Lineup announced for 2013-2014 Authors! Authors! Series

Daily Dose  |  08/21/2013

Question: What has two American Book Awards, one National Book Award, three Pulitzer Prizes, eight Emmy Awards, one leather jacket on display at the Smithsonian, one Hispanic Heritage Award for Literature, two Golden Globes, one Sundance Film Festival Audience Favorite Award, one Pushcart Prize, one PEN/Faulkner Award, and one listing on Time Magazine’s All-Time 100 Novels?
 
Answer: The Fall 2013-2014 season of Authors! Authors!
 
The Authors! Authors! series, as presented by The Blade and arranged by the Toledo-Lucas County Public Library, is pleased to announce a spectacular list of authors who are scheduled to appear in Toledo this fall/winter season. Tickets are available for purchase at all Toledo-Lucas County Public Library locations beginning on Friday, August 30. Tickets, $10 for adults, are limited in quantity and student discounts are available. Authors will speak at either the Stranahan Theater, 4645 Heatherdowns Blvd., or in the McMaster Center of Main Library, 325 Michigan St.
 
The exciting series, now in its 19th year, kicks off at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, September 11, 2013 at the Stranhan Theater with noted American Indian poet, author and filmmaker Sherman Alexie, author of his most recent War Dances, (2010) and well-known for his 2007 young people’s literature The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.
 
2013-2014 Authors! Authors! Season Lineup
 
2013 Fall Lineup:
Wednesday, September 11 ? Sherman Alexie (Stranahan Theater)
American Indian author of, most recently, War Dances, stories and poems, from Grove Press, and Face, poetry, from Hanging Loose Press. Reservation Blues, received one of the fifteen 1996 American Book Awards. His first young adult novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, is a semi-autobiographical part-graphic novel that won the 2007 U.S. National Book Award for Young People's Literature and the Odyssey Award as best 2008 audiobook for young people (read by Alexie himself). His collection of short stories and poems, entitled War Dances, won the 2010 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, and he wrote the film Smoke Signals  which won the Sundance Film Festival audience favorite award.
 
Wednesday, October 2 ? Jimmy Santiago Baca (McMaster Center, Main Library)
An author of Chicano and Apache descent, Baca experienced an amazing transformation of self. A runaway at age 13, it was after Baca was sentenced to five years in a maximum security prison that he began to turn his life around: he learned to read and write and unearthed a voracious passion for poetry. He is the winner of the Pushcart Prize, the American Book Award, the International Hispanic Heritage Award and the prestigious International Award for his memoir A Place to Stand.
 
Thursday, November 7 ? Jeff Greenfield (McMaster Center, Main Library)
Five-time Emmy winner, CNN, CBS and PBS involvement, and new book If Kennedy Lived: The First and Second Terms of President John F. Kennedy: An Alternate History, is scheduled to be released in October 2013. Greenfield’s appearance is scheduled some two weeks before the anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination (November 22, 1963).
 
2014 Spring Lineup:

Wednesday, March 5 ? Zadie Smith (Stranahan Theater) 
Internationally celebrated British novelist, whose grew up in working class London, the daughter of a Jamaican mother and white English father. Smith’s acclaimed novel White Teeth was included in Time Magazine's ALL-TIME 100 Best English-language Novels, On Beauty was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and won the 2006 Orange Prize for Fiction, and NW (2012) has been highly acclaimed, starred, and nominated for the 2013 Women's Prize for Fiction.
 
Thursday, May 1 ? Rick Atkinson (McMaster Center, Main Library)
Born in Munich, and raised in the United States, Atkinson has won Pulitzer Prizes in history and journalism. He formally wrote for the Washington Post before turning to writing on military history. His books include narrative accounts of American wars. In 2010 he received the $100,000 Pritzker Military Library Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing. His Liberation Trilogy, with the third book being published this year, The Guns at Last Night: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945, is on the history of the American role in the liberation of Europe in World War II.
 
Wednesday, May 14 ? Henry Winkler (Stranahan Theater)
Cultural icon, actor champion and advocate for literacy (has managed Dyslexia throughout his life), Winkler reinvented himself for every generation (as of late his acting appearances include Arrested Development, Children’s Hospital, and Royal Pains,). Winkler, known by many for his fictional character Fonzie or The Fonz on the TV sitcom Happy Days (1974-1984), is also a children’s book series author, Emmy award winner and known as an all-around nice guy.
 
At each program, authors will speak for about an hour, followed by a short question and answer session. Following the program, they will be available to sign copies of their works. Books will be available for purchase at the program from Barnes & Noble Booksellers.

An anticipated treat for the community, Authors! Authors! has welcomed some of the biggest names - straight off the bestsellers lists - for an evening of discussion, Q&A and book signings. Some of the names from the Authors! Authors! past include David McCullough, Anna Quindlen, Isabel Allende, Neil Gaiman, Sebastian Junger, Nicholas Sparks, Bob Woodward, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Ray Bradbury, John Updike, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., P.J. O'Rourke, and Sue Grafton, to name a few.
 
NOTE: For additional information visit toledolibrary.org, or call 419.259.5266.