About Our Guest Speaker
Mysti works in San Francisco at the best software shop in town and lives in a forgotten corner of The City with her husband, graphic novelist Dale Berry, and the maximum number of black rescue cats their vet recommends for a small house (two). An active member of MWA, Sisters in Crime, and ITW, Mysti has served on the board of her local MWA and Sisters in Crime chapters (NorCal!) and on the board of the PSWA. She is honored to be the President for the Desert Sleuth chapter of SinC (Phoenix, Arizona) for 2021. Mysti is the editor and publisher of Low Down Dirty Vote, two volumes of short stories created to raise money for voting rights work.
When not raising money for voting rights, you can find Mysti polishing her financial fraud murder mystery to keep up with real-life changes in how people steal millions of dollars without getting caught. She also speaks at writers conferences, teaches workshops, and tweets far too often for her own mental health. To cope with the pandemic, she has started a historical mystery set at the time of the Hilo Massacre–an era and location where Mysti’s real-life haole mother was born. Spending imaginary time in Hawaii is good work when you can get it. Mysti has an MFA in Writing from the University of San Francisco and a BA in Linguistics from UC Santa Cruz—but she never lets them get in the way of a good story. She loves to talk with people about story structure, language, film noir, and the resistance, not always in that order. She was really fond of Dalwhinnie scotch until a Scotsman told her it is a “lady’s whiskey.” One of her favorite adventures was serving as the amuse-bouche for MC Beaton at Bloody Scotland. If you see her at a writer’s conference or book festival, please do say hello. |
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