LIVE! @ your library Reading Stage

Aisle 2500 in the Exhibition Hall

Take a break from a day of meetings and programs and stop by the LIVE! @ your library Reading Stage in the exhibition hall to enjoy readings from new and favorite authors and poets, learn how to develop author programs for your library, and find new recommendations for your patrons.

The 2008 LIVE! @ your library Reading Stage is presented by the ALA Public Programs Office.

LIVE! @ your library Reading Stage Schedule
Time  Saturday, June 28 Sunday, June 29 Monday, June 30
 

Emcee: Jane Gibson, Librarian, Seattle Public Library

Emcee: to be announced

Emcee: Brad Hooper, Editor, Adult Books, Booklist Magazine

Noon

Francesca Lia Block

Anya Ulinich

Firoozeh Dumas

12:30

Matthew Eck

Kaya McLaren

Brunonia Barry

1:00

Bich Minh Nguyen

Graciela Limon

Keir Graff

1:30

Yxta Maya Murray

John Francis

Ellis Avery

2:00

Leif Enger

John Clinch

Daniel White

2:30

Nina Revoyr

Alan Bern

Kimberly Pauley

3:00

Lisa Hernandez

Dan Kennedy

Mark Doty

3:30

Culture Clash

Lila Karp

Alex Lemon

Each reading will be followed by an autograph session.

LIVE! @ your library Reading Stage Author Biographies

ellis avery    Ellis Avery is the winner of a Lambda Literary Award and an Ohioana Library Award for her first novel, The Teahouse Fire (Riverhead Books, 2006). In 2001, Three Lines, One Road, a year’s worth of daily haiku exchanged between Avery and Melissa Demian, was a finalist in the National Poetry Series. Avery is also the author of a nonfiction book, The Smoke Week, a personal account of life in Manhattan after 9/11. Photo: Kate Attardo.

brunonia barry'    Brunonia Barry spent nearly a decade in Hollywood before returning to her native Massachusetts, where, along with her husband, she co-founded an innovative company that creates award-winning word, visual and logic puzzles. In recent years she has written books for the Beacon Street Girls, a fictional series for ’tweens. The Lace Reader (William Morrow, 2008) is her first original novel.

alan bern    Alan Bern is a poet and author of children’s picture and chapter books, as well as a storyteller and a performer for both children and adults. For the past fourteen years Alan has worked as a librarian in public libraries in the San Francisco Bay Area. His newest book of poems, Waterwalking in Berkeley, was released by Daniel & Daniel Publishers in spring 2007.

francesca lia block    Francesca Lia Block is renowned for her groundbreaking novels and stories, including her best-selling first book, Weetzie Bat (HarperTrophy, 1989). She is also the recipient of the 2005 Margaret A. Edwards Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Library Association. Her latest book is Quakeland (Manic D Press, Inc., 2008).

jon clinch    Jon Clinch’s first novel, Finn (Random House, 2007) was named one of the best novels of 2007 by the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Christian Science Monitor and Book Sense. It was also shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle’s first-ever Best Recommended List and the Sargent First Novel Prize. Photo: Michael O’Neill

culture clash    Culture Clash (Richard Montoya, Ric Salinas and Herbert Siguenza) has performed in such venues as the Kennedy Center and the Lincoln Center, New York Shakespeare Festival/Public Theater and countless university and community stages. Founded in San Francisco in 1984, and anthologized by Theater Communications Group, this troupe of writers/performers surveys contemporary Latino/Chicano culture in America from its own unique perspective.

mark doty    Mark Doty’s eight books of poems and four books of nonfiction prose have been honored by the National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, a Whiting Writers Award, a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writer’s Award and, in the United Kingdom, the T.S. Eliot Prize. He is a professor at the University of Houston and lives in New York City. Photo: Mark Lacy.

firoozeh dumas    Firoozeh Dumas self-published Funny in Farsi in 2003 with no prior writing experience, as a gift for her children. The Persian version of Funny in Farsi is currently one of the bestselling books in Iran. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle Magazine, Lifetime Magazine, and on NPR. Her next book, Laughing without an Accent, a series of autobiographical essays, was published by Random House in May 2008. Photo: Stephanie Rausser.

matthew eck    Matthew Eck enlisted in the Army in 1992, and served in Somalia and Haiti. He has a BA in English Literature from Wichita State University, and received his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Montana. He currently teaches creative writing and literature at University of Central Missouri. The Farther Shore (Milkweed, 2007) is his first novel.

leif enger    Leif Enger’s bestseller Peace Like a River was the winner of the Book Sense Book of the Year and one of Time’s top-five novels of 2001. His second novel, So Brave, Young, and Handsome (Grove/Atlantic, Inc.), was released in April 2008. He lives on a farm in Minnesota with his wife and two sons. Photo: Robin Enger.

john francis    John Francis is the founder and director of Planetwalk, a nonprofit environmental education organization, and the author of the memoir Planetwalker: 22 Years of Walking, 17 Years of Silence. He travels around the world speaking on pilgrimage and change, and on Planetlines, an environmental studies curriculum based on the walking pilgrimage, which he is developing for K–12 schools and universities. Photo: National Geographic

keir graff    Keir Graff is the author of the political thrillers One Nation, Under God (Severn House, July 2008), My Fellow Americans and, writing as Michael McCulloch, the crime novel Cold Lessons. He is the senior editor of Booklist Online, where he writes the popular blog “Likely Stories.” A native of Missoula, Montana, he lives in Chicago. Photo: Sean Graff

lisa hernandez    Lisa Hernandez is a native of Pasadena, California, where she lives with her husband and daughter. She teaches English at Los Angeles Community College and coordinates literacy programs for the Los Angeles Unified School District. Migrations and Other Stories (Arte Publico Press, 2007) is her first published book.

lila karp    Lila Karp has taught literature, film and feminist theory in women’s studies programs at universities throughout the country. The former director of the Princeton University Women’s Center, Karp was also the co-director of The Institute for the Study of Women and Men at the University of Southern California. Her autobiographical novel, The Queen Is in the Garbage (The Feminist Press at CUNY, 2007) was originally published in 1971 and has been reprinted by the Feminist Press in their Classic Feminist Writers series.

dan kennedy    Dan Kennedy is author of the books Rock On (Algonquin Books, 2008) and Loser Goes First, and a longstanding contributor at McSweeney’s. He lives in New York City and performs spoken word gigs and readings on stages across the country. Photo: Stephen Smith

alex lemon    Alex Lemon’s first poetry collection, Mosquito, which documents his slow recovery from brain surgery as a young man, was hailed by Publishers Weekly as an “edgy, energetic, even frenetic debut from a rising star of the Midwest.” He is the co-editor of LUNA: A Journal of Poetry and Translation and is a frequent contributor to The Bloomsbury Review. His newest collection is titled Hallelujah Blackout (Milkweed, 2008).

graciela limón    Graciela Limon is the critically acclaimed and award-winning author of six novels: Left Alive, Erased Faces, The Day of the Moon, Song of the Hummingbird, The Memories of Ana Calderon and In Search of Bernabe, all from Arte Publico Press. Limon is Professor Emeritus of Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, where she served as a professor of U.S. Latina/o Literature and chair of the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies.



kaya mclaren    Kaya McLaren lives and teaches elementary school art on the east slope of Snoqualmie Pass in Washington. She is the author of Church of the Dog, which was rereleased by Penguin in May, 2008. When she’s not working, she likes to telemark ski, sit in hot springs, moonlight hike and play in lakes with her dog, Big Cedar.

yxta maya murray    Yxta Maya Murray is the author of The Queen Jade and The Conquest. She was chosen as a Barnes and Noble Discover pick for The Conquest, and she was a 1999 Whiting Award-winner for fiction. The second volume in her Red Lion series, The King’s Gold (HarperCollins), was published in May 2008. She teaches law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, where she currently lives. Photo: Andrew Brown

bich minh nguyen    Bich Minh Nguyen is the author of Stealing Buddha’s Dinner (Penguin, 2008), winner of the PEN/Jerard Award, a Chicago Tribune Best Book of 2007, and a Book Sense pick. She teaches literature and creative writing at Purdue University and lives with her husband, novelist Porter Shreve, in West Lafayette, Indiana, and Chicago. Photo: Porter Shreve

kimberly pauley    Kimberly Pauley loves a good book she can sink her teeth into. She is book reviewer for Young Adult Books Central ( www.yabookscentral.com). Sucks to Be Me (Mirrorstone, forthcoming August 2008) is her first novel. She lives in Illinois.

nina revoyr    Nina Revoyr was born in Tokyo to a Japanese mother and a Polish-American father, and grew up in Japan, Wisconsin, and Los Angeles. She is the author of The Necessary Hunger and Southland, which was a Book Sense 76 pick, winner of the Ferro-Grumley and Lambda Literary Awards, a finalist for an Edgar Award, and one of the Los Angeles Times’ Best Books of 2003. Her newest novel is The Age of Dreaming (Akashic Books, 2008). Photo: Leslie Barton

anya ulinich    Anya Ulinich began studying art as a child in Moscow. At seventeen, she immigrated to the United States, where she attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and received an MFA from the University of California at Davis. In 2000, she moved to Brooklyn, abandoned painting and began to write. Petropolis (Viking USA, 2007) is her first novel. Photo: Lisa Sciarsia

daniel white    Daniel White is a journalist and author whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Backpacker magazine. He received his MFA from Columbia University, and he lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. His first nonfiction book is The Cactus Eaters: How I Lost My Mind and Almost Found Myself on the Pacific Crest Trail (HarperCollins).