| Events slated for week of February 2 at the main branch of the Free Library of Philadelphia on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Just Added! Betty Medsger | The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover's Secret FBI Thursday, February 6, 2014 at 7:30 PM; FREE No tickets or reservations required. For more info: 215-567-4341  In 1971 a group of unlikely activists--ordinary people from diverse walks of life--broke into an FBI office just outside of Philadelphia and stole thousands of files that documented the dirty tricks, Constitutional violations, and domestic spying of J. Edgar Hoover's "shadow" agency. Washington Post reporter Betty Medsger was the first to receive and report on these files. In The Burglary, she details how their actions "dealt the first significant blow to an institution that had amassed enormous power and prestige" (New York Times) in this chillingly prescient tale that seems to foreshadow post-9/11 spying and state secrets. In conversation with Bonnie and John Raines and Keith Forsyth |
| Armistead Maupin | The Days of Anna Madrigal Monday, February 3, 2014 at 7:30 PM; buy tickets online>>  From trailblazing newspaper serial to bestselling series of novels to acclaimed PBS series, Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City is celebrated as an "extended love letter to a magical San Francisco" (New York Times Book Review). The series chronicles the ongoing lives, loves, and quirks of the denizens of a Bay Area apartment building. At times both sentimental and "cheerfully raunchy" (Miami Herald), Maupin's work has also portrayed thinly veiled versions of real-life people and events, and were some of the first books to address the AIDS epidemic. Maupin is also the author of the novels Maybe the Moonand The Night Listener. The ninth and final novel in the Tales of the City saga follows the comic and touching titular character of Anna Madrigal, the elderly transgendered landlady of 28 Barbary Lane, as she considers her mortality and attempts to reconcile the past. |
Philip Schultz | The Wherewithal: A Novel in Verse
Tuesday, February 4, 2014 at 7:30 PM; buy tickets online>>  At turns "prayerful, nostalgic, and elegiac" (Library Journal) and "raging, kaleidoscopic...exhilarating" (Booklist),Philip Schultz is preeminent among American poets. His many collections include The God of Loneliness, Deep Within the Ravine, and Failure, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. He is the founder/director of The Writers Studio and a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Among many other publications, his poetry and fiction have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, and the Paris Review, and in 2011 he published a memoir, My Dyslexia. Schultz once again pens "his plainly framed, consistently articulated joys and sorrows" (Publisher's Weekly) in The Wherewithal, a collection of linked verse in which a young man hiding from the Vietnam War draft translates his mother's Holocaust diary. |
One Book, One Philadelphia Opening Program Featuring Kevin Powers
Wednesday, February 5, 2014 at 7:30 PM; FREE No tickets or reservations required. For more info: 215-567-7710  Celebrate the start of One Book's 12th year with a reading and talk by authorKevin Powers and an evening of theater and music. The event will feature a screening of vignettes from In Conflict, a drama drawn from interviews by Iraq War veterans and adapted by Temple University professor Douglas C. Wager from a book by journalist Yvonne Latty. The program will conclude with a special performance of an original composition inspired by The Yellow Birds, written by Alyssa Weinberg of the Curtis Institute of Music and performed on cello by Curtis student Tim Petrin.Lead Sponsor:  |
Roddy Doyle | The Guts with Wesley Stace | Wonderkid
Friday, February 7, 2014 at 7:30 PM; FREE No tickets or reservations required. For more info: 215-567-4341  "Feisty, funky, rude, unpretentious and great fun" (Time Out), prolific novelist, dramatist, children's author, and screenwriter Roddy Doyle writes fiction rooted in the vibrant colloquialisms and tight relationships of the Irish working class. His novel Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Hawon the Man Booker Prize. The Guts is the latest chapter in the Barrytown series. The first three novels-The Commitments, The Snapper, and The Van-were critical darlings and adapted into successful movies.  Under the name John Wesley Harding, novelist, singer, and songwriter Wesley Stace has released 15 albums in genres ranging from folk to pop music. His Cabinet of Wonders variety show, recently launched on NPR, has featured performances by countless rock luminaries. "The poignant and mordantly funny" (The Village Voice) Stace's new novel, Wonderkid, follows the commercial and critical success of his previous books, Misfortune, by George, and Charles Jessold, Considered as a Murderer. |
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