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Author Readings
18th Annual Fireside Reading Series
Join us by the fire at Hamline Midway Library for six weeks of readings by acclaimed Minnesota authors.
Wednesdays at 7 p.m.
Hamline Midway Branch Library
1558 W. Minnehaha Ave.
Now in its 18th season, the Fireside Literary Readings Series is one of The Friends' oldest and most beloved events. The series annually highlights the work of some of Minnesota's finest writers who have published a new work in the previous year. The author readings take place in the cozy atmosphere in front of the hearth at the Hamline Midway Branch Library and include free coffee, cider and cookies. The series is co-sponsored by Micawber's Books.
February 15: Diane Wilson
Among the Dakota, the Beloved Child ceremony marked the special, tender affection that parents felt toward a child whose life had been threatened. In this moving book, Beloved Child: A Dakota Way of Life, author Diane Wilson explores the work of several modern Dakota people who are continuing to raise beloved children: Gabrielle Tateyuskanskan, an artist and poet; Clifford Canku, a spiritual leader and language teacher; Alameda Rocha, a boarding school survivor; Harley and Sue Eagle, Canadian activists; and Delores Brunelle, an Ojibwe counselor. each of these humble but powerful people teaches children to believe in the “genius and brilliance” of Dakota culture as a way of surviving historical trauma.
Missed It!
January 11: Larry Millett
Historian Larry Millett kicks off the series with the thrilling latest in his renowned mystery series, The Magic Bullet: A Locked Room Mystery Featuring Shadwell Rafferty and Sherlock Holmes.
High above the city, a renowned local financier named Artemis Dodge
lies facedown on the floor of his armored penthouse sanctuary, a single
bullet hole in his head. Thirty stories up, in the city’s tallest
building, and without a shred of evidence or a sign pointing to anyone
having broken into the wealthy man’s fortress, it is—to all
appearances—an impossible crime. From locked rooms and civil unrest, to
murder and wartime paranoia, Larry Millett’s The Magic Bullet presents detective Shadwell Rafferty’s most challenging case.
January 18: Eric Dregni
Growing
up with Swedish and Norwegian grandparents with a dash of Danish thrown
in for balance, Dregni thought Scandinavians were perfectly normal. Who
doesn’t enjoy a good, healthy salad (Jell-O packed with canned fruit,
colored marshmallows, and pretzels) or perhaps some cod soaked in drain
cleaner as the highlights of Christmas? But what does it actually mean
to grow up Scandinavian-American or to live with these Norwegians,
Swedes, Finns, Danes, and Icelanders among us? In Vikings in the Attic,
Dregni tracks down and explores the significant—and quite often
bizarre—historic sites, tales, and traditions of Scandinavia’s peculiar
colony in the Midwest.
January 25: Mary Rockcastle
Told from the alternating perspectives of a husband and wife, Mary Rockcastle’s In Caddis Wood
explores the competing rhythms of romantic love, family life, and
professional ambition, refracted through the changing seasons of a long
marriage. Beneath the surface, affecting their collective future, beats
the resilient and endangered heart of nature. Library Journal states the book is “a strong and insightful novel this reader was reluctant to see end.”
Author Photo by Dani Werner
February 1: Ed Bok Lee
In
his new collection of poetry, Ed Bok Lee looks toward a global future –
one where the dividing lines between state, religion, race, history,
and culture have been blurred to the extent that the very idea of
difference requires a new understanding. Whorled strives to
give a voice to those left out with words of loss and longing,
confrontation and celebration. From gambling Buddhists at a Midwest
Native American casino, to a Russian rave, Lee’s ever-wandering cultural
and spiritual nomads struggle to make sense of what it means to be a
citizen of an increasingly homeless world.
February 8: Peter Smith
For
Peter Smith, the unavoidable mistakes and embarrassments in life—our
lesser horrors— are not without their humor, and a healthy dose at that.
In A Cavalcade of Lesser Horrors, a series of funny, honest,
and moving pieces, Smith explores a few messy episodes from his own life
and uncovers a simple reassurance we should take to heart: we’re all on
this wild ride together.
"With precise language he tells a good story with elegant descriptions, laced with the minor calamities of life, and woven with touches of wry humor." – Star Tribune
Workshops/Discussions
Books and Bars comes to Saint Paul
With The Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library, moderator Jeff Kamin brings his unique take on a
public book club show to Amsterdam Bar and Hall every third Tuesday
of the month. Kamin has taken the suburban book club tradition and put it in a
public bar where people’s opinions flow freely with a little liquid courage.
Even if you don’t like the featured book, he “guarantees a good time at our entertaining
discussions.” Are all welcome to try this reinvention of the book club.
Tuesdays at 6 p.m. - Discussion begins at 6:15
Amsterdam Bar and Hall
6 W. Sixth Street, Saint Paul, MN 55102
Swamplandia!, by Karen Russell
SPECIAL 4TH WEDNESDAY - February 29 - Leap Day!
Russell’s lavishly imagined and spectacularly crafted first novel sprang from a story in her highly praised collection, St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves (2006). Swamplandia! is a shabby tourist attraction deep in the Everglades, owned by the Bigtree clan of alligator wrestlers. When Hilola, their star performer, dies, her husband and children lose their moorings, and Swamplandia! itself is endangered as audiences dwindle. The Chief leaves. Brother Kiwi, 17, sneaks off to work at the World of Darkness, a new mainland amusement park featuring the “rings of hell.” Otherworldly sister Osceola, 16, vanishes after falling in love with the ghost of a young man who died while working for the ill-fated Dredge and Fill Campaign in the 1930s. It’s up to Ava, 13, to find her sister, and her odyssey to the Underworld is mythic, spellbinding, and terrifying... Ravishing, elegiac, funny, and brilliantly inquisitive, Russell’s archetypal swamp saga tells a mystical yet rooted tale of three innocents who come of age through trials of water, fire, and air. – Booklist Starred Review
Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Tuesday, March 20
Barcelona, 1945—just after the war, a great world city lies in shadow, nursing its wounds, and a boy named Daniel awakes on his eleventh birthday to find that he can no longer remember his mother’s face. To console his only child, Daniel’s widowed father, an antiquarian book dealer, initiates him into the secret of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a library tended by Barcelona’s guild of rare-book dealers as a repository for books forgotten by the world, waiting for someone who will care about them again. Daniel’s father coaxes him to choose a volume from the spiraling labyrinth of shelves, one that, it is said, will have a special meaning for him. And Daniel so loves the novel he selects, The Shadow of the Wind by one Julian Carax, that he sets out to find the rest of Carax’s work. To his shock, he discovers that someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book this author has written. In fact, he may have the last one in existence. Before Daniel knows it his seemingly innocent quest has opened a door into one of Barcelona’s darkest secrets, an epic story of murder, magic, madness and doomed love. And before long he realizes that if he doesn’t find out the truth about Julian Carax, he and those closest to him will suffer horribly.
The Shadow of the Wind is a coming-of-age tale of a young boy who, through the magic of a single book, finds a purpose greater than himself and a hero in a man he's never met. With the passion of García Márquez, the irony of Dickens, and the necromancy of Poe, Carlos Ruiz Zafón spins a web of intrigue so thick that it ensnares the reader from the very first line. The Shadow of the Wind is an ode to the art of reading, but it is also the perfect example of the all-encompassing power of a well-told story.
The Tragedy of Arthur, by Arthur Phillips
Tuesday, April 17
The always-original Phillips has outdone himself in this clever literary romp. Successfully blending and bending genres, he positions himself as a character in a novel that skewers Shakespearean scholarship, the publishing industry, and his own life to rollicking effect. Poised on the brink of literary history, Random House is about to publish a recently discovered Shakespearean play that had languished for centuries until unearthed by Phillips’ own father, also named Arthur Phillips. As literary executor of his father’s estate, the younger Arthur is invited to provide a brief introduction to this masterpiece, detailing the often questioned provenance of the play and his own eccentrically dysfunctional family in the process. The play, complete with scholarly notes, is also appended. Who wrote the play? Was it Arthur Phillips or William Shakespeare? How much truth does an author actually reveal in a fictional memoir? How low will a publishing company sink in pursuit of a literary coup? Does a play within a novel ever make sense? For the answers to these and other burning questions, you simply must read the book. – Booklist
Missed it!
January: Just Kids, by Patti Smith
It
was the summer of love and riots, when a chance encounter in Brooklyn
led two young people on a path of art, devotion, and initiation. Patti
Smith would evolve as a poet and performer, and Robert Mapplethorpe
would direct his highly provocative style toward photography. In 1969,
the pair set up camp at the Hotel Chelsea and entered a community of the
famous and infamous—the influential artists of the day and the colorful
fringe. It was a time of heightened awareness, when the worlds of
poetry, rock and roll, art, and sexual politics were colliding and
exploding. In this milieu, two kids made a pact to take care of each
other. Just Kids begins as a love story and ends as an elegy. It serves
as a salute to New York City during the late sixties and seventies and
to its rich and poor, its hustlers and hellions. A true fable, it is a
portrait of two young artists' ascent, a prelude to fame.
December: Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen
In his first novel since The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen has given us an epic of contemporary love and marriage. Freedom comically
and tragically captures the temptations and burdens of liberty: the
thrills of teenage lust, the shaken compromises of middle age, the wages
of suburban sprawl, the heavy weight of empire. In charting the
mistakes and joys of St. Paul, Minnesota’s Walter and Patty Berglund as
they struggle to learn how to live in an ever more confusing world,
Franzen has produced an indelible and deeply moving portrait of our
time.
November: Friday
Night Lights: A Town, A Team, A Dream, by H.G. Bissinger
Return once again to the timeless account of the Permian Panthers of
Odessa--the winningest high-school football team in Texas history.
Odessa is not known to be a town big on dreams, but the Panthers help
keep the hopes and dreams of this small, dusty town going. Socially and
racially divided, its fragile economy follows the treacherous boom-bust
path of the oil business. In bad times, the unemployment rate barrels
out of control; in good times, its murder rate skyrockets. But every
Friday night from September to December, when the Permian High School
Panthers play football, this West Texas town becomes a place where
dreams can come true.
Books and Bars at Amsterdam Bar and Hall will continue every third Tuesday through April. Visit www.booksandbars.com for more information. Follow on Twitter: @booksandbars. Call The Friends' office for more information at 651-222-3242.
This event series is co-sponsored by The Friends.
Films
The Women’s Human Rights Film Series, a monthly film and discussion series on the global issue of women’s human rights, returns.
“Peace Unveiled”
Wednesday, March 21 • 7 p.m.
Metropolitan State University Library - Ecolab Room
When the U.S. troop surge was announced in late 2009, women in Afghanistan knew that the ground was being laid for peace talks with the Taliban. Peace Unveiled follows three women who immediately began to organize to make sure that women’s rights don’t get traded away in the deal. One is a savvy parliamentarian who participated in writing the Afghan constitution that guarantees equality for women; another, a former midwife who is one of the last women’s rights advocates alive in Kandahar; and the third, a young activist who lives in a traditional family in Kabul.
“The War We Are Living”
Tuesday, April 24 • 7 p.m.
Metropolitan State University Library - Ecolab Room
If you ask Colombia’s city dwellers and governing political class, they’ll tell you the country’s 40-year-old civil war is over. But “The War We Are Living” reveals the “other” Colombia, in rural areas far away from the capital, where the war is all too real – and now the battle is over gold. In Cauca, a mountainous region in Colombia’s Pacific southwest, two extraordinary Afro-Colombian women are fighting to hold onto the gold-rich land that has sustained their community through small-scale mining for centuries.
Missed It!
OCTOBER: “The Price of Sex” - A
compelling inquiry into a dark side of immigration, “The Price of Sex”
sheds light on the underground criminal network of human trafficking and
experiences of trafficked Eastern European women forced into
prostitution abroad. Photojournalist Mimi Chakarova’s feature
documentary caps years of painstaking, on-the-ground reporting that
aired on "Frontline" and "60 Minutes" and earned her an Emmy nomination.
This dangerous investigative journey brings Chakarova face to face with
trafficked women.
NOVEMBER: "Miss Representation" uncovers a glaring reality in our society. The film explores how mainstream media contribute to the under-representation of women in influential positions in America and challenges the media’s limiting and often disparaging portrayals of women. Stories from teenage girls and provocative interviews with influential women from Condoleezza Rice to Gloria Steinem build momentum as the film accumulates startling facts and statistics that will leave the audience shaken and armed with a new perspective.
DECEMBER: “Grace, Milly, Lucy… Child Soldiers” People rarely realize that many child soldiers are girls. This reality is underscored by the gripping personal accounts of three female child soldiers in Raymonde Provencher’s riveting film. They are three among thousands of young girls violently abducted from Ugandan villages by the Lord’s Resistance Army, a rebel force that trained kidnapped girls to fight and kill. These survivors help women ex-rebels find a voice in the world, acceptance at home, and forgiveness from one another.
FEBRUARY: "Sin by Silence" -
From behind prison walls, a group of extraordinary women is
shattering misconceptions of domestic violence. “Sin by Silence”
profiles
Convicted Women Against Abuse (CWAA), the US prison system’s first
inmate-initiated group. CWAA has changed laws for battered women, raised
awareness for
those on the outside, and educated a system that does not fully
comprehend the
complexities of domestic abuse. A discussion follows the film. Presented
with The
Advocates for Human Rights. (Please note: some graphic images of abuse appear
briefly in photographs during the film.)
Check back soon for updated information on additional films and 2012 dates. The Women’s Human Rights Film Series is presented with The Advocates for Human Rights.
Music
There are currently no music programs offered by The Friends.
Visit the Library's website and online calendar to search for music, discussions, author readings and other events offered free, throughout the system.
Find out more about these and other annual events:
Fireside Reading Series
Untold Stories: Labor History
Women's Human Rights Film Series
Explore a UniVERSE of Poetry in Saint Paul!
For more detailed information on upcoming events at the Saint Paul Public Library, check out our program calendar, Events & Classes, jointly produced by The Friends and the Library. Events & Classes includes articles on upcoming programs and activities, highlights new services, and provides a complete monthly calendar of free programs for children and adults sponsored by the Library and The Friends. Copies of Events & Classes are available free at all Saint Paul Public Library branches, and are mailed to all Friends members. For a complimentary copy, please send a note with your address to friends@thefriends.org.
