Susan Vreeland Keynote Speaker

A three-time winner of the Theodor S. Geisel Award, the highest honor given by the San Diego Book Awards, Susan Vreeland is the internationally known author of art-related historical fiction.

Her newest book, New York Times Best Seller Luncheon of the Boating Party, reveals Renoir's masterpiece, the personalities involved in its making, and the vibrancy and joie de vivre of late nineteenth century Paris.

Her previous works include Life Studies, stories of Impressionist painters and contemporary people encountering art; Girl in Hyacinth Blue, tracing an alleged Vermeer painting through the centuries; The Passion of Artemisia, illuminating Italian Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi; and The Forest Lover, following rebel Canadian painter Emily Carr into the British Columbia wilderness.

Two of these earlier books have also been New York Times Best Sellers. Vreeland's novels have been translated into twenty-six languages, and have frequently been selected as Book Sense Picks. She was a high school English teacher in San Diego for thirty years.