Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie author of, Americanah, is a finalist for the 2014 Andrew Carnegie Excellence in Fiction Award. Americanah, follows the journey of two young Nigerian people as they adapt to foreign countries. Their lives take them back to Nigeria where they reconnect and find themselves in their roots. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has earned a multitude of praise and is set to become a movie starring Lupita Nyong’o.
Would you tell us a bit about your program? For instance how long has the Kitsap Regional Library System hosted a Community Reads event, how did it get started, and how has it changed over the years?
One Book, One Community started in 2008 with, To Kill a Mockingbird. The idea was to gather the community to celebrate National Book Month. We have refined our criteria over the year and now alternate between fiction and nonfiction titles. We like a Pacific Northwest connection though that’s not written in stone. We have a much better response from patrons when we choose a live author who visits the community. We have also started fine tuning our programming, focusing more on the opportunity to actually discuss the book and hear the author and not so much on tangential thematic programming.
Would you tell us a bit about your program? For instance how long has Frederick been hosting a Community Reads event, how did it get started, and how have you seen it change since your involvement with it?
Frederick Reads started about nine years ago, in a bagel shop. Several friends were discussing a recent report that was in the news, stating that the average American adult reads less than one book per year. (The report was “Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America”, published by the National Endowment for the Arts in 2004).
Many people attempt to break in to the literary world, but few are able to break into the industry. Whether your goals are to make writing into a vocation, or write to tickle your creativity, Jamie Ford gives his two cents on how to become an author in this article. In another interview, Jamie Ford describes his own writing process and journey from start to finish his novels.
Gearing up for your next Common Reads selection? For most event coordinators, this means winnowing down a long list of titles to a short list of authors, who often write on wildly different topics. How do you choose? Incorporating a theme can play an integral role in meeting your program’s goals. Instead of considering thousands of books, using a theme can narrow down your choices with titles that help focus the important goals you’d like to achieve with the program. Themes also offer a fresh perspective on your program, additional marketing opportunities, and chances for collaboration with new partners.
The most highly regarded American authors tend to be dominated by male writers. While female authors may top the sales charts, they are rarely celebrated as their male counterparts in the sense of their literary competence. There are multiple different reasons as to why, but overall the difference in sex doesn’t equate to the difference in ability to write.
Garth Stein’s, How Evan Broke his Head, was recently re-launched for its 10th anniversary, an event that was recently highlighted in the Seattle Times.
