Showing posts with label WPL Foundation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label WPL Foundation. Show all posts

Saturday, October 19, 2019

A Celebration of Authors 2019

A Celebration of Authors 2019
The signature fundraising event of the Worcester Public Library Foundation

Please join us for an extraordinary evening of cocktails, food and conversation with four celebrated authors to benefit the programs and services of the Worcester Public Library. 

Thursday, October 17, 2019: 5:30-9:00 p.m. 
 Mercantile Center @ 100 Front Street Worcester, MA

Robin Cook 

Robin Cook’s literary career began with his first novel, The Year of the Intern, published in 1972. He wrote the book on board the nuclear powered submarine, USSN Kamehameha while fulfilling his compulsory military service after completing his general surgical training. It was followed 5 years later with Coma, which he wrote at night during the final year of his ophthalmology residency at Harvard. Coma was published the following year while Dr. Cook was a student at the Kennedy School of Government. Thirty-four other bestsellers have followed for a current total of thirty-six, all of which have been translated into some forty languages, and many of which have been adapted into theatrical films, television movies, and mini-series. To date he has sold several hundreds of million books worldwide. Dr. Cook’s thirty-seventh book, Genesis,dealing with the rapid evolution of genetic genealogy will be published in December 2019.

Jarrett J. Krosoczka 

New York Times-bestselling author/illustrator Jarrett J. Krosoczka creates books with humor, heart, and a deep respect for his younger readers-qualties that have made his titles perennial favorites on the bookshelves of homes, libraries, and bookstores. First published at the age of twenty-three, Krosoczka now has dozens of published books to his credit. Titles include several picture books, his wildly popular Lunch Lady graphic novels, the Platypup Police Squad middle-grade novels, and story arcs in the Star Wars™: Jedi Academy series. Krosocka also shares his own story of growing up amongst family addiction in his young adult graphic memoir, Hey, Kiddo, which was a finalist for the National Book Award.


William Landay

William Landay’s latest novel is the New York Times bestseller Defending Jacob, which is currently in production as a limited-run television series for Apple TV starring Chris Evans and Michelle Dockery. His previous novels are Mission Flats, which won the Dagger Award as best debut crime novel of 2003, and The Strangler, which was an L.A. Times favorite crime novel and was nominated for the Strand Magazine Critics Award as best crime novel of 2007.




Steven Rowley

Steven Rowley is the bestselling author of The Editor and Lily and the Octopus, which has been
translated into nineteen languages. He has worked as a freelance writer, newspaper columnist, and screenwriter. Originally from Portland, Maine, Rowley is a graduate of Emerson College. He currently resides in Los Angeles.







Moderator:

Stephanie Pasha is currently the President of the Worcester Public Library Board of
Directors. She is the Assistant Vice President of Strategic Volunteer Engagement at WPI.

Thursday, October 25, 2018

A Celebration of Authors 2018

A Celebration of Authors 2018 
The signature fundraising event of the Worcester Public Library Foundation 

Please join us for an extraordinary evening of cocktails, food and conversation with four celebrated authors to benefit the programs and services of the Worcester Public Library.
 Thursday, October 25, 2018: 5:30-9:00 p.m. Mercantile Center @ 100 Front Street Worcester, MA 

Featured Authors 

Ann Hood 

Ann Hood is the author of the bestselling novels The Knitting Circle, The Obituary Writer, and The Red Thread as well as the memoir Comfort: A Journey Through Grief which was named one of the top ten non-fiction books of 2008 and was a New York Time's Editor's Choice. The winner of two Pushcart Prizes, two Best American Food Writing Awards, a Best American Spiritual Writing and a Best American Travel Writing Award, her most recent books include the novel The Book That Matters Most and the memoir Morningstar: Growing Up with Books.



Gregory Maguire 

Gregory Maguire is the New York Times bestselling author of After Alice, Confessions of an Ugly
Stepsister, Lost, Mirror Mirror, and The Wicked Years, a series that includes Wicked - the beloved classic that is the basis for the blockbuster, Tony Award-winning Broadway musical- Son of a Witch, A Lion Amoung Men and Out of Oz. Maguire has lectured on art, literature, and culture both at home and abroad. He lives with his family near Boston, MA.



Roland Merullo

Roland Merullo is the award-winning author of twenty books of fiction and non-fiction. These range from suspense novels (Fidel's Last Days, A Russian Requiem, Revere Beach Boulevard, The Return) to love stories (A Little Love Story, The Talk-Funny Girl, Leaving Losapas) to golf and travel books (Golfing with God, Passion for Golf, The Italian Summer, Taking the Kids to Italy) to humorous spiritual road trips (Breakfast with Buddha, Lunch with Buddha, Dinner with Buddha, American Savior). His work has been translated across the globe, from China to Brazil, from Korea to Croatia and has sold hundreds of thousands of copies to date. His most recent novel is The Delight of Being Ordinary.



 Randy Susan Meyers


 Randy Susan Meyers' internationally bestselling novels are informed by years working with families
impacted by violence. Her fourth novel, The Widow of Wall Street, was called an "engrossing emotional journey" by Kirkus Review, and "compelling" by Associated Press. She has written The Comfort of Lies and Accidents of Marriage, which was chosen by People Magazine as "Pick of the Week." The Murderer's Daughters, Meyers' debut, was a month-long Target Book Club pick for the country and called a "knock-out debut" by the LA times.




Moderator: Stephanie Pasha is currently the President of the Worcester Public Library Board of Directors. She is the Assistant Vice President of Strategic Volunteer Engagement at WPI.

Thursday, October 26, 2017

A Celebration of Authors 2017

A Celebration of Authors 2017 
The signature fundraising event of the Worcester Public Library Foundation Please join us for an extraordinary evening of cocktails, food and conversation with five celebrated authors to benefit the programs and services of the Worcester Public Library. 
 Thursday, October 26, 2017 - 5:30-9:00 p.m. 
The White Room @ Crompton Collective 138 Green Street Worcester, MA

Andre Dubus III 
A
ndre Dubus III grew up in mill towns on the Merrimack River along the Massachusetts-New Hampshire border. He is the author of six books including three New York Times bestsellers. House of Sand and Fog was a #1 New York Times bestseller, a fiction finalist for the National Book Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and Booksense Book of the Year. It was also an Oprah Book Club Selection, and was adapted into an Academy Award-nominated motion picture starring Ben Kingsley and Jennifer Connelly. The Garden of Last Days is soon to be a major motion picture. His memoir, Townie, was a #4 New York Times bestseller and a New York Times Editors Choice. Dirty Love was chosen as a Notable Book and Editors’ Choice from the New York Times, a Notable Fiction from The Washington Post, and a Kirkus Starred Best Book of 2013. Mr. Dubus has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, The National Magazine Award for Fiction, Two Pushcart Prizes, and an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature. His books are published in over twenty-five languages.

John Dufresne

John Dufresne is the author of two short story collections, The Way That Water Enters Stone and
Johnny Too Bad, and the novels Louisiana Power & Light, and Love Warps the Mind a Little, both New York Times Notable Books of the Year. He is also the author of Deep in the Shade of Paradise; Requiem, Mass; No Regrets, Coyote; and I Don’t Like Where This is Going. He has written two books on writing fiction, The Lie That Tells a Truth and Is Life Like This? He is the editor of the anthologies Blue Christmas, Everything is Broken, and Everything is Broken, Too. His short stories have twice been named Best American Mystery Stories, in 2007 and 2010. He is a 2013 Guggenheim Fellow in Fiction.

Margot Livesey

Margot Livesey was born and grew up on the edge of the Scottish Highlands. She has taught in numerous writing programs including Emerson College, Boston University, Bowdoin College and the Warren Wilson low residency MFA program, and is the author of a collection of stories and eight novels, including Eva Moves the Furniture, and The Flight of Gemma Hardy, which won the New England Independent Booksellers’ Award in fiction for 2012. She lives in Cambridge, MA and is on the faculty of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her novel, Mercury, was published in September 2016. In July 2017, Tin House will publish The Hidden Machinery: Essays on Writing.



Elizabeth Searle
Elizabeth Searle is the author of five books of fiction, most recently her novel We Got Him (2016),
which is set on the night of the Boston Marathon bombing manhunt. Her previous books are Girl Held in Home; A Four-Sided Bed, now in development as a feature film; Celebrities in Disgrace, produced as a short film, and My Body to You, winner of the Iowa Short Fiction Prize. Elizabeth's original stage work, Tonya & Nancy: The Rock Opera has been produced in Boston, LA, Chicago, NYC and has drawn national media attention. Elizabeth's work has appeared in over a dozen anthologies; she is the co-editor of a new anthology: Soap Opera Confidential: Writers and Soap Insiders on Why We'll Tune in Tomorrow as the World Turns Restlessly by the Guiding Light of Our Lives.

Annie Weatherwax

Winner of the Robert Olen Butler Prize for Fiction, Annie Weatherwax’s short stories have appeared in The Sun Magazine, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. A graduate of Rhode Island School of Design, for years, she earned a living sculpting superheroes and cartoon characters for Nickelodeon, DC Comics, Pixar and others. She has written extensively on the link between visual art and language including for Publishers Weekly, The New York Times and regularly for Ploughshares magazine. Her debut novel, All We Had, now a major motion picture, was published by Scribner and was a finalist for the Massachusetts Book Award




Joe Cox, Moderator, is President of the EcoTarium, New England's leading science and nature
center.

Thursday, October 20, 2016

A Celebration of Authors 2016

A Celebration of Authors 2016 
The signature fundraising event of the Worcester Public Library Foundation Please join us for an extraordinary evening of cocktails, food and conversation with four celebrated authors to benefit the programs and services of the Worcester Public Library. 
 Thursday, October 20, 2016 - 5:30-9:00 p.m. 
The White Room @ Crompton Collective 138 Green Street Worcester, MA 

Anita Diamant
Anita Diamant is the Boston-based author of 12 books, including bestsellers The Boston Girl and The Red Tent. Her novels Day After Night, Good Harbor, and The Last Days of Dogtown are book-group favorites, too. Diamant is the author of a collection of essays, Pitching My Tent, and six non-fiction guides to contemporary Jewish Life, including The New Jewish Wedding, and Choosing a Jewish Life. Her writing has appeared in such publications as The Boston Globe, Real Simple and Hadassah Magazine. She was the founding president of Mayyim Hayyim, Living Waters Community Mikveh and Education Center in Newton, Massachusetts, www.mayyimhayyim.org. Visit her web site at www.antiadiamant.com.


Joseph Finder
 Joseph Finder is the New York Times bestselling author of thirteen novels, including The Fixer,
Suspicion, Vanished, and Buried Secrets. Finder's international bestseller Killer Instinct won the International Thriller Writers' Thriller Award for Best Novel of 2006. Other bestselling titles include Paranoia and High Crimes, which both became major motion pictures. He lives in Boston.

  



Lily King 

Lily King is the author of The Pleasing Hour, The English Teacher, Father of the Rain, and the New York Times bestseller, Euphoria. She is winner of the Kirkus Prize, two time winner of the New England Book Award for Fiction and a NYTBR Top Ten Book of the Year author. She lives with her family in Maine.







Ann Leary

Ann Leary is the New York Times bestselling author of The Children, The Good House, An Innocent,
A Broad and Outtakes from a Marriage. She has written short fiction and essays for the New York Times, Ploughshares, NPR's "You Must Read This," among various others. Ms. Leary and her husband, actor Denis Leary, live in northwestern Connecticut.







Joe Cox, Moderator, is President of the EcoTarium, New England's leading science and nature center.

Sunday, September 2, 2012

Celebrating Exceptional Authors


The Worcester Public Library Foundation’s Seventh Annual A Celebration of Authors Thursday, October 11, 2012 at the Main Library 

Three authors appearing this year include Chris Bohjalian, author of fifteen books, including his critically acclaimed and newly published The Sandcastle Girls, a mesmerizing historical love story steeped in his Armenian heritage. Joining him is Leah Hager Cohen, a prolific fiction and nonfiction writer, whose most recent novel, The Grief of Others, is a perceptive, absorbing drama about the complex bonds of the modern American family. The delightful “diva of dialogue,” Elinor Lipman, rounds out the trio of acclaimed authors. Her latest humor-laden book, Tweet Land of Liberty: Irreverent Rhymes from the Political Circus, chronicles the 2012 election season with a poem a day—all 140 characters or less.

The evening’s program begins at 7 p.m. and includes a dessert reception and book-signing by the authors. Tickets: $35, $30/Friends of Worcester Public Library, and $100/sponsors. Sponsors may join the authors for a pre-program reception at 6 p.m. Proceeds benefit the library’s Foundation and its ongoing efforts to enhance library services. For tickets and more information, please call 508-799-1656.