Author of RGB book to speak to Sonoma students

Students received free book from Sonoma Valley Authors Festival|

Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s influence lives on in her court cases and Supreme Court writings, likely touching the lives of young people who, before this year, may have not known her name. But thanks to a donation from the Sonoma Valley Authors Festival, hundreds of Sonoma Valley teenagers received a book about Ginsburg and will have an opportunity to speak with the book’s author.

Ginny and David Freeman, co-founders of the Sonoma Valley Authors Festival, donated 300 books to Sonoma Valley High School earlier in the fall to give students time to read the book, “Conversations with RBG: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Life, Love, Liberty, and Law” prior to a Dec. 1 Zoom presentation with the author, Jeffrey Rosen.

A question and answer session follows Rosen’s presentation.

“It will be so interesting to hear what the students ask him,” Ginny Freeman said.

The Zoom archive video will be available to view free online the week of Dec. 7.

The book is 20-years’ worth of conversations between Rosen and Ginsburg dating to the 1990s and into the Trump era. Their chats range from their shared love of opera to discussions of her dissents on the Supreme Court.

Rosen is the president of the National Constitution Center, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization with the mission to educate the general population about the U.S. Constitution. He is a journalist, professor and author of six books. He developed the Interactive Constitution, an online resource that launched in 2015 where legal scholars discuss – sometimes agreeing, and sometimes not – on clauses in the Constitution. Since its inception, the site has had more than 30 million hits.

Rosen’s book was published in November, 2019, about 10 months before Ginsburg’s death on Sept. 18.

The Sonoma Valley Authors Festival is a nonprofit organization dedicated to education, literacy and life-long learning. Its three-day festival, which was to be held in August, shifted from in-person to online due to the coronavirus pandemic. The Freemans are planning for their 2021 festival to be in-person with possibly the addition of virtual events based on the success of this year’s virtual festival, they said.

Contact Anne at anne.ernst@sonomanews.com.

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