Join Advancing Real Change, Inc.’s Executive Director Liz Vartkessian, to discuss her book The Deserving: What the Lives of the Condemned Reveal About American Justice at Capital Books in Sacramento, CA.
Liz will be in conversation with Katie McCleary, a public speaker, expert facilitator, and coauthor of Bridge the Gap: Breakthrough Communication Tools to Transform Work Relationships from Challenging to Collaborative (McGraw-Hill, 2022).
Katie McCleary is an award-winning author, keynote speaker, and champion of the belief that every human has a voice worth hearing and a story worth telling. She is the founder of 916 Ink, a Sacramento literacy nonprofit that has transformed more than 8,000 youth into confident authors across schools, libraries, and juvenile justice settings, and she has spent 25 years writing alongside people in boardrooms, prisons — including Folsom State Prison — and every room in between. She is the co-author of Bridge the Gap (McGraw Hill), named a Top 3 Business Book of 2022.A three-time TEDx speaker whose talks have reached over four million views, Katie is also the license holder of TEDx Folsom Prison, bringing its inaugural event to life this October.
Elizabeth Vartkessian has been investigating the life histories of those facing the most severe penalties possible in the United States since 2004. She is the author of The Deserving: What the Lives of the Condemned Reveal About American Justice published by Bloomsbury in January 2026. Elizabeth holds a PhD in law and an MS in comparative social policy from the University of Oxford, and BAs in philosophy and political science from the George Washington University. She is the founder and executive director of Advancing Real Change Inc., a national nonprofit dedicated to conducting life history investigations in criminal cases. She lives in Baltimore.
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