & Ruin young adult novel was adapted into the #1 horror comic on Webtoon and is being developed for film by Alcon Entertainment.
He president of the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers, and the editor of Weird Tales Magazine. He lives in San Diego, California. Find him online at www.jonathanmaberry.com.
ZOHREH (ZOE) GHAHREMANI is an author, speaker, and painter whose work is influenced by her experiences as a Middle Eastern immigrant and her background as a poet.
Zoe is a recovered dentist whose first novel – Sky of Red Poppies was selected for One Book, One San Diego 2011. Her sophomore novel, The Moon Daughter won Writer’s Digest Book Awards for Best Literary Fiction as well as the San Diego Book Award. She is also the author of The Commiserator (non-fiction in Persian) and has contributed to numerous anthologies. Zoe was profiled in the book A Glorious Freedom: Older Women Leading Extraordinary Lives by Lisa Congdon, alongside Vera Wang, Cheryl Strayed, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and more. In 2019, she received the Community Leader Award from the San Diego Writers Festival. Among her favorite recognitions is that in 2013, more than 30,000 local Girl Scouts selected her as the Cool Women!
She now writes for both adults and children. Her debut picture book, Memory Garden, illustrated by her daughter Susie, was published in 2024. Her second picture book Celebrating Nowruz about the Persian New Year, will be released next February.
Zoe has been featured on WBEZ in Chicago, Voice of America, KPBS, Radio Iran, Osher Club, at the Iranian American Women Foundation Conferences, and at universities nationwide, including Georgetown, University of Chicago, UC Berkeley, San Diego State University, UCSD, and many more.
An avid supporter of writers, Zoe founded and curates the Author of the Month program and is an active member of Writing Women. She is a past board member of San Diego Writers, Ink, the San Diego Writers and Editors Guild, and Friends of San Diego Central Library.
