Author Debra Brenegan to lead book discussion
 The KPL Friends will sponsor their first author-led book discussion group with Shame the Devil author Debra Brenegan to lead the event, Saturday, February 18 at 11:30 am. Lunch is included with registration for the discussion, which will be held in the lower level meeting room at the library. Event cost, including a box lunch, is $12. Books are available for purchase for $20, which is discounted from its $25 retail price, and Professor Brenegan will sign copies at the event. Find the reservation form HERE . Reservations with book orders are required by Friday, January 27. All reservations must be received by February 14. Reserve early because space is limited.
Shame the Devil tells the remarkable and true story of Fanny Fern (the pen name of Sara Payson Willis), one of the most successful, influential, and popular writers of the nineteenth century. A novelist, journalist, and feminist, Fern (1811-1872) outsold Harriet Beecher Stowe, won the respect of Nathaniel Hawthorne, and served as literary mentor to Walt Whitman. Scrabbling in the depths of poverty before her meteoric rise to fame and fortune, she was widowed, escaped an abusive second marriage, penned one of the country’s first prenuptial agreements, married a man eleven years her junior, and served as a nineteenth-century Oprah to her hundreds of thousands of fans. Her weekly editorials in the pages of the New York Ledger over a period of about twenty years chronicled the myriad controversies of her era and demonstrated her firm belief in the motto, “Speak the truth, and shame the devil.” Through the story of Fern and her contemporaries, including Walt Whitman, Catharine Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Harriet Jacobs, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, Shame the Devil brings the intellectual and social ferment of mid-nineteenth- century America to life.
Debra Brenegan has a Ph.D. in creative writing from The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and is an Assistant Professor and director of the Women’s Studies Program at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. For her fiction, she has received a Ragdale residency, the Ellen Hunnicutt Fiction Award, and was a recent finalist for the John Gardner Memorial Fiction Prize, The Cincinnati Review’s Schiff Prose Prize, and the Crab Creek Review Fiction Prize. She has recently had work published in Calyx, Tampa Review, Natural Bridge, The Laurel Review, Cimarron Review, Milwaukee Magazine, Phoebe, RE:AL, The Southern Women’s Review and elsewhere. SUNY Press released her novel, Shame the Devil, about nineteenth-century American journalist and novelist Fanny Fern in July, 2011.
If you have any questions, please call the Friends of the Kirkwood Public Library at (314) 821-5770, ext. 1023.
Building a legacy...Constructing a future
Since 1978, the Friends of the Kirkwood Public Library have assisted the Kirkwood Public Library by providing funds and volunteers. In the last five years, the Friends have donated over $300,000 to the library and over $30,000 to the Foundation. These funds help the Library purchase equipment & materials as well as provide funding for programs and services not covered by the operating budget.
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Board Meetings
The Friends Executive Committee currently consists of:
- Virginia Kramer, President (view the 2011 President's Report)
- Liz Walker, Vice-President
- Barbara Dionne,Secretary
- Carol Sipes, Treasurer
Other board members include:
- Jackie Bailey, Books & Beyond Administrator
- Jane Boal, Homebound Chair
- Jane Bond, Book Sales Chair
- Mary Butkus, Chapter & Verse Editor
- Jackie Carpenter, Database Manager
- Jane Evans, Programs Chair
- Silvia Madeo, Member-at-Large
- Cindy Plummer, Member-at-Large
- Jay Kridel, Special Events Chair
- Bob Rowlinson, Books & Beyond Treasurer
- Pat Soraghan, Membership Chair
Sarah Erwin, Library Director, is an Ex-Officio member of the Board.
Friends Board Meetings:
February 13th 2012, 1-3 pm
April 16th 2012, 1-3 pm
June 18th 2012, 1-3pm
The 2012 Annual Meeting will be held on Monday, June 11. |
