7th Annual Maynard Book Festival
Thursday, April 5
through
Saturday, April 7, 2018
The Friends of the Maynard Library are excited to bring you our 7th Annual Book Festival with events on Thursday and Friday evenings and all day Saturday, April 7. We have great events planned for people of all ages and we hope you'll come to them all! You can see the list of events below. The Festival is brought to you by the Friends, and with grant funds from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.
This year, our festival is celebrating the power, beauty and joy of storytelling in its many forms—through music, art and writing. We hope you'll be inspired by our authors and perhaps even tell your own in our art and writing workshop and oral history recording sessions. Each author event will be followed by a book signing by the authors. Books by all the authors will be available for sale all day, courtesy of Porter Square Books. Refreshments will be served. All events are free and open to the public. Please be sure to register for workshops, as space is limited!
The first festival event will be held to welcome a new art exhibit to the library. Our friends at ArtSpace on Summer Street will be exhibiting ArtSpace Artists—multimedia works from 22 of their artists. We'll have a reception where you can view the artwork, meet the artists and chat about the stories behind the works. The event runs from 5-7 pm on Thursday, April 5, so you can drop in at your convenience. Of course, there will be some light refreshments for everyone to enjoy! If you can't make it to the reception, you can enjoy the exhibit at the Festival and through April 27 whenever the library is open.
Here's the artist list, in alphabetical order: Lola Chaisson, Caleb Cole, Gail Erwin, Cynthia Frost, Kay Hartung, Lisa Heffley, Laura Johnson, Mica Knapp, Margaret Kushner, Julie L’Heureux, Samantha Linnane, Peggy McClure, Cecilia Flores McKean, Carole McNamee, Barbara O’Brien, Fay Senner, Donna Shapleigh, Jenny Sorblom, Judi Stein, Mary Webber, Sandy Wilensky and Toby Williams.
Once again, the festival will include a concert on Friday evening so that we can enjoy stories in song form. The library will open its doors to music lovers on Friday, April 6 at 7 pm to welcome the Wolverine Jazz Band. The band has been entertaining lovers of Traditional Jazz - a blend of Dixieland, New Orleans, Swing - all over Boston and New England since 1995. With sixteen CDs to their credit, they have become well known on the national circuit, playing music festivals including Bar Harbor Summer Music Festival, America's Dixieland Festival, and Arizona Classic Jazz Society Festival. Read more about the band and listen to some music at their website.
Festival Saturday begins at 10:30 a.m. with a presentation by children's author Tui Sutherland, who has written 40 books for young people. She is best known for her New York Times bestselling Wings of Fire dragon fantasy series. Sutherland has also written the Avatars trilogy, the Menagerie trilogy (with her sister Kari Sutherland), is part of the Erin Hunter team contributing mainly to the Seekers series and is the author of Spirit Animals: Against the Tide. Sutherland also writes under the pseudonyms Rob Kidd, Heather Williams and Tamara Summers. Please note that this event will be held at the Fine Arts Theatre at 19 Summer Street. Parking is available in the public lot across from the theatre, as well as at the library.
We are so excited to Sharon Santillo lead one of her trademark art-and-writing workshops—Family Stories Through Art! Sharon taught art for many years in the Maynard Public Schools, and her mission is to encourage everyone to collect and save their family stories. At 11:00 a.m., students will begin with collage artwork, which will set the stage for their stories when it is time to write. The workshop is appropriate for adults at all levels of art proficiency. Because space is limited, please register online, by visiting the Reference Desk, or by calling 978-897-1010 x103. Sharon has also served as a teaching artist in the Boston Public Schools. In 2011, she was named Massachusetts Art Educator of the Year.
Author events continue at 1:30 pm with a sports panel discussion with journalists/authors Leigh Montville and Charlie Pierce. Three-time New York Times bestselling author Leigh Montville has written a number of biographies of notable athletes including Evel Knievel, Dale Earnhardt, Babe Ruth and Ted Williams. His 2017 book, Sting like a Bee: Muhammed Ali vs. the United States of America, 1966-1971, examines the cultural and political implications of Muhammed Ali’s refusal to serve in the military. Montville is a former columnist at the Boston Globe and former senior writer at Sports Illustrated, and was inducted into the Sportswriters and Sportscasters Hall of Fame in 2009. Charlie Pierce is the author of four books, including Moving the Chains: Tom Brady and the Pursuit of Everything and Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free. He has written for the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, ESPN’s Grantland, Sports Illustrated and numerous newspapers across the country. He is currently the lead political blogger for Esquire. He appears weekly on National Public Radio's sports program Only A Game and is a regular panelist on NPR's game show Wait Wait… Don't Tell Me.
At 3:00 pm, the festival concludes with a presentation by best-selling novelist Jessica Shattuck entitled "Three Women: Complicity and Resistance in WWII and its Aftermath.” Shattuck is the author of 2017’s critically acclaimed The Women in the Castle, described as “a rich, potent, fluently written tale of endurance and survival” in a starred review by Booklist. The novel has been awarded winner of the 2017 New England Book Award for Fiction. Shattuck also won praise for her debut novel The Hazards of Good Breeding, which was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and a Boston Globe Book of the Year.
Schedule of Events
Thursday, April 5
5:00-7:00 pm ArtSpace "Made in Maynard" Exhibit Reception
Friday, April 6
7:00 pm Jazz Concert with Wolverine Jazz Band
Saturday, April 7
10:30 am Middle Grade Author Tui Sutherland, at the Fine Arts Theater
10:30 am Special Festival Storytime and Craft
11-12:30 *Family Stories Through Art Workshop, with Sharon Santillo
1:30 pm Panel Discussion with Charlie Pierce and Leigh Montville
3:00 pm Author Presentation with Jessica Shattuck
*Registration required for this event. Call the Reference Desk at 978-897-1010 x103 to register.