Four bestselling authors will make their way to Central Oregon for the seventh season of the Deschutes Public Library Foundation’s popular Author! Author! literary series: Maria Semple, Sarah Vowell, Colum McCann and Richard Russo. With a collective 30 books between the four of them, this author line-up promises to deliver a rich variety of experience and perspective to the community:
MARIA SEMPLE
Friday, October 5 • 7pm • Bend High School Auditorium
Maria Semple is the author of the novels Today Will Be Different, Where’d You Go, Bernadette and This One is Mine. Before writing fiction, she wrote for the TV shows 90210, Mad About You, Arrested Development and others. Where’d You Go, Bernadette spent over a year on the New York Times bestseller list and made over a dozen year-end best lists. It’s currently being made into a film starring Cate Blanchett and Kristen Wiig.
SARAH VOWELL
Thursday, November 15 • 7pm • Bend High School Auditorium
Sarah Vowell is the New York Times bestselling author of seven nonfiction books on American history and culture. Her books include Unfamiliar Fishes, Assassination Vacation, The Wordy Shipmates and Lafayette in the Somewhat United States. Vowell is a contributing editor for This American Life and is also the voice of teenage superhero Violet Parr in Pixar Animation Studios’
The Incredibles.
COLUM McCANN
Thursday, February 21, 2019 • 7pm • Riverhouse Convention Center
Colum McCann is the author of six novels and three collections of stories. Born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, he is the recipient of many international honors, including the National Book Award for his novel Let the Great World Spin, which McCann is adapting for a screenplay. His book TransAtlantic was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. McCann is a contributor to The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, and The Paris Review.
RICHARD RUSSO
Thursday, March 14, 2019 • 7pm • Riverhouse Convention Center
Richard Russo is the author of eight novels, most recently Everybody’s Fool and That Old Cape Magic. He received the Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for his novel Empire Falls. His most recent collection is The Destiny Thief: Essays on Writing, Writers, and Life. Additional awards include The Indie Champion Award by the American Booksellers Association as well as France’s Grand Prix de Littérature Américaine. Russo is also a screenwriter, having written the teleplay for the HBO adaptation of Empire Falls as well as other screenplays.
“The community support for Author! Author! has been tremendous,” says Chantal Strobel, the project director for the series. “The Foundation continues to work hard to bring high-level writers and thinkers into the region to promote dialogue and engagement. The wealth of literary talent out there has certainly found its audience in Central Oregon,” she says.
The seventh season sees the popular literary series splitting its time between two venues: the Bend High School auditorium for the first two authors in 2018, and Bend’s Riverhouse on the Deschutes for the two authors in 2019. General admission tickets are just $30 per event, but the entire four-author series is available for $100. A limited number of preferred seating packages, which include a private reception with each author, are available for $180 for the series. Money raised from ticket sales is used by the Foundation to support Deschutes Public Library programs and services that are not funded by tax dollars.
The Library Foundation also provides free tickets for up to 200 regional high school students to attend the author presentations. “The outreach is part of an effort to connect with area youth and to expose them to quality literature while engaging them in discussions regarding the books’ themes,” says Strobel.
For more information, visit the Foundation website at www.dplfoundation.org or call 541-312-1027