13th Annual RSVP Conference 2022

638 Jefferson St.,Ashland OH 44805

30 March, 2022

Description

KEYNOTE SPEAKER: Sam Quinones America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth: One Reporter's Stories KEYNOTE:   America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth: One Reporter's Stories Sam Quinones Sam Quinones is a Los Angeles-based freelance journalist, a reporter for 35 years, and author of four acclaimed books of narrative nonfiction. He is a veteran reporter on immigration, gangs, drug trafficking, the border. He is formerly a reporter with the L.A. Times, where he worked for 10 years. Before that, he made a living as a freelance writer residing in Mexico for a decade. His latest book, released in November, 2021, is The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth. In The Least of Us (published October 2021), Quinones chronicles the emergence of a drug-trafficking world producing massive supplies of dope cheaper and deadlier than ever, marketing to the population of addicts created by the nation's opioid epidemic, as the backdrop to tales of Americans’ quiet attempts to recover community through simple acts of helping the vulnerable. The Least of Us follows his landmark Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic (Bloomsbury, 2015), which ignited awareness of the epidemic that has cost the United States hundreds of thousands of lives and become deadliest drug scourge in the nation’s history. Dreamland won a National Book Critics Circle award for the Best Nonfiction Book of 2015. It was also selected as one of the Best Books of 2015 by Amazon.com, the Daily Beast, Buzzfeed, Seattle Times, Boston Globe, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Entertainment Weekly, Audible, and in the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg Business by Nobel economics laureate, Prof. Angus Deaton, of Princeton University. In 2019, Dreamland was selected as one the Best 10 True-Crime Books of all time based on lists, surveys, and ratings of more than 90 million Goodread.com readers. Also in 2019, Slate.com selected Dreamland as one of the 50 best nonfiction books of the last 25 years. In 2021, GQ Magazine selected Dreamland as one of the “50 Best Books of Literary Journalism of the 21st Century” For Dreamland, Quinones has testified before the US Senate’s Health Committee, numerous professional conferences of judges, doctors, librarians, hospital administrators and at more than two-dozen town hall meetings in small towns across the country. A Young Adult version of Dreamland – for 7th through 12th graders -- was released in July of 2019. His first two books grew from his 10 years living and working as a freelance writer in Mexico (1994-2004). True tales From Another Mexico: The Lynch Mob, the Popsicle Kings, Chalino and the Bronx was released in 2001. It is a cult classic of a book from Mexico’s vital margins – stories of drag queens and Oaxacan Indian basketball players, popsicle makers and telenovela stars, migrants, farm workers, a narcosaint, a slain drug balladeer, a slum boss, and a doomed tough guy. In 2007, he came out with Antonio's Gun and Delfino's Dream: True Tales of Mexican Migration. In it, Quinones narrates the saga of the Henry Ford of Velvet Painting, and of how an opera scene emerged in Tijuana, and how a Zacatecan taco empire formed in Chicago. He tells the tale of the Tomato King, of a high-school soccer season in Kansas, and of Mexican corruption in a small L.A. County town. Threading through the book are three tales of Delfino Juarez, a modern Mexican Huck Finn. Quinones ends the collection in a chapter called "Leaving Mexico" with his harrowing tangle with the Narco-Mennonites of Chihuahua. Dagoberto Gilb, reviewing Antonio’s Gun in the San Francisco Chronicle, called him “the most original writer on Mexico and the border.” Contact him at www.samquinones.com or samquinones7 Related Event: Ask Me Anything with Sam Quinones (Zoom on March 23rd at 6pm- Details Below) Register for Ask Me Anything event here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/ask-me-anything-interactive-zoom-with-sam-quinones-tickets-261096475587 The Mental Health and Recovery Board (MHRB) is a branch of county government which is authorized and defined in the Ohio Revised Code, Section 340.  The board is comprised of 18 citizen volunteers who represent the community. They come from diverse backgrounds and are comprised of professionals, family members, people who have or are receiving services, advocates and other community members who wish to influence and promote mental health and addiction services in Ashland County.