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Join us for tea and conversation as Julie Maloney, Director of Women Reading Aloud, conducts an up-close and personal interview with best-selling American novelist, essayist, and editor, Christina Baker Kline at Bernardsville Public Library on Sunday, October 27 at 2:00 pm. Audience members will have a rare opportunity to ask the author questions about her work and her writing process. A short reading as well as a book signing will follow the interview.
Ms. Kline's newest novel, “Orphan Train,” was published by Harper/Collins in April and is currently #5 overall in books on USA TODAY's list. It also hit all three New York Times bestseller lists this week, at #3 for e-books, #6 for combined, and at #14 for trade paperbacks. It's also #3 on the Wall St. Journal e-book list and is on all the Indie lists this week (October 6, 2013).
In addition to "Orphan Train," Ms. Kline's novels include "Bird in Hand," "The Way Life Should Be," "Desire Lines" and "Sweet Water." She served as Writer-in-Residence at Fordham University from 2007 to 2011 and was an on-staff editor and writing coach at the social networking site SheWrites.com. She is coeditor, with Anne Burt, of a collection of personal essays called "About Face: Women Write About What They See When They Look in the Mirror" and also commissioned and edited two widely praised collections of original essays on the first year of parenthood and raising young children, "Child of Mine and Room to Grow." She is co-author, with her mother, Christina Looper Baker, of a book on feminist mothers and daughters, "The Conversation Begins."
Ms. Kline, a resident of Montclair, was born in Cambridge, England, and raised there as well as in the American South and Maine. She is a graduate of Yale, Cambridge, and the University of Virginia, where she was a Henry Hoyns Fellow in Fiction Writing. In addition to Fordham, she has taught fiction and nonfiction writing, poetry, English literature, literary theory, and women’s studies at Yale, New York University, and Drew University. She is a recent recipient of a Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation Fellowship, a Writer-in-Residence Fellowship at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and a Fordham Faculty Research Grant.
Interviewer Julie Maloney has worked in the arts as a performer and educator her entire life. She is a poet and writer and founder/director of Women Reading Aloud (WRA), a not-for-profit organization that promotes women writers in New Jersey and beyond. WRA holds workshops, special events, writing retreats, conferences and an on-going writing workshop series each spring and fall during which women writers of all genres hone their work in a salon type setting. The annual Writer’s Weekend Retreat is held each April in Sea Girt, NJ. In June, WRA returns for its fourth Greece Writer’s Retreat on the island of Alonnisos in the North Sporades. Ms. Maloney is a frequent speaker on “Writing as a Life Tool.”
There is no charge to attend the program at the library, but advance sign-up is requested. Register online at www.bernardsvillelibrary.org and follow the link from Adult Programs, or call the library at 908-766-0118 to sign up.
The next session of the "University of Can-Do Master's Program" will meet on Wednesday, October 30 at 7:00 pm at Bernardsville Public Library. "Do you have a goal that you think you can't make happen?" asks Andrea Mastrobattista who leads the group, "Well, you can, because you have what it takes to accomplish it."
This workshop runs throughout the year, and each month participants discover more skills for cultivating and maintaining the "can-do" determination to make a dream come true. Come to this session to master the art of dealing with adversity and discover vital tools that will help you deal with adversity and come out of it stronger than ever!
There is no charge to attend the library workshop, but advance registration is requested. Register online at www.bernardsvillelibrary.org, and follow the link from Adult Programs, or call the library at 908-766-0118 to sign up.
Former Governor Christie Todd Whitman will speak at a fundraiser for the Friends of the Bernardsville Public Library on Sunday, October 27 at 4:00 pm at Dolce Conference Center in Basking Ridge. "Superstorm Sandy: One Year Later" is the subject of Ms. Whitman's talk, and she will discuss topics such as what we can look forward to from the environment and from the government, and whether or not we have or will put in place preventive measures to minimize the devastation of natural weather events in the future.
Tickets are $100 per person and proceeds will benefit the Friends of the Library whose mission it is to fund special programs and services at the Library including children's programs and Sundays at Three concerts, as well as computers, and books and materials that enhance the library's offerings to the community. Light refreshments will be served before the talk begins.
Governor Whitman, now the President of The Whitman Strategy Group (WSG), a consulting firm that specializes in energy and environmental issues, served in the cabinet of President George W. Bush as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency from January of 2001 until June of 2003. She was the 50th Governor of the State of New Jersey, serving as its first woman governor from 1994 until 2001.
As Governor, she earned praise from both Republicans and Democrats for her commitment to preserve a record amount of New Jersey land as permanent green space. She was also recognized by the Natural Resources Defense Council as having instituted the most comprehensive beach monitoring system in the nation.
As EPA Administrator, she promoted common-sense environmental improvements such as watershed-based water protection policies. She is the author of a New York Times best seller called “It’s My Party Too,” which was published in January of 2005 and released in paperback in March 2006.
Governor Whitman serves on a number of non-profit organizations including heading the Trustees’ Executive Committee of the Eisenhower Fellowships. She co-chairs Clean and Safe Energy (CASE) with Dr. Patrick Moore and is a member of the board of directors of the Council on Foreign Relations and the American Security Project. Governor Whitman is a board member for the Center for Sustainable Shale Development, is Co-Chair of the Aspen Health Stewardship Project, and a member of the advisory board of Reform New Jersey Now. She is a Monmouth University Distinguished Public Servant in Residence for the 2013-2014 year.
Prior to becoming Governor, she was the President of the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities and served on the Somerset County Board of Chosen Freeholders.
Tickets may be purchased at the library until October 23. For further information, call the 908-766-0118.
As the most densely populated state in the United States, New Jersey is experiencing increasing negative impacts from stormwater, that is, water from rainfall and snowmelt that runs off of paving and other impervious surfaces. Declines in water quality, unstable streams, aquatic habitat loss and increased flooding are real and measurable in almost all developed municipalities of our state and expected changes in weather events brought on by global climate change place new urgency on finding solutions.
On Tuesday, October 22 at 7:00 pm, David Peifer, from the Association of New Jersey Environmental Commissions, will highlight the need for a new "green infrastructure" approach to stormwater management, describe new techniques to reduce or eliminate existing problems as well as anticipated impacts. He will also present examples of green infrastructure installations from around the state to encourage residents and municipal governments to adopt and implement a "green infrastructure" approach to stormwater management. The program is designed for members of the general public, environmental commissioners and other local officials.
There is no charge to attend the program, which is sponsored in partnership with the Bernardsville Environmental Commission, but advance sign-up is requested. Register online at www.bernardsvillelibrary.org and follow the link from Adult Programs, or call the library at 908-766-0118 to sign up.
The next meeting of Bernardsville Public Library’s book discussion group, Memoirs and Coffee, will be held on Tuesday, October 22 at 10:30 am in the library’s Community Room. Pat Kennedy-Grant, Readers’ Services Manager for the library, will lead the discussion of “Give Me Everything You Have: On Being Stalked” (2013) by James Lasdun. [The author will not be present.]
A true story of obsessive love turning to obsessive hate, "Give Me Everything You Have" chronicles the author’s strange and harrowing ordeal at the hands of a former student, a self-styled “verbal terrorist,” who began trying, in her words, to “ruin him.” Hate mail, online postings, and public accusations of plagiarism and sexual misconduct were her weapons of choice and, as with more conventional terrorist weapons, proved remarkably difficult to combat. James Lasdun’s account, while terrifying, is told with compassion and humor, and brilliantly succeeds in turning a highly personal story into a profound meditation on subjects as varied as madness, race, Middle East politics, and the meaning of honor and reputation in the Internet age.
Author James Lasdun was born in London and now lives in upstate New York. He has published two novels, as well as several collections of short stories and poetry. He has been long-listed for the Man Booker Prize and short-listed for the Los Angeles Times T.S. Eliot and Forward prizes in poetry; he was the winner of the inaugural BBC National Short Story Award. His nonfiction has been published in Harper's Magazine, Granta and the London Review of Books.
There is no charge and no sign-up is needed to join the discussion. Call the library at 766-0118 for more information.
Reading fifty books in fifty-two weeks may seem daunting, but share the goal with a supportive group and it can be a lot of fun. Community members are invited to come to the next meeting of the 50 Book Challenge on Saturday, October 19 at 3:00 pm in the library’s Community Room.
At this meeting, which will include animated discussion, reading suggestions and snacks, ambitious readers will trade notes on their progress as well as book recommendations. New members are welcome at any time during the year and will be invited to additional events in the coming months.
The fifty books in fifty weeks are suggested, not required, for participation in the program. Each reader will choose which reading “counts” as part of the total. There are no limitations as to which formats can be read: downloaded books, audio books, e-books and graphic novels are all acceptable.
For more information and resources and for email updates for the 50 Book Challenge, go to the library's webpage, www.bernardsvillelibrary.org/50_book/. For further information, call the library at 908-766-0118.
Saturday Crafters, a monthly craft group organized by Bernardsville Public Library, will meet on Saturday, October 19 at 3:00 pm. Individuals are invited to bring their own handwork projects to the Library and work together in a comfortable, communal setting while enjoying the benefits of shared tips and conversation. They can also take advantage of the many books available at the library on different types of crafts.
Public Relations Assistant Evelyn Fischel will showcase project ideas and books at each meeting. A long-time crafter, Ms. Fischel will encourage such interests as knitting, crocheting, paper arts, hand sewing, embroidery and other needlework, as well as any other craft the group wishes to cover.
There is no charge to attend the meeting, and no sign-up is needed. For more information, call the library at 908-766-0118.
