Tonight's Reading at the South End Library by Doug Bauer ("What Happens Next?: Matters of Life and Death") Has Been Cancelled Due to the Boston Marathon Bombings

The Dovekeepers, a historical novel describing the AD70 massacre at Masada from the point of view of four women at the fortress before it fell during the Jewish-Roman war, is the most recent of the nearly two dozen novels by Hoffman and just came out in paperback. To be introduced by Sue Miller.

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Tuesday, June 11, 6:30 p.m.

the local filmmaker whose mesmerizing documentary, Angelo Unwritten, has followed the life of a teenager adopted out of foster care when he was twelve, will return with an update of new material gathered since December 2011.

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Tuesday, June 18, 6:30 p.m.

will return to read from his current work-in-progress, retracing the steps of his father who, as a soldier, was sent to Europe during the Second World War.

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FOSEL 4/13/13 FOSEL 4/13/13

Visitors to BPL's Johnson Building Judge Library's Services and Physical Condition Harshly but Offer Many Suggestions for Planned Improvements

Two display panels describing the Johnson Building Improvement Project and asking for public comment seem to have hit a raw nerve last week. On Monday, paper-covered panels were filled with hundreds of observations and criticisms, handwritten and on post-it notes, mostly negative, but with many suggestions for improvements. On Wednesday, they were replaced with fresh sheets of paper which, by the end of the day, had covered half of the available space again.

Years of budget cutbacks to the public library system; a weak and disorganized constellation of BPL lobbyists at the local, state and federal level; and a poisonous relationship between the previous library president and the current mayor have left the 1970s addition to the McKim Building in a state of disrepair. And an easy target for the frustrated public which left the following messages: "Fix glitches in the on-line catalogue." "What happened to the arm chairs?" "Turn down the heat in the Johnson Building: it's always too hot." "More books, fewer computers." "Fix and clean the bathrooms." "A friendlier staff: I'm surprised when someone is helpful." "Better toilet paper." "Friendlier security guards." "An area where I can use my laptop when it's plugged in." "Add more local papers and archives to data base." "From the atrium, graphics to show where the call numbers are." "Be more informed and welcoming to visitors." "Staff none too friendly." "AP tutors." "Bring back newspapers." "Magazines that circulate please." "Bring back the reading room." "Scrap paper at catalogue tables." "Install bike racks at the entrance...lots of them." "Fix the sidewalk so it's not a tripping hazard." "Create an outdoor plaza with benches and planters." "Open the library to the street." "Get better books, not just bestsellers." "Bathrooms are disgusting." "More light." "A targeted quiet space." "A store to sell library books." "Pay fines on-line." "Hang a huge sparkling mobile in the central atrium." "Phone-charging stations." " More windows." "Take down the barriers." "Kiosk for entrepreneurs and local artists to promote, sell, give work and info." "Meeting space for small non-profits." "Boards like these should be up all the time." "Take down the barriers." "Resources for the homeless." "Bring back the periodicals room." "Clean, clean clean." "Keep the restaurant open Saturdays." "Keep the restaurant open until after lectures at night." A second-floor bathroom." "Coffee shop" "More selection in teen room." "Teen room should be hip." "Teen room should be easy to find." "Teen room should have computers." "Humanize." Have people who can alphabetize books." "Remove dirty carpet." "Have employees who want to be here: others would love their jobs." "Why do staff seem so unfriendly: are you treating them well?" "Get on the ball stocking shelves with terrific new writers." "More color." "Get the maps of Boston off the ground." "Make cards, souvenirs, bags, history of library books available." "Mice." "No multi-language signage but multi-language children's books: disgraceful." "More selection in teen room." "Teen room should be hip." "Teen room should be easy to find." "Teen room should have computers." "Humanize." Have people who can alphabetize books."

And then there was this one: "Boards like this should be up all the time."

The current effort to revamp the down-trodden Johnson Building into a modern, exciting, light-filled space that welcomes library users and visitors instead of aggravating them is led by an outside six-member local Community Advisory Committee, BPL staff headed by president Amy Ryan, and the architectural firm of Rawn Associates, designers of the Mattapan, East Boston and Cambridge Public Library, among other places. Part of the project includes the consideration of leasing some of the one-million-square-feet building to "library-mission-compatible commercial space." A consulting group, Byrne/McKinney, is working on that aspect.

The CAC meetings for the Johnson Improvement Project are open to the public. The next one will be held on Wednesday, May 8 at 8:30 AM in the Johnson Building's Lower Level Conference Room 5. Check the BPL web site under News and Events. Scroll down to Strategic Planning for further information and dates, OR go to the FOSEL web site under Community News, which carries several previous posts about this exciting but challenging project.

FOSEL 4/5/13 FOSEL 4/5/13

FOSEL's Sixth Annual Easter Egg Hunt Drew a Large Crowd with Many Volunteers, a City Council Candidate and Kids Young and Old on the First Mild Day after a Long Cold Snap..

Reported by Ann Lloyd

Warm sunshine, a tall bunny, and a hundred or so eager egg hunters made the Sixth Annual Easter Egg Hunt, Sunday, March 31, in Library Park another big success. Many thanks to all the volunteers who made it happen: the steadfast bunny, otherwise known as Jean-Jacques Dubreuil, who had to be sweltering inside that furry suit during the many photo ops requested by the crowd; the FOSEL folks who laboriously stuffed more than 1200 plastic eggs with chocolates and poems; Nathalie Dubreuil, who collated a new crop of poems; other library supporters like at-large city council candidate Suzanne Lee who hid countless eggs; and the many Friends who showed up at 9:30 AM to set up snack tables and blow up balloons. Thanks most of all to the South End neighbors for turning out and creating such a festive, friendly event.

*Marcia Lloyd and Suzanne Lee with an egg huntress*

People seemed to linger and chat long after eggs were snatched up and the delicious snacks --including the annual contribution of Liane Crawford's amazing cupcakes-- were eaten. The donation jar was generously filled and parents thanked the volunteers over and over. One dad said, “This is the most well-executed egg hunt we’ve been to.” Several parents expressed gratitude for the roped-off area for small children. The egg hunt is one of the most fun neighborhood things FOSEL does, and it seems to be more appreciated every year. Many thanks, too, to Area D4 for their assistance and to the wonderful staff of the South End Library for, among other things, their beautiful painting of the Easter bunny. Last but not least, big a big thank-you to Mary Owens for designing yet another poster for her beloved library.

Bunny Jean-Jacques Dubreuil greeting his delighted parents

Mike Lloyd took many pictures, some featured on this page. Others are now on display in the library’s window.

FOSEL 3/23/13 FOSEL 3/23/13

The Sixth Annual South End Library Easter Egg Hunt Will Start Sunday, March 31, at 11:00 a.m. (and End at 11:02 a.m. So Be On Time)

Some 1,200 Easter eggs filled with chocolate eggs, knock-knock jokes and a new crop of children's poems will be laid out by the Easter Bunny early next Sunday, March 31st. The gates to Library Park will be closed until the countdown begins, 30 seconds before 11:00 a.m. Once they open, the guess is a few minutes are all that's needed to clear the field. That is, except for the tiny-tot area, where it may take a little longer. The Parks Department will clean beforehand (that's what a permit entitles us to) and an officer from Area D4 will help parents and children cross the street. There will be balloons, refreshments and South End Library tote bags for sale. Good weather has been ordered. Bring your own baskets or use ours: we have plenty. See you there....

FOSEL 3/14/13 FOSEL 3/14/13

Whither the Plinths: Success of Retail Addition and Library Upgrades to BPL's Johnson Building May Hinge on Landmarks' Approval to Remove Visual Barricades on Boylston and Exeter Streets

There are many reasons why the Boylston Street entrance to the Copley Library --known as the Johnson building-- can't hold a candle to the grace and appeal of the McKim building to which it is --awkwardly-- connected, according to participants in the so-called Johnson Improvements project, now underway at the BPL. But the focal point of their wrath has become the 93 plinths that encase the Johnson building on three sides. The seven-foot granite barriers were placed there in the 1970s after architect Philip Johnson, who had designed the addition without any windows fronting the streets, compromised with then-BPL trustees who insisted on having windows. "He put them in but then covered them up," explained Bill Rawn, who was hired by the BPL as the lead architect to help rejuvenate the Johnson building and create viable retail space to go with it. The plinths obstruct natural light, cut off the library from the street, and create a dead zone on what should be a prominent block on Boylston Street, say the eight members of the Community Advisory Committee (CAC). The success of the project, which has for its goals revitalizing the library's Deferrari Hall, a new and expanded Children's Room on the second floor as well as revenue-producing retail space on the first floor and concourse level below, may well hinge on the removal of the vertical barriers.

There will be little opposition from the Library Board: "I just want to make sure the plan is for the plinths to come down," said Rep. Byron Rushing, one of the eight trustees on the nine-member board, after an in-depth presentation last Tuesday by Rawn, the eminent architect of a number of local libraries, Mattapan, East Boston and the Cambridge downtown library among them. "If all we do here is remove the plinths," Rushing continued, "this project will be a success as far as I am concerned." "If necessary, I'll loan you my gavel for it," joked Library Board chair, Jeff Rudman.

What is no joke, however, is that the plinths, as well as the facade of the Johnson building and Deferrari Hall on the inside, have landmark status. Boston's Landmark Commission will have to approve the changes, without which creating attractive commercial space and long-overdue major upgrades to the Central Library are unlikely. But opening up the library to the street and reconnecting it to the community is an important goal for architect Rawn, as it is to the CAC members and BPL executives. Which means convincing the Boston Landmarks Commission to approve removing the plinths will be key.

Monetizing some of the one million square feet that makes up the Central Library may seem incompatible with an institution that has the words FREE TO ALL carved above its entrance. A baby step in the process of capturing revenue for the BPL occurred in 2009 when the City moved the Kirstein Business Library, then located in its own building behind the Old City Hall downtown, to the lower level of the Central Library on Boylston Street. Revenue from the Kirstein trusts that paid for operations at the previous location has since been used by the Central Library to offset its operating costs, after court approval in 2010.

Merging commercial enterprise with the library's mission to capture income poses thornier issues, however, including whether the revenue generated by public library space will be applied directly to the BPL or to the City's coffers for general use. The hours needed for successful retail operations, especially innovation/high-tech spaces that are open 24/7 --proposed for the lower-level concourse where Rabb Hall is located-- don't match limited library hours either. A spokeswoman for the librarian's union stated, moreover, that for increased hours of operations at the BPL to mesh with the hours demanded by successful retail space "should not be negotiated on the backs of library staff" and that preference should be given to retailers who provide good wages and benefits. Finally, maintaining security for both the library's collection and retail establishments while promoting easy access and a welcoming environment at the same time, will require additional sophisticated, and expensive, solutions. CAC member Gary Saunders wondered whether it would make sense for any retail space at the Johnson building to have a completely separate entrance from the library. But first....the plinths...Stay tuned.

The CAC meetings are open to the public. The next one will be held April 10, although the date still has to be confirmed. Check the BPL web site under News and Events. Scroll down to Strategic Planning for further information and dates.

FOSEL 3/12/13 FOSEL 3/12/13

South End Author Mari Passananti Returns to the South End Library to Read from her New Suspense Thriller, "The K Street Affair," Tuesday, March 19, 6:30 PM

Mari Passananti once took her father's advice and went to law school instead of journalism school. She practiced law for a while, became a legal headhunter, but finally quit to write. Her first novel, The Hazards of Hunting While Heartbroken, was published in 2011; her second, The K Street Affair, just came out this year. Her background as an attorney and legal headhunter came in handy for this suspense thriller, since it plays out in our nation's capital and involves the FBI, Saudi and Russian oil interests and a roster of high-profile legal clients. She will read from her latest on Tuesday, March 19, at 6:30 PM at the South End branch.

Passananti is currently working on her third novel. Her books will be for sale and for borrowing at the South End Library. The event is free.

The next scheduled authors in The South End Writes series are:

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Tuesday, April 16, 6:30 p.m.

Doug Bauer

Editor, writer of numerous books of fiction and non-fiction, and revered professor of Literature at Bennington College (to where he commutes from the South End), Bauer will read from his most recent collection of essays, What Happens Next?: Matters of Life and Death. It willbe published in the fall of 2013 by the University of Iowa Press. His previous work includes three novels --Dexterity, followed by The Very Air, and The Book of Famous Iowans, both New York Times Notable Books; and two non-fiction books, Prairie City, Iowa and The Stuff of Fiction. He has edited anthologies, such as Prime Times: Writers on their favorite television shows; and Death by Pad Thai and Other Unforgettable Meals. He has received grants in fiction and creative non-fiction from the National Endowment for the Arts.

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Tuesday, April 30, 6:30 p.m.

Barbara Shapiro

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Tuesday, May 14, 6:30 p.m.

Dennis Lehane,

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Tuesday, May 21, 6:30 p.m.

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Tuesday, June 11, 6:30 p.m.

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Tuesday, June 18, 6:30 p.m.

will return to read from his current work-in-progress, retracing the steps of his father who, as a soldier, was sent to Europe during the Second World War.

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FOSEL 3/6/13 FOSEL 3/6/13

Andre Dubus III, Author of "Townie," Describes the Bones of his Memoir as "I Know What Happened, But What the Hell Happened?"

Standing before a tightly packed audience upstairs at the South End Library, novelist Andre Dubus III talked about the genesis of Townie, and the pitfalls of writing memoirs in general.Townie was an "accidental memoir," he told the mesmerized listeners. He had written several novels (House of Sand and Fog, The Garden of Last Days, Bluesman), but started on what became Townie as an exploration of why he never learned to play baseball the way his sons had. Watching their coaches yell things at them like "Bobby, I want nothing but strikes outta you, you hear that, nothing but strikes," Dubus III always assumed he never got into baseball because it was "too competitive" and therefore just "didn't give a damn." Four years and five hundred pages later he had produced a heart-rending memoir detailing his family's life after his "charismatic father," one of America's best short-story writers, Andre Dubus, "dumped" his mother, a former Louisiana beauty pagaent winner. She was 27, uneducated, with four young children and no income. She found a job and went back to school but her social-work career left the fridge bare and the rent often unpaid.

Author Doug Bauer, who introduced Dubus III, said Townie's "raw prose" told two tales: of growing up amid the economic despair of the mill towns of the Merrimack River valley with a mother "long on love and short on cash," and of Dubus III 's "generous acceptance" of his father as a man for whom writing was "essential." Dubus III, now reconciled and resolved about who his father was, told the audience he finds he has to defend him to reviewers and readers. A priest who had once been a stockbroker, asked him if his father, who wrote so "insightfully," had been "a fraud." "All I could say," Dubus III commented, "was that the writer was larger than the man. He was gifted, but AWOL as a father." He worried that perhaps he had not "nailed" his father in his memoir but realized one of the pitfalls of memoir-writing is that it is your truth at a particular moment in time, not someone else's. "It is easy to confuse the writer with the man," he told the crowd. "But I couldn't idealize him. My father was a deeply flawed man who, as a writer, illuminated the truth."

Dubus III's new novel, "Dirty Love," will appear in October. The author has promised to return to the South End Library for a repeat performance. His five favorite books are listed under The South End Reads.

The next South End Writes reading will be on Tuesday, March 19, when South End writer Mari Passananti will talk about her latest suspense thriller, The K Street Affair.

Tuesday, March 19, 6:30 p.m.

Mari Passananti

will read from her second novel, The K Street Affair.

Tuesday, April 16, 6:30 p.m.

Doug Bauer

Editor, writer of numerous books of fiction and non-fiction, and revered professor of English at Bennington College (to where he commutes from the South End), Bauer will read from his most recent collection of essays, What Happens Next?: Matters of Life and Death, to be published in the fall of 2013 by the University of Iowa Press. His previous work includes several novels, including Dexterity, The Very Air, and The Book of Famous Iowans; and two non-fiction books, Prairie City, Iowa and The Stuff of Fiction. He has edited anthologies, such as Prime Times: Writers on their favorite television shows; and Death by Pad Thai and Other Unforgettable Meals.

Tuesday, April 30, 6:30 p.m.

Barbara Shapiro

Tuesday, May 14, 6:30 p.m.

Dennis Lehane,

Tuesday, May 21, 6:30 p.m.

Tuesday, June 11, 6:30 p.m.

Tuesday, June 18, 6:30 p.m.

will return to read from his current work-in-progress, retracing the steps of his father who, as a soldier, was sent to Europe during the Second World War.

FOSEL 2/20/13 FOSEL 2/20/13

Looking for Good Reads? Visiting "South End Writes" Authors List Their Five Favorite Books...

Susan Naimark (09/20/12 "The Education of a White Parent: Wrestling with Race and Opportunity in the Boston Public Schools"): 1. The Warmth of Other Suns, by Isabel Wilkerson

2. The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander

3. Country of My Skull, by Antjie Krog

4. The Education of a WASP, by Lois M. Stalvey

5. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, by Anne Fadiman

L. Annette Binder (09/25/12, "Rise")

1. No Country for Old Men, by Cormac McCarthy

2. The Road, by Cormac McCarthy

3. Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon

4. Play It as It Lays, by Joan Didion

5. A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, by David Foster Wallace

Sara Lawrence Lightfoot (10/09/12: "The Third Chapter: Passion, Risk and Adventure in the 25 Years after Fifty")

1. Still Alice by Lisa Genova

2. The Known World by Edward P. Jones

3. Plainsong by Kent Haruf

4. Brown Girl Brownstones by Paule Marshall

5. Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

Margaret Sullivan and Sgt. Detective Dr. Kim L. Gaddy (10/16/12:“Boston’s Fairest,” an exhibit and lecture about the first 50 years of women in the Boston Police Department by the BPD’s archivist, documenting the careers of wives and mothers who took on gangsters and bootleggers.)

1.Sarah's Long Walk: The free Blacks of Boston and How Their Struggle for Equality Changed America, by Stephen Kendrick and Paul Kendrick

2. THE SISTERS: The Saga of the Mitford Family, by Mary S. Lovell

3. DARK TIDE: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919, by Stephen Puleo

4. A City in Terror : The 1919 Boston Police Strike, by Francis Russell. Digitized by the Boston Public Library at <http://archive.org/details/officersmenstati00tapp>http://archive.org/details/officersmenstati00tapp

Maryanne O'Hara (10/2//5/12, "Cascade")

1. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte

2. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy

3. Immortality, Milan Kundera

4. The Master, Colm Toibin

5. Selected Stories, Alice Munro

6. Collected Stories, William Trevor

Margot Livesey (10/30/12, "The Flight of Gemma Hardy")

1. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

2. The Fountain Overflows by Rebecca West

3. The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford

4. Middlemarch by George Elliot

5. The Leopard by Lampedusa

Stephen Davis(11/1/12, "More Room in a Broken Heart: the True Adventures of Carly Simon")

1. The Aleph, by Jorge Luis Borges

2. Collected Stories, by Paul Bowles

3. Offshore, by Penelope Fitzgerald

4. For Your Eyes Only, by Ian Fleming

5. Spies of the Balkans, by Alan Furst

Leah Hager Cohen (1/15/13, "The Grief of Others")

1. How Green Was My Valley, by Richard Llewellyn

2. Dime Store Alchemy, by Charles Simic

3. The Keeping Days, by Norma Johnston

4. Binocular Vision, by Edith Pearlman

5. Middlemarch, by George Eliot

Lynne Potts(1/29, "A Block in Time: a History of the South End from a Window on Holyoke Street")

1. The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino (fiction)

2. Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov (fiction)

3. Omenos, by Derek Walcott (poetry)

4. To the Lighthouse , by Virginia Woolf (fiction)

5. Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: a Journey through Yugoslavia," by Rebecca West (non-fiction)

April Bernard (2/5, "Miss Fuller")

1. Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes

2. Geography IIIby Elizabeth Bishop

3. Virgil's Eclogues, translation by David Ferry

4. Villette by Charlotte Bronte

5. Desire by Frank Bidart

Andre Dubus III(2/26, "Townie")

1. Ironweed, by William Kennedy

2. Let the Great World Spin, by Column McCann

3. Any short story collection by Alice Munro

4. Bastard Out of Carolina, by Dorothy Alison

5. Dalva, by Jim Harrison

Mari Passananti (3/19, "The K Street Affair")

1. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

2. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

3. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

4. The God of Small Things by Arundati Roy

5. A Time to Kill by John Grisham

Doug Bauer (4/16, "What Happens Next: Matters of Life and Death")

1. The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald

2. The Collected Stories of John Cheever;

3. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

4. The Professor's House by Willa Cather

5. Ragtime, by E. L. Doctorow

Barbara Shapiro (4/30, "The Art Forger")

1. Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston

2. The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver

3. The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien

4. The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison

5. Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides

Dennis Lehane (5/14, "Live by Night")

1. The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald

2. Clockers, by Richard Price

3. Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy

4. The Last Good Kiss, by James Crumley

5. The Three Musketeers, by Alexandre Dumas

Alice Hoffman (5/21, "The Dovekeepers")

1. Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte

2. Something Wicked This Way Comes, Ray Bradbury

3. Andrew Lang's Books of Fairytales (any color)

4. Beloved, Toni Morrrison

5. The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald

FOSEL 2/16/13 FOSEL 2/16/13

Local History and Dynamic Poetry Draw Big Crowds for Lynne Potts (A Block in Time) and Poet April Bernard (Miss Fuller, and New Poems)

It's a good thing that the South End Library offers elevator access to its second-floor community room: It allowed a harried-looking mother with three young children and a squeaky-wheeled stroller to come up and listen to a reading underway by poet April Bernard on a recent Tuesday night. "It made my day," the grateful mother said afterwards.

She was not alone. A large crowd had taken every seat in the room, spellbound first by Bernard's forceful reading from her 2012 fictionalized history of Boston-based feminist Margaret Fuller, followed by five new poems received with appreciative laughter and applause. A week earlier, a standing-room audience listened intently to Lynne Potts describe her 35 years living on Holyoke Street and the research she has done to tie the colorful fortunes of that single block to the larger tale of the South End's many cycles of rise and decline.

While "Miss Fuller" is fictionalized history, it is based on years of research and "coincides with facts as known," said Bernard, who teaches creative writing at Skidmore College. The story of how Henry Thoreau traveled to the shores of Long Island hoping to find a manuscript that might have survived the shipwreck in which Fuller drowned with her husband and young son in 1850, "planted a seed in my tooth" when she first heard of it, said Bernard. "What if he found something else?" That conceit is at the root of the novel's fiction, and allowed Bernard to weave a new and complex picture of Fuller's character and beliefs, set in tumultuous times when the changes she advocated caused great discomfort not just to close friends and others but also to herself. After a few audience questions, Bernard read five new poems, titled, When I was Thirteen I Saw Uncle Vanya; Werner Herzog in the Amazon; Tis Late; Lids; and Thunder-Mountain-Mesa-Valley-Ridge, all likely to be included in Bernard's next collection. Both Lynne Potts's and April Bernard's five favorite books can be found on this web site under the tab The South End Reads.

*Local author Lynne Potts signing books*

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On Tuesday, February 26, acclaimed author Andre Dubus III (House of Sand and Fog, The Garden of Last Days) will read from his riveting memoir, Townie, in which he describes the violence, bullying and loneliness of his childhoodafter his father, short-story writer Andre Dubus, leaves the family. He will be introduced by his colleague, Doug Bauer. The reading starts at 6:30 PM.

Those who missed Lynne Potts's reading have another chance to hear her when she will read from her book on Thursday, February 21 at the South End Historical Society, 532 Massachusetts Ave, at 6:30 PM. Reservations are required: 617 536-4445 or by email at admin@southendhistoricalsociety.org.

FOSEL 2/7/13 FOSEL 2/7/13

Nemo the Nor'easter Forces the Closing of the Entire Boston Public Library System --Including the South End Library-- Friday, February 8, Saturday, February 9 and Sunday, February 10.

On a day filled with headlines like "Potential Historic Blizzard Looms" and "Historic Crippling Blizzard Ahead" the Boston Public Library wisely decided to shut down all its branches Friday and Saturday February 8 and 9. And yes, that includes the South End library. In addition, the Central Library at Copley Square, the only facility in the library system open on Sundays, will be closed on Sunday, February 10, as well.

If you can't make it through the snowy weekend without that book or DVD you meant to pick up, hop on a train, bus or bike and get to the Copley Library now: it's open tonight till nine o'clock. Otherwise, dust off the sled and the trash-can lids, flatten out the cardboard box that new 80-inch television screen came in, and go sledding in Titus Sparrow Park. It will be the hot spot in the South End.

FOSEL 2/3/13 FOSEL 2/3/13

Poet April Bernard to Read from "Miss Fuller," a Fictionalized History of Feminist Margaret Fuller, Once "the Most Famous Woman in America," Tuesday, February 5, 6:30 PM at the SE Library

The cover of Miss Fuller shows a stormy sea seen from the coast, ostensibly New York's Fire Island, where, in 1850, Margaret Fuller perished in a shipwreck with her Italian husband and two-year-old son. The tragic dimensions of Fuller's life and death are narrated from the points of view of various characters belonging to the Concord Transcendentalists, who had awaited her return. Henry David Thoreau, traveling to Fire Island hoping to find manuscripts among the soaked debris that washed ashore after the hurricane passed, finds something else instead, which forms the fictionalized framework of Bernard's 2012 work.

April Bernard is a novelist, poet, and essayist whose most recent book of poems is Romanticism (2009). Previous poetry collections are Blackbird Bye Bye, Psalms, and Swan Electric. Her work has appeared in The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, The New Republic, The Nation, and Slate. She has taught widely and was for many years a magazine and book editor in New York City. Her honors include a Guggenheim award, the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets, a Whitney Humanities Fellowship at Yale University, a Sidney Harman Fellowship, and the Stover Prize. As Director of Creative Writing, she is a member of the English Department faculty at Skidmore College, and is also on the faculty of the Bennington MFA Writing Seminars. Her five favorite novels are listed under The South End Reads tab of the FOSEL web site.

Ms. Bernard will read from Miss Fuller as well as from her poetry collection, Romanticism. Both books will be available for sale, signing and borrowing from the library. The writer will be introduced by author Doug Bauer, also on the faculty of Bennington College, whose next collection of essays --What Happens Next?--will be published this fall.

On February 26, the South End Writes will host nationally known writer Andre Dubus III, who will read from Townie, a Memoir.

FOSEL 1/24/13 FOSEL 1/24/13

New Art Journaling (for the Young) and Writing Workshops (for the Young at Heart) to Start Thursdays at the South End Branch

Two new art and writing workshop will be offered at the South End branch on Thursday afternoons, starting next week for one and a week later for the other. The first, "Art Journaling for Fifth-graders and Up" has been organized by children's librarian Margaret Gardner and will be held under the guidance of graphic designer Mary Owens, a long-time library supporter who also designs the snappy posters for The South End Writes series. The first art-journaling workshop will be held next Thursday from 4:00 -5:00 PM, followed by additional ones each last Thursday of the month. In case you wondered what this might be about, here's a link to an art-journaling web site for kids, teens and beginners. Participants will create their own keepsake art journals in which to draw, write and make collages. The first session will be devoted to making the journals from materials provided for free at the library.

"Writing in the World: a Creative Writing Workshop for Adults" will beginThursday, February 7 at 3:00 PM and run weekly through April 11. Led by writer and teacher, Debka Colson, the workshop is aimed at beginning writers age 55 and up to experiment with short fiction and poetry. Students will develop their skills through writing prompts, discussing examples by major writers, peer review and a public reading/reception at the end of the course. Fun exercises will help writing students reflect on life in their communities, and their roles in it, from a fresh perspective. The class is limited to 10 participants who must commit to attending all sessions. Registration is required: call Anne Smart at 617 536-8241.

The writing workshop was funded by the MetLife Foundation in partnership with the Boston Public Library, Lifetime Arts Inc., and the American Library Association's Public Programming Office. In addition, The Friends of the South End Library are paying for materials and refreshments.

FOSEL 1/24/13 FOSEL 1/24/13

Looking Back 45 Years and Longer, Lynne Potts Will Read from her Memoir, "A Block in Time: a History of the South End from a Window on Holyoke Street" Tuesday, January 29, 6:30 PM

"Holyoke Street, a single block of row houses in the South End of Boston, was built in the 1860s as housing for upper- and middle-class families," is how Lynne Potts begins the memoir of her time in what is now the largest Victorian neighborhood in the United States. In a carefully documented paperback illustrated with photographs and drawings, the author weaves a history of the beginnings of the South End in the early 1800s, when it was still mostly underwater, to its nascent form as a neighborhood for wealthy Bostonians decades later, and its subsequent decline toward the end of the 19th century. How it reemerged in the 20th and 21st centuries as one of the most sought-after and diverse neighborhoods in Boston is the tale with which she intertwines her own, arriving first in 1968 from New York City as a student and ten years later as a single mother with two young children, Sam and Emmy, to whom the book is dedicated.

Many names of local characters who helped shape the history of the neighborhood can be found in the pages of this delightful book, some still around, others not, including Eleanor Strong, Allan Crite, Ann Hershfang, Marcie Curry and Mel King. The movement to preserve open space in the neighborhood by means of establishing community garden plots, the opening of first Bread and Circus store (now Whole Foods), the creation of Southwest Corridor Park and historic fights to keep the South End branch of the Boston Public Library open are covered as well. In the 1980s, Potts began to write about it all for The South End News, then just founded as a 24-page local newspaper by Alison Barnet and Skip Rosenthal.

Lynne Potts is a poet who currently lives both in the South End and in New York City, where she received an MFA from Columbia University. Her poems have appeared in the Paris Review and other literary journals, and she was the Poetry Editor of the Columbia Journal of Literature and Art. Her five favorite books are listed under The South End Reads on this web site.

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Author Leah Hager Cohen Explores the Unique Dimension of Sorrow Experienced by Each of her Characters in her Novel, "The Grief of Others,"

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A roomful of people greeted Leah Hager Cohen on January 15 when she read at the South End branch from her latest, and highly acclaimed, novel, The Grief of Others. Introduced by author Doug Bauer, who substituted for Sue Miller, out with a bad cold, Hager Cohen started out by saying that she is happiest when writing but "second happiest' when in a library "with other library people." She read a section from the novel that harkened back to a summer vacation in a family cabin where a couple and three children from two relationships are united for the first time in years, each bringing with them an assortment of wounds and sorrows that are explored underneath the starry skies of the Adirondack mountains, a place where, as Hager Cohen described it, the lake's black water at night "is warmer than the air." This is the first novel where she used physical details from places she knows well, the Adirondacks and the town of Nyack, NY, something she had resisted in her previous work, she told the spellbound audience, until her agent suggested doing otherwise for this novel.

*Author Leah Hager Cohen at the South End library*

How people grieve is not quantifiable, the author suggested in response to various comments about how contemporary culture deals with sorrows large and small because "we each do it in our own unique way." Her mother taught her "no one lives very long without sorrow or grief," and that, through like experiences, we are all part of a larger community, in our own time --horizontally-- and through time --vertically-- with our ancestors and descendants.

One of Hager Cohen's earlier non-fiction books, Train Go Sorry, offered personal history of a different kind, specifically the experience of her immigrant grandparents, both deaf, and of her father who ran a school for deaf children, told from the author's perspective as a person with hearing. Or, as Doug Bauer put it, as someone who "yearns to be part of that culture, one she grew up so close to, and yet could not fully be a member of."

*Author Doug Bauer introduced Hager Cohen*

Answering a question from the audience of how she became a writer Hager Cohen said that, when she was little, she would name each of her fingers and tell stories about them, which her mother transcribed. "She gave me the gift of taking seriously what I was doing," Hager Cohen said. Later on, in journalism school, a professor asked whether he could show the non-fiction she had written, about the deaf culture, to his agent, which set her on the road to being a published writer, first in non-fiction, but in fiction shortly after.

Hager Cohen said she is "excited" about the new book she is working on: It is based on the question of how to love, or live with, someone who is hard to love.

Her five favorite books are listed on the FOSEL web site under The South End Reads.

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Local Advisors for BPL's Project to Add Stores to Copley Library Express Concern about Mixing Library Mission with Commerce but Agree on One Thing: Johnson Building Needs a Major Overhaul

A group of local advisors from the Back Bay met at the BPL for the second time on January 10 to look into a proposal by the Menino administration to add retail commercial space to what is by all accounts a dead zone on Boylston Street: the 1972 addition to the Central Library's McKim building, otherwise known as the Johnson building. Its cavernous street-level entry features Soviet-style security gates, a drab circulation counter and a lonely reference desk way down in the center, but "nothing that welcomes or embraces me," complained Meg Mainzer-Cohen of the Neighborhood Association of the Back Bay. The conference room where the meeting was held came itself under fire from Karen Cord Taylor of the Independent Newspaper Group who looked at the colorless rug, unattractive wood paneling and neon lighting and declared it all "ugly."

Yet fixing the building's shortcomings by adding commercial space to attract shoppers to the library did not appear to be the logical solution to the Community Advisory Committee's (CAC) members, either. "There's no doubt about the demand. I could rent the space tomorrow," said Chris Gordon, a BPL development advisor. "But is it compatible with the BPL? Does it have to be integrated or separate? Is the mission of the BPL revenue or library services?" "Store owners don't want to feel they're passed by on the way to somewhere else, like a library," added Peter Sherin, also of the Neighborhood Association of the Back Bay. "I have an aversion to franchises," commented Cord Taylor. "Any retail here should be iconic for Boston. Another "Curious George" store puts me off."

Support for creating a conference center that would bring in revenue seemed equally lukewarm. "There's no daylight downstairs," Gordon pointed out. Cord Taylor said that a conference center is someplace you'd want to go to, not because you have to. She reiterated there's little architectural or visual interest in the Johnson building, as opposed to the adjacent McKim Building, which is filled with natural light and architectural detail. "Or like the JFK Library," piped up several other advisors, extolling the breathtaking water views from that library. How to make the BPL competitive with already available conference space in Boston was not an easy task, the consensus was, and unlikely to generate a lot of money.

A market analysis report by a consultant group, Byrne-McKinney, was not yet available for the committee's discussion, but library-mission-centered proposals seemed to generate most excitement among its members: a light-filled Children's Room; a prominently displayed exhibit about the history of libraries; a place for chess instruction or even a 'Little League of Chess centered in the library.' Architect Bill Rawn, who in the 1980s worked on a masterplan to revamp the New York Public Library and more recently designed both the successful Mattapan branch as well as the Cambridge Public Library, said his take on libraries is that they are egalitarian institutions that should be accessible to everyone and offer opportunities to all. "Parts of the Johnson building work very well, but others don't match the excitement of the McKim building,"said Rawn, whose firm heads the Johnson Improvements project. Referring to the library's Boylston Street location as a "weak retail block," Rawn suggested that "we have to think about this project as one that extends into the sidewalk."

BPL trustee, Rep. Byron Rushing, who attended the meeting as an observer, said plainly that the Johnson building was a 'mistake' that we are now 'stuck with.' "Had we had a Community Advisory Committee when planning the Johnson building, it would never have been built," he asserted. "Before there was a Johnson building, we never talked about a McKim building. It was always the Central Library or Copley Library." Rushing expressed a strong desire to change the name of the Johnson building. "The trustees are very open to this project," he said. "We don't want to hear that something is 'too cutting-edge' or even 'too expensive.' "

The next meeting for the Johnson Improvements project will be Wednesday, March 13, 8:30 am, Central Library's Commonwealth Salon. The public is invited.

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The "South End Writes" Author Series Resumes Tuesday, January 15, with Leah Hager Cohen Reading from her 2012 Novel, "The Grief of Others"

*FOSEL president Marleen Nienhuis, author Margot Livesey and novelist Sue Miller*

When the Friends of the South End Library (FOSEL) began to sponsor authors at the South End Library to read from their work three years ago, we had no idea how popular the adventure would become, or whether anyone would show up. What we did know was that the South End branch had an incredibly supportive and interested staff who would help us, that the South End is, was, and likely will always be a haven for writers, artists, musicians and other creative minds, and that we had a wonderful graphic designer on our board, Mary Owens, who would generously and cleverly volunteer to do the posters we needed to announce the readings.

It's easy to take for granted all the different roles a free public library plays in the community it serves, from the vaulted place of research to the simple refuge that is cool in the summer, warm in the winter, with a free, clean bathroom in a culture where that sort of basic amenity can be hard to find.

What FOSEL was not fully cognizant of at the time is that a library is also a place where local residents can find out who else actually lives here, who is writing what, who is thinking what, and what our local history is. This is what The South End Writes has become: a mirror of literary achievement by the many fine writers, journalists and poets who live where we live, shop where we shop, take the T and go to the polls just like we do. We just didn't know who they were, but increasingly we do. Writers are invited by FOSEL board members, by FOSEL supporters and literary luminaries like Sue Miller and Doug Bauer, and by the South End Library staff, headed by Anne Smart. The ones who have enriched us with their work include Sue Miller, Doug Bauer, Chris Kimball, Joanne Chang, John Sacco, Phil Gambone, Johnny Diaz, Susan Naimark,, Henri Cole, Sara Lawrence Lightfoot, Stephen Davis, Margot Livesey, Alice Stone, Mari Passananti, Maryanne O'Hara, L. Annette Binder, Edith Pearlman, Christine Chamberlain, Sven Birkerts, Wendy Wunder, Lily King, Susan Conley, Alison Barnet and Scott Pomfret, among others.

Coming up between now and the summer are:Leah Hager Cohen, Lynne Potts, April Bernard, Andre Dubus III, Mari Passananti, Doug Bauer, Dennis Lehane, Alice Hoffman, Alice Stone, and Phil Gambone. Some will read at the South End branch for the first time; others are returning to update us on new work, or work in progress.

Perhaps the best compliment paid to The South End Writes is that another library Friends group, at the Jamaica Plain branch, has begun its own series, Jamaica Plain Writes, with the first author, JP resident Chuck Collins, appearing there on Thursday, January 24, at 6:45 p.m. Collins is an expert on U.S. inequality, the author of several books, and a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive think tank. For further information about the JP Writes series, check the link to their web site here.

Below is the list of writers scheduled to appear at the South End Library until July. Occasionally, schedules need to change, but FOSEL posts them on this web site as soon as they become known.

Wishing you a Happy and Writerly New Year....

UPCOMING READINGS FOR THE SOUTH END WRITES ARE:

January 15, 2013, 6:30 p.m.

Leah Hager Cohen

The Grief of Others

The author, who publishes both fiction and non-fiction, will read from her latest novel which the New York Times described as “her best work yet.” With an introduction by Sue Miller

Tuesday, January 29, 6:30 p.m.

Lynne Potts

A Block in Time: a History of Boston’s South End from a Window on Holyoke Street. The author, who moved into a house on Holyoke Street with two young children in 1978, has written a personal history that includes what it was like to be young in the 60s, the turmoil and transformations of the South End from the time it was created out of Boston Bay, and captivating details of the characters in her neighborhood. A poet as well as a writer, she splits her time living on Rutland Street and in New York City, where she was Poetry Editor of the Columbia Journal of Literature and Art.

Tuesday, February 5, 6:30 p.m.

April Bernard

The poet (Romanticism)and novelist, most recently of history (Miss Fuller), is currently the director of creative writing at Skidmore College. With an introduction by South End author Doug Bauer, whose own new collection of essays, "What Happens Next?" will come out this fall.

Tuesday, February 26, 6:30 p.m.

Andre Dubus III

Townie, a Memoir

The examination of the author’s violent past has been described ”best book” of non-fiction of 2011 and 2012 by many literary-gate guardians, and was preceded by his previous novelsHouse of Sand and Fog (made into a movie by the same name) and The Garden of Last Days. Sue Miller will introduce the author.

Tuesday, March 19, 6:30 p.m.

Mari Passananti

will read from her second novel, The K Street Affair.

Tuesday, April 16, 6:30 p.m.

Doug Bauer

Tuesday, May 14, 6:30 p.m.

Dennis Lehane, the spectacularly successful author who grew up in Dorchester and is ALSO a BPL trustee, published his latest novel, Live by Night, in 2012. Set in Boston in the 1920s, the New York Times’ reviewer called the book a “sentence-by-sentence pleasure.”

Tuesday, May 21, 6:30 p.m.

Tuesday, June 11, 6:30 p.m.

Tuesday, June 18, 6:30 p.m.