September 20, 2025

The Importance of Diversity in Fiction & How Authors Create Diversity through Characters

Panelists:

Ana Manwaring, Thena MacArthur,
& Lisa Towles

Ana Manwaring, Thena MacArthur,
& Lisa Towles

The importance of diversity in fiction has never been greater. Stories need to resonate with audiences of different age groups, backgrounds, and cultures to build interest and long term connections. Panelists Ana Manwaring, Thena MacArthur, and Lisa Towles are all award-winning, Bay Area crime novelists whose books employ diverse voices for the main characters of their standalone and series novels. The authors will discuss how their contemporary stories rely on the perspectives of diverse protagonists and how those cultural perspectives and experiences influence their roles in these unique stories.  

Ana Manwaring is the author of award-winning thrillers set in Mexico against the backdrop of organized crime and institutional corruption. Her latest, Kickback, ripped from the headlines, explores Mexico’s political corruption. Saints and Skeletons, her memoir of living in Mexico, is a LiteraryTitan Gold Book. Ana has target practiced with an Uzi, camped out in ancient Mexican ruins, and visited a Mexico City garbage dump, four Veracruz hospitals, and a funeral home—as research for the forthcoming book she and her Mexican co-author are working on. Ana produces North Bay Poetics, a monthly poetry event, is a Helene S. Barnhart award winner, the vice president of Sisters in Crime Northern California, and co-chair of the Left Coast Crime 2026 conference. www.anamanwaring.com    https://linktr.ee/anamanwaring

T.E. MacArthur is an award-winning author, artist, historian, amateur cat whisperer, and aspiring parapsychologist living in the San Francisco Bay Area with her cat and far too many books.

She’s written for specialized publications, anthologies, and even—accidentally—served as a sports reporter for Reuters News.

Thanks to the pandemic, her storytelling dramatically pivoted toward Retro-Futurism and Supernatural Mysteries—lifelong obsessions—and she now publishes in the Dieselpunk and Paranormal subgenres of Mystery and Thriller fiction. Her 2026 upcoming book is a Gothic Western.

If you ever want to talk ghosts, Raymond Chandler slang, steam locomotives, or Elizabethan insults, she’s your girl.

Lisa Towles is an award-winning crime novelist and an engaging speaker on writing, creativity, and marketing. With 13 crime thrillers to her name, she will soon release her latest title, Switch, in September 2025. This highly anticipated book marks the conclusion of her acclaimed E&A Investigations series, which features a female PI tackling high-impact crimes along the stunning California coast. Her previous E&A titles, Salt Island (June 2023) and Hot House (June 2022), received prestigious literary awards, including Readers Choice and Pencraft, and both became Amazon Kindle #1 bestsellers. 

 Her award-winning standalone thriller titles include Specimen, Codex, Terror Bay, The Ridders, among others. 

 A member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and International Thriller Writers, Towles actively engages with the literary community, supporting fellow authors through her Story Impact author interview podcast. Additionally, she serves as a communications leader for tech firms in the Bay Area and holds an MBA in IT Management.

Learn more at www.lisatowles.com ↗(http://www.lisatowles.com) and follow Lisa on social media: linktr.ee/authortowles.

Join us in person at
Sequoia Yacht Club
(click for MAP)
441 Seaport Court
Redwood City, CA 94063