The Mill Valley Public Library presents a special panel discussion of local memoirists. Learn about the art of writing memoir and hear from these accomplished local talents! The panel features authors Penny Lane, Susannah Kennedy, Lynda Beth Unkeless, and moderator Mary Alice Stephens.

Penny Lane is a writer, wife and mother with an insatiable passion for life and books. She is the author of Redeemed: a Memoir of a Stolen Childhood. Originally from Jackson Heights, Queens, she loves being outdoors-cycling, hiking, traveling, and connecting to, and inspiring people. She has a BS in business and management from the University of Phoenix and an MA in industrial/organizational psychology from Golden Gate University. In her spare time, she helps underserved youth learn to read, apply to college, and find jobs once they graduate, and in food pantries and other non-profits near her home in Mill Valley, California. Find out more at her website www.pennylanewriter.com.

Lynda Beth Unkeless has explored five continents and thrived on the kindness of strangers. Her book Stronger in the End: My 70 Year Swim from Chaos to Calm tells the story of her risks in various countries with good humor, encouraging her readers to live without guilt and shame. At 62, she was diagnosed with two brain tumors. Unbowed and undaunted, she healed and continued to work as an advocate for people diagnosed with mental illness. She has written and performed four one-woman shows at The Marsh Theatre in San Francisco, including Burning Man Breakup/Breakthrough, Rosey, Are You Somebody? and Not Far from the Throat.

Susannah Kennedy is a Berkeley and Oxford-educated anthropologist who now writes literary nonfiction. Her debut Reading Jane: A Daughter's Memoir is a vivid “can’t put it down” exploration of the late-in-life suicide of her mother Jane and transgenerational influences of parenting on her own mothering of three children. It won many awards, including a Foreword Review INDIES Book of the Year 2023. She has also been published in The Summerset Review, Evening Street Review, Halfway Down the Stairs, (mac)ro(mic), and Wilderness House Literary Review. She and her husband live on the Marin coast.

Mary Alice Stephens has written and produced for Bay Area Backroads, HGTV, Food Network, and National Geographic. Her debut book, Uncorked: A Memoir of Starting Over, will be released by Sibylline Press on August 8, 2025. Though Mary's life appeared picture-perfect, she secretly battled alcoholism for 30 years. In her memoir, she lays bare the messy struggles of early recovery and reexamines an identity—a hard shell shaped by trauma—that no longer served her, creating a more authentic version of herself. Mary earned her MFA in creative nonfiction from the Dominican University of California and resides in Marin County, California with her family.