Announcements & Press Releases
March 16, 2011
Friends of the Central Library Announce 2011-2012 Season
The Friends of the Central Library announced the 2011-2012 Season of the Rosamond Gifford Lecture Series at the Rick Steves lecture on Tuesday, March 15. “We’re so excited to offer this fabulous line up,” said Denise Headd, FOCL Director. “We hope our audience was as excited to hear the news as we were to deliver it.”
Authors for the 2011-2012 Season include Jonathan Franzen, Dennis Lehane, Alexandra Fuller, Sherman Alexie, Laurie R. King, and Abraham Verghese. All lectures will be held at the Civic Center and begin promptly at 7:30 pm.
Jonathan Franzen was born in Western Springs, Illinois, in 1959. He grew up in Webster Groves, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis. After graduating from Swarthmore College in 1981 he studied in Berlin as a Fulbright scholar and later worked in a seismology lab at Harvard. Franzen is the author of a bestselling collection of essays, How to Be Alone and the memoir The Discomfort Zone. He is well-known for his books The Corrections and (most recently) Freedom. His short stories and his essays, including political journalism, have most recently appeared in The New Yorker, The Best American Essays, The New York Times, and The Guardian. In 2009 The Corrections was named as one of the “100 Best Books of the Decade” by The Times (London). In August 2010, Franzen was featured on the cover of TIME Magazine -- only the second time a living writer has been on the cover of this national magazine. Franzen will appear at the Civic Center on Tuesday, October 11, 2011 at 7:30 pm.
Dennis Lehane was born and raised in Dorchester, Massachusetts. Before becoming a full-time writer, he worked as a counselor with mentally handicapped and abused children, waited tables, parked cars, drove limos, worked in bookstores, and loaded tractor-trailers. His one regret is that no one ever gave him a chance to tend bar. Lehane and his wife, Angie, divide their time between Boston and the Gulf Coast of Florida.
Lehane’s works include the New York Times best-sellers Moonlight Mile, The Given Day, Gone Baby Gone, Mystic River, and Shutter Island, as well as Sacred, Prayers for Rain, Darkness, Take My Hand, A Drink Before the War and Coronado, a collection of short stories and a play.
Mystic River was a finalist for the 2001 PEN/Winship Award and won both the Anthony Award and the Barry Award for Best Novel, the Dilys Award from the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association and the Massachusetts Book Award in Fiction from the Massachusetts Center for the Book. A Drink Before the War won the Shamus Award for Best First Novel. In addition, three of Lehane’s books have been made into hit movies: Shutter Island (directed by Martin Scorsese, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, 2010); the big screen debut of Gone Baby Gone (directed by Ben Affleck, 2006); and the award-winning film adaptation of Mystic River (directed by Clint Eastwood, 2003). Lehane will appear at the Civic Center on Tuesday, November 1, 2011 at 7:30 pm.
Alexandra Fuller was born the third of five children to Tim and Nicola Fuller in Glossop, England in 1969, during a brief attempt by her parents to live outside of Africa. The family moved back to Africa in 1972, to Rhodesia, where the Fullers became more absorbed by the country’s intensifying bloody struggle for independence, “War was like an episode of awful, non-stop weather to us,” Fuller has said.
Fuller was educated in Zimbabwe until she was eighteen, first at a small government boarding school near the family’s farm in the country’s eastern mountains and then at a private girls-only boarding school in Harare. Watching the celebratory atmosphere in the aftermath of independence turn into the horror of Mugabe’s one-man attempt to take a country to the grave with him has influenced Fuller’s work.
Fuller has written three books of non-fiction. Her debut book, Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood, was a New York Times Notable Book for 2002, the 2002 Booksense Best Non-fiction book, a finalist for the Guardian’s First Book Award and the winner of the 2002 Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize. Her 2004 Scribbling the Cat: Travels with an African Soldier won the Ulysses Prize for Art of Reportage. Her latest book is The Legend of Colton H Bryant. She has also written extensively for magazines and newspapers including The New Yorker and National Geographic magazine. Fuller is currently at work on a book titled Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness which is a prequel/sequel to Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight. Fuller will appear at the Civic Center on Monday, December 5, 2011 at 7:30 pm.
Sherman Alexie was born in October 1966. A Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian, he grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Wellpinit, WA, about 50 miles northwest of Spokane. Born hydrocephalic, which means with water on the brain, Alexie underwent a brain operation at the age of 6 months and was not expected to survive. When he did beat the odds, doctors predicted he would live with severe mental retardation. Though he showed no signs of this, he suffered severe side effects, such as seizures, throughout his childhood. In spite of all he had to overcome, Alexie learned to read by age three, and devoured novels, such as John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, by age five. All these things ostracized him from his peers, though, and he was often the brunt of other kids' jokes on the reservation.
Alexie planned to be a doctor and enrolled in pre-med courses at WSU, but after fainting numerous times in human anatomy class realized he needed to change his career path. That change was fueled when he stumbled into a poetry workshop at WSU.
His first novel, Reservation Blues, won Booklist’s Editors Choice Award for Fiction. Indian Killer was a New York Times Notable Book. The Toughest Indian in the World won the 2001 PEN/Malamud Award, honoring excellence in the art of storytelling. Ten Little Indians was a 2003 national bestseller and Publishers Weekly Book of the Year.
His latest books include Flight, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, a 2007 National Book Award winner in Young People’s Literature, and Face, his first full collection of poems in nine years. His collection of short stories, War Dances, was released in Fall '09.
Alexie wrote and produced the film, Smoke Signals, based on his book, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, which won the Audience Award and Filmmakers Trophy at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival. In 2002 he made his directorial debut with The Business of Fancydancing. He is currently working on a sequel to The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven entitled, Fire with Fire, and a sequel to True Diary entitled, The Magic and Tragic Year of My Broken Thumb.
Alexie’s stories cut to the heart of the human experience. He compels audiences to see the world for all of its pitfalls and possibilities. He lives in Seattle, WA, with his wife and two sons. Alexie will appear at the Civic Center on Tuesday, March 27, 2012 at 7:30 pm.
Laurie R. King is a third generation Northern Californian living near Monterey Bay. Her background is as mixed as any writer’s, from theology to managing a coffee store. She has raised children, vegetables, and the occasional building. King’s academic background includes a BA in Comparative Religion from UC Santa Cruz, a MA in Old Testament Theology from Berkeley’s Graduate Theological Union, and an honorary doctorate, also from the GTU.
King’s first novel, A Grave Talent won the First Novel Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America and the Creasey Dagger from Britain’s Crime Writers’ Association. Later books have won or been nominated for an alphabet of prizes. The Beekeeper’s Apprentice was chosen as one of the century’s best crime novels by the IMBA and her books appear regularly on bestseller lists that include the Independent Booksellers Associations and the New York Times. Her novels, particularly the historical series set in the early Twentieth century, appear regularly as the focus of book clubs and library “community reads.” In 2010, she was inducted into the Baker Street Irregulars, and was appointed Guest of Honor at the annual mystery convention, BoucherCon.
She continues to write in two series and standalone novels. King will appear at the Civic Center on Monday, April 2, 2012 at 7:30 pm.
Abraham Verghese is the son of parents who were teachers in Ethiopia. He grew up near Addis Ababa and began his medical training there. When Emperor Haile Selassie was deposed, he completed his training at Madras Medical College and came to the United States for his residency as one of many foreign medical graduates. He trained as a resident and chief resident in internal medicine at East Tennessee State University, and as a fellow in infectious diseases at Boston University. From 1980 to 1983, he did his fellowship at Boston University School of Medicine, working at Boston City Hospital for two years. It was here that he first saw the early signs of the HIV epidemic and later, when he returned to Johnson City as an assistant professor of medicine, he saw the second epidemic, rural AIDS, and his life took the turn for which he is most well known - caring for numerous AIDS patients in an era when little could be done. He helped his patients through their early and painful deaths, and at that point in time that was often the most a physician could do.
He has served on the faculty at East Tennessee State University, the University of Iowa, Texas Tech University and the University of Texas Health Sciences Center, San Antonio, where he was the founding director of the Center for Medical Humanities and Ethics. He is board certified in internal medicine, pulmonary diseases and infectious diseases. He serves on the Board of Directors of the American Board of Internal Medicine. Verghese MD is Senior Associate Chair and Professor for the Theory and Practice of Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine.
In 1990-91, Dr. Verghese attended the Iowa Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa where he obtained a Master of Fine Arts degree. His first book, My Own Country, about
AIDS in rural Tennessee, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for 1994 and was made into a movie by Mira Nair. His second book, The Tennis Partner, was a New York Times notable book and a national bestseller. His third book, Cutting for Stone, has been published by Knopf. He has published extensively in medical literature, and his writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Sports Illustrated, The Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, Granta, The New York Times Magazine, The Wall Street Journal and elsewhere. Verghese will appear at the Civic Center on Monday, May 7, 2012 at 7:30 pm.
Proceeds of the Rosamond Gifford Lecture Series are donated to the Central Library to fund special programming, and to purchase books and materials. Tickets are sold through the Oncenter Box Office at 435-2121, or via Ticketmaster online. Individual tickets for the 2011-2012 Season will go on sale after Labor Day. For specific questions related to the lecture series check out our website at www.giffordlectureseries.org or call the FOCL offices at 435-1832.
Last updated: March 23, 2011