On a chilly afternoon, Lynette Vrooman and Gary Noy strolled into the warmth of Tofanelli’s Gold Country Bistro. The two writers were meeting at the Grass Valley icon to talk about an upcoming symposium. But as they settled near an old, tattered brick wall in its eatery, it was Noy who understood that if walls could talk – as the saying goes – that one could whisper about the very beginning of California literature.   
 
The weathered stone patrician once belonged to a structure housing the newspaper office of John Rollin Ridge, America’s first celebrated Native American writer and the author of the Golden State’s first hit book. Ridge remains one of the most darkly Shakespearean figures of the West. He was the survivor of a Cherokee civil war in Arkansas that exterminated most other men in his family. He was an unapologetic gun-slinger who killed a man when he was 22 and escaped the consequences by trekking out to the Gold Rush. He was an admired statesman for an indigenous people betrayed and persecuted by the federal government, who nonetheless held complicated politics when the North eventually fought the South. And Ridge was a man of volcanic temper, a wordsmith who’d beat and sometimes flash his gun at other Grass Valley reporters over disagreements in print. Most importantly, Ridge was one of the Sacramento region’s first truly professional journalists – and a man who immortalized himself by penning a story that foreshadowed the nation’s coming obsession with True Crime, his book hitting store shelves 115 years before a term for the genre even existed. 
 
Noy, one of the top Gold Rush historians working today, knows all about Ridge’s unlikely rise over nightmarish trauma, genocidal politics and racial prejudice to become a unique celebrity of the 1850s and 60s. Noy wrote a chapter about Ridge in his nonfiction book “Gold Rush Stories” and was later a primary voice interviewed in the two-hour audio-documentary about Ridge’s life, which was Episode 6 of the ‘Drinkers with Writing Problems’ podcast, titled Boomtowns of the American West. 
 
But Noy acknowledges Nevada County isn’t just special because it produced California’s first major author: Between its twin creative towers of Grass Valley and Nevada City, few rural communities have played a more out-sized role in American Letters. Vrooman understands that, too. She’s a memoirist and the Editor of Sierra College Press who’s spent years restoring a western Victorian house in the mountainous hamlet of Dutch Flat. Like Noy, Vrooman knows about the legacy of Wallace Stegner living in Grass Valley in the 1970s and using it as inspiration for his seminal book “Angle of Repose.” She’s also aware that Nevada City is where the great California novelist Oakley Hall spent his final days, with his influence spreading far beyond his own books through mentoring cutting-edge writers that include Louis B. Jones, Michael Chabon, Richard Ford – and best-selling novelist Amy Tan. 
 
Next month, a conference meant to keep the literary spark alive in Nevada County will feature Tan as its keynote speaker. 
 
In one sense, there’s nothing new about gathering crowds in front of writers in Grass Valley and Nevada City. A young Mark Twain performed one of his original spoken-word extravaganzas in the former, staying at the Holbrook Hotel just a few feet away from John Rollin Ridge’s office. Later, California’s trail-blazing storyteller of the early 20^th century, Jack London, performed his own night of spoken-word wonders in Nevada City. 
 
The Sierra Writers Conference was started ten years ago as a way of making sure such creative traditions keep flourishing. Its first keynote speaker was Louie B. Jones, whose 1997 novel “California’s Over” was a national best-seller. Jones began as one of Oakley Hall’s students and wound up his son-in-law, after marrying his daughter Bret Hall. Oakley Hall’s other daughter, Sands Hall, is a writer who recently made waves with her memoir “Reclaiming My Decade Lost in Scientology.”

Since Sands Hall’s father was one of Amy Tan’s mentors, the conference tapped Sands to host a conversation with the poignant mind behind “The Joy Luck Club” and “The Bonesetter’s Daughter.” That part of the event happens March 8 at Sierra College’s Grass Valley campus at 2 p.m.
 
“Once Amy agreed, the first person I called was Sands,” Vrooman recalled. “I told her, ‘You’re the best choice to do this.’” 
 
The conference is hosted by Sierra College Press and also features popular California nature writer and illustrator John Muir Laws. In 2019, Laws published “Sierra Wildflowers: A Hiker’s Guide” on Sierra College Press. That, along with several titles he’s published with Heyday Books in Berkeley, including “The Laws Field Guide to the Sierra Nevada,” have made Laws a well-known name in outdoor life and conservation circles. 
 
Amy Tan’s newest book, “The Backyard Bird Chronicles,” was influenced by Laws’ work.    
 
The theme of this year’s conference is Ecosystems. Given that Grass Valley was historically a mining town sustained partly by the work of Chinese immigrants, and given Tan’s latest book is a meditation on time and natural splendor, the conference saw her as the ideal literary personality to punctuate 2025.  
 
“What she can bring is two-fold,” Vrooman reflected. “Not only has she written about the Chinese-American experience, but she also has this new book that speaks to the environment. It’s a perfect marriage of what we do.”
 
Other writers hosting workshops at the conference include Dorothy Lazard, Farnaz Fatemi, Joan Griffin, C. E. Shue, Gail Carriger, Ernesto Garay, Catharine Bramkamp, Karen McCoy, Kim Culbertson, Kirsten Casey and Ingrid Keriotis. Tickets for the conference can be purchased here. 
 
Gary Noy, the founding editor of Sierra College Press and author of SN&R favorite “Hellacious California,” will host a workshop that could be handy to professionals who work in multiple fields. 
 
“I’ll be talking about pure craft and the writer’s tool box, and the things any writer needs to have to succeed,” Noy said. “It’s patience. It’s a thick skin. Things like that. But other authors will be focusing on the creative part, and inspirational part, so it’s a real mix. Between all that, it’s a great insight into how writers operate. It always fascinates me when writers meet other writers and come together to share process.”