Along with Susan Straight, Alex Espinoza, Emily Rapp Black, and Victoria Chang, Tod discusses the need for Rancho Mirage’s Writers Festival to embrace diversity.

“So what is an intellectual village minus the voices of those most at risk? It is an indictment of the very essence of literature. 

We read to understand those people we might never meet. We read to better understand compassion, and also to learn how to fear its demise. Because to experience another human’s logic is to experience the universe, writ tiny, one letter at a time.”