• Check-In opens at 5:45PM. Please print out your tickets.
• Seating is first-come, first served.
• Books will be distributed the evening of the event at check-in to "With Book" Ticketholders. Neal and Anne will sign books after the discussion.
• The Performing Arts Center is directly behind the Coronado Public Library. You can view a parking map HERE. The two lots marked “school parking lots (for select events only)” will be available.
• Please call the Warwick's Book Department at 858-454-0347 for more information.

Neal Allen is a writer, spiritual coach and speaker whose chief interest is removing obstacles of the ego. He is the author of Shapes of Truth: Discover God Inside You. A former journalist and corporate executive, he earned master's degrees in Political Science and Eastern Classics. He lives with his wife the writer, Anne Lamott, in Northern California.

Anne Lamott is the author of many bestsellers. Her seven novels include Rosie and Imperfect Birds. Her twelve non-fiction works include Bird by Bird, Operating Instructions, Help, Thanks, Wow, and most recently, Dusk, Night, Dawn. She lives in Northern California with her husband and author of Better Days, Neal Allen.

In this life-changing book, writer and spiritual coach, Neal Allen, teaches us a stunning new method for quieting the inner critic.

"Better Days will help you get to know your inner critic, and quiet its yammering, and in so doing, get to know the person you were born to be." - Anne Lamott, Author of Dusk Night Dawn, Bird by Bird and others

What if your superego has it wrong? That snarky little bully in your head...you know the one. You've lived under its weight for decades.

I'm a fraud, I'm lazy
I need to work harder
I need to be tougher, funnier, calmer...
I need to stay quiet, look pretty, stop showing off
I need to put others before me, I need to put myself first
I need to be perfect
I need to hide who I really am

Sound familiar?

You know that its scolding voice is harmful to you, but you can't will it away. You accept a life with short periods of peace and long stretches of stress and anxiety. But you don't have to.

In this revolutionary new book, Better Days: Tame Your Inner Critic, writer and spiritual coach, Neal Allen, examines a critical aspect of the human psyche that often gets ignored - the superego. Building on Freud's idea that the superego necessarily forms a person's moral conscience, Neal explains how this voice in your head develops in childhood as a survival mechanism, but when no longer needed for protection, camps out in your mind like a personal parasite. A parasite that doesn't belong.

Through simple and engaging exercises and explorations, Neal leads you into meeting, confronting, and ultimately quieting your own inner critic. By shedding off the burden of the superego, you can overcome tired patterns of reward and punishment, reduce the self-talk that harms you, and ultimately clear an open space for the life you deserve, one that is gentler and more peaceful.

Just imagine...if all that nasty, negative chatter in your head just evaporated ... what would you do next?

Better days are just ahead.

Marni Freedman is the co-founder and Programming Director for The San Diego Writers Festival, whose mission is to gather Southern California writers and creatives for a day of literary celebration, creative expression and most importantly, to promote diversity and inclusion for undeserved communities.

She runs the San Diego Writers Network and is the programming director for the San Diego Memoir Association which produces a yearly theatrical Memoir Showcase. Marni has also edited four volumes of the Anthology, Shaking the Tree: brazen. short. memoir.

Marni is also a therapist for artists and writers. Her welcoming, easy-going nature and solid background are the underpinnings of what makes her such a popular writing coach across the country. Marni is a unique writing coach because she has a tool for almost everything. She has a way of taking complicated information and translating it into easy-to-grasp, step-by-step information. Her character worksheets and plotting devices have been met with rave reviews. She teaches writing workshops for UCSD Extension, conferences and retreats across the state and runs the Memoir Certificate Program at San Diego Writers Ink.