Tonight’s Reading by Author Leah Hager Cohen Cancelled Due to Family Emergency
The scheduled reading tonight, May 15, by Leah Hager Cohen had to be cancelled to to an emergency in the author’s family. We wish her the very best and hope to reschedule the event when it is convenient to do so.
Next week, Tuesday May 22, at 6:30 PM, The South End Writes will host memoirist Christine Chamberlain and custom-publisher Jane Karkel, who will discuss how to write memoirs of people and places AND get published.
Here’s your chance to learn how to put into words your observations about the block you’ve lived on for so many years, or just a family memoir to encourage your children to think of you fondly. Chamberlain and Karkel have helped develop a small body of such memoirs produced by residents of Maine, where they hail from, and would be happy to assist in starting such a collaborative venture in the South End.
We hope to see you there.
From time to time, one gets egg on one’s face, and this is one of those times for yours truly: the BPL trustees’ breakfast with the Massachusetts’ Library Caucus took place on March 21, and will not take place on May 21 as I reported earlier. I apologize for the error. A belated report on the event will be posted in the near future. Onwards and sideways…
In a welcome sign that the BPL is working hard to improve its ties with the State Legislature, it is hosting a breakfast for the state’s Library Caucus on Monday, May 21. The caucus is made up of state legislators from all over the Commonwealth who see libraries as their special charge. Since 2008, when two powerful BPL trustees –MA Senate President William Bulger and State Rep. Angelo Scaccia– left the Boston Library Board over the ousting of former BPL President Bernard Margolis by Mayor Thomas Menino, the relationship between BPL and Beacon Hill went into atrophy mode.
The mayor did not appoint any state legislator to replace Bulger or Scaccia for several years, which meant, among other things, that for several years no one from the BPL was at the Legislature advocating and lobbying for funds to maintain library services. It proved one thing: if one does not ask, one does not get. The legislature cut Boston’s library budget; the mayor cut the library budget; and in 2010 the mayor and BPL President Amy Ryan proposed closing up to 10 branches. In the end, none were closed, in part because Boston’s state representatives, hearing the outrage in their constituents’ voices, threatened to cut off all state funding to Boston if any library branches were shuttered.
Shortly thereafter, State Rep. Byron Rushing, who had assailed the BPL trustees for their lack of competent advocacy on Beacon Hill during the 2010 library closure fight, was nominated to the BPL’s Library Board. Immediate improvements ensued. He made public comment at BPL trustees meetings standard operating procedure. He took charge of the long-term strategic planning plan, Compass, which had earlier been initiated by former BPL trustee and author, James Carroll. The May 21 breakfast meeting is another sign of library-climate warming. Kate Hogan (D Stow), will give opening remarks after a welcome by Amy Ryan; the executive director of the Massachussets Board of Library Commissioners, Robert Maier, will discuss budget priorities for the state libraries; and Rep. Rushing himself will talk about …Library Cards. Stay tuned.
The one-hour meeting is open to the public and starts at 9:00 AM.
The South End Writes will bring author Leah Hager Cohen to the South End Library on Tuesday May 15th to read from her latest novel, The Grief of Others. She will be introduced by South End novelist Sue Miller, who invited her to speak at the program. The event will start at 6:30 PM.
Hager Cohen has been described as one of this country’s best novelists by the editor of the New York Times Book Review, Sam Tanenhaus. The Grief of Others delves into a family fighting for its emotional survival while whipsawed by the loss of a small child. A Boston Globe’s book reviewer described the writing as “fluid and insightful.” The author, a graduate of the Columbia Graduate School for Journalism, has published both fiction and non-fiction books, and is a regular contributor to newspapers and magazines. In one recent Boston Globe opinion piece she explained why the Pulitzer Prize Committee’s refusal to select a winner for its 2012 Fiction category was ‘a good thing;’ in another, she provided an insightful look into the working life of The South End Writes’ most recent speaker, award-winning short-story writer Edith Pearlman. Hager Cohen’s other titles include the non-fiction books Train Go Sorry: Inside a Deaf World, and Glass, Paper, Beans, as well as the novel Heart, You Bully, You Punk.
Head Librarian Anne Smart has many of the titles available at the South End branch for those who wish to borrow them: all you need is your BPL library card.
The final two South End Writes events of the season will take place on Tuesday, May 22 and Tuesday, June 19, both at 6:30 PM at the South End Library. Memoirist Christine Chamberlain and custom-publisher Jane Karkel will talk about how to write memoirs of people and places AND get them published on May 22; and South End resident Marie Passananti will read from her first novel, The Hazards of Hunting While Heartbroken.
The South End Writes authors’ series will be in full swing in May when authors Edith Pearlman and Leah Hager Cohen will read from recent work at the South End branch on Tuesday, May 1 and Tuesday, May 15, respectively. They will be introduced by local novelist Sue Miller, who invited them. Edith Pearlman’s much-prized collection of new and selected short stories, Binocular Vision, has just been released in paperback. Just in time ,as every book venue in Boston was sold out of the hardcover version. The collection won the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award, the 2011 PEN/Malamud Award, and was a finalist in the 2011 National Book Award for Fiction. Pearlman won other awards, such as the Pushcart Prize, the O’Henry Prize and a number of others for previous work.
Leah Hager Cohen has been described as one of this country’s best novelists by the editor of the New York Times Book Review, Sam Tanenhaus. Her latest novel, The Grief of Others, delves into a family fighting for its emotional survival while whipsawed by the loss of a small child. The Boston Globe’s book reviewer described the writing “fluid and insightful.” Hager Cohen, a graduate of the Columbia Graduate School for Journalism, is a regular contributor to newspapers and magazines, as well, and recently explained in a commentary for the Boston Globe why the Pulitzer Prize Committee’s refusal to select a winner for its 2012 Fiction category was ‘a good thing.’
CHRISTINE CHAMBERLAIN, a memoirist and biographer, will talk about how to turn your oral history, family history and any other history of interest to you and others into books that can be self-published. It can be the history of rowing, of first-generation families who want to preserve culture and customs for their children, or the history of institutions that don’t yet have one written down. Chamberlain, a former journalist working from Europe, will bring Jane Karker, a small publisher from Maine, who will provide pointers on self-publishing and display samples of self-published work. Tuesday, May 22, 6:30 PM.