The Armenian National Committee - Western Region (ANC-WR) has announced that award-winning journalist and author Mark Arax will deliver the keynote address at ANC Grassroots, on Sunday, November 27.

Mark Arax is the author of "In My Father's Name," and "West of the West," and the co-author of the bestseller "The King of California."

A former senior writer at The Los Angeles Times, he now teaches writing at Fresno State University and is working on a new book, this one a fictional novel. His Los Angeles Times stories revealing state-sanctioned murder and cover-up in California prisons were praised by The Nation magazine as "one of great journalistic achievements of the decade." In a review of his most recent book, "West of the West," the Washington Post called Mark a "great reporter…tenacious and unrelenting." His books on California have been compared to the "great social portraits" by William Saroyan and Joan Didion, and he is considered one of the finest journalists of his generation.

A top graduate of Fresno State and Columbia University, Mark left the Los Angeles Times in 2007 after a public fight over censorship of history on the Armenian Genocide. He has taught literary non-fiction at Claremont McKenna College and Fresno State University and served as a senior policy director for the California Senate Majority Leader.

The three-day ANC Grassroots program is a groundbreaking weekend of workshops and panel presentations that will educate the community about civic leadership arising from grassroots efforts.