SPARKLE: Guns, Gangs, and Terrorism—The Joy of Writing Narrative Nonfiction with Author Tom Diaz

Name: SPARKLE: Guns, Gangs, and Terrorism—The Joy of Writing Narrative Nonfiction with Author Tom Diaz
Start: 2025-12-10T14:00:00-05:00
End: 2025-12-10T15:30:00-05:00
Location: Silver Spring Civic Building, 20910

Schedule

Wed Dec 10 2025 at 02:00 pm to 03:30 pm

UTC-05:00

Location

Silver Spring Civic Building, 20910 | Silver Spring, MD

Join us for our next SPARKLE: Guns, Gangs, and Terrorism—The Joy of Writing Narrative Nonfiction and How the Ugliest Painting I Ever Saw Still Inspires Me with author Tom Diaz Wednesday, December 10 at 2pm in the Silver Spring Civic Center.
Author Tom Diaz will discuss the challenges, joys, and frustrations of writing nonfiction
books about some of the modern world’s grimmest realities. Lots of people have good
ideas about books that could be written. But translating even the greatest of ideas into a
finished product takes years of work. Diaz uses examples from his six published nonfiction books to illustrate the process of building a well-crafted book from inspiration through research, writing, and publication.
Registration is recommended. Register online as Village Members or RSVP to [email protected].
ABOUT OUR PRESENTER
TOM DIAZ is a retired lawyer and former journalist. He has written six non-fiction books, a number of monographs and articles about crime, terrorism, and firearms, and several self-published novels that he calls his “worst sellers.” He is a graduate of the University
of Florida and the Georgetown University Law Center.
Diaz practiced a variety of civil and criminal law in his legal career. As a journalist, he reported on the Supreme Court and national security at The Washington Times newspaper. He then became an assistant managing editor from 1985 to 1991.
From 1991 to 1993 Diaz worked at the National Strategy Information Center, where he focused on the study of terrorism and international organized crime. From 1993 to 1997 he was Democratic counsel on the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Crime and Criminal Justice. His subject matter specialties were counterterrorism and firearms legislation.
Diaz was senior policy analyst at a gun violence reduction organization from 1997 until his retirement in 2012.
Published books:
Making a Killing: The Business of Guns in America (The New Press, January 1999)
Lightning Out of Lebanon: Hezbollah Terrorists on American Soil (with Barbara Newman) (Random House, 2005)
No Boundaries—Transnational Latino Gangs and American Law Enforcement (University of Michigan Press, 2009)
The Last Gun: How Changes in the Gun Industry Are Killing Americans and What It Will Take to Stop It (The New Press, 2013)
Tragedy in Aurora: The Culture of Mass Shootings in America (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019)
Broken Scales: Race and the Crisis of Justice in a Divided America (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021)