At Beebe Library on March 10, Banks will read from his work, talk about the movie and his writing, and engage in discussion with the audience.
(Beebe Library will offer a free public screening of the film Affliction at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, March 1 in the Lecture Hall.)
Through a dozen novels and short story collections that have won him Guggenheim and NEA grants and a St. Lawrence Prize for fiction, Banks has made a life’s work of charting the causes and effects of the terrible things “normal” men can and will do. He writes with an intensely focused empathy and a compassionate sense of humor that help to keep his readers, if not his characters, afloat through the misadventures and outright tragedies in his books.
In addition to Affliction and The Sweet Hereafter, Banks’s titles include Cloudsplitter, Rule of the Bone, Continental Drift, Trailerpark, Searching for Survivors, The Darling, Success Stories and The Book of Jamaica.

Among the numerous honors and awards Banks has received are the Ingram Merrill Award, the John Dos Passos Award and the Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. “Continental Drift” and “Cloudsplitter” were Pulitzer Prize finalists. “Affliction” and “Cloudsplitter” were PEN/Faulkner finalists.

Russell Banks’ talk at Beebe Library on March 10 is free, but reservations are required. Reserve your seat at the Reference Desk, by phone at 781-246-6334, x2, or email@wakefieldlibrary.org.

This event is one of a number of local programs that will be offered during March as part of “Stories for a Safer Wakefield,” a cooperative project involving multiple organizations and coordinated by Beebe Library and the Wakefield Alliance Against Violence.

(Photo by Asia Kepka)
Novelist and short story writer Jennifer Haigh will speak at Beebe Library on Thursday, December 4, at 7 p.m. Her first book, Mrs. Kimble, won the 2004 PEN/Hemingway Award for debut fiction. Her second, Baker Towers, was a New York Times bestseller and won the PEN/L.L. Winship Award for outstanding book by a New England author. Her latest novel is The Condition.

In her masterful first novel, Mrs. Kimble, Haigh delivers a riveting story of three women who marry the same man. Ken Kimble is a chameleon, a man able to become, at least for a while, all things to all women.

Baker Towers,”is both a family saga and a love letter to our industrial past, to the men and women known as the Greatest Generation; to the vibrant small town life of America’s Rust Belt when it was still shiny and new.

Compassionate yet unflinchingly honest, witty and astute, The Condition explores the power of family mythologies, the self-delusions, denials and inescapable truths that forever bind fathers and mothers and siblings.

Ms. Haigh’s appearance at Beebe Library is free and open to the public. Reservations are not required. For more information, phone 781-246-6334, or go online at wakefieldlibrary.org. Sponsored by the Friends of the Library.

On Thursday, September 11, at 7 p.m., author Xujun Eberlein will visit Beebe Library to discuss her new collection of short stories “Apologies Forthcoming.”
Ms. Eberlein is a Chinese immigrant who holds a Ph.D from MIT, but after 9/11 gave up her position in high tech to write. “Apologies Forthcoming” is set in China during and after the Cultural Revolution. Four decades ago, China was embroiled in the Cultural Revolution, a period that turned the country on end and defined the generation of Chinese now coming to power. This collection of stories, departing from the usual “victim literature,” provides an apolitical and humanistic view into life during and after that time.

Ms. Eberlein is the winner of the 2007 Tartt Fiction Award and the recipient of the 2008 Artist Fellowship in Fiction/Creative Non-fiction from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Her blog, Inside-Out China, enjoys a global audience.

Thursday evening’s event is free and open to the public. Advance sign-up is not required. Ms. Eberlein’s appearance is sponsored by the Friends of the Library.

Wrote The House on Fortune Street

Margot Livesey, author of six novels including her latest, “The House on Fortune Street” (May 2008), will speak at Beebe Library on Wednesday, June 4, at 7 p.m. in the Lecture Hall.

Her previous novels include “Homework,” “Criminals,” “The Missing World,” “Banishing Verona” and “Eva Moves the Furniture.”

“The House on Fortune Street,” centers on Dara, a therapist, and Abigail, an actress. After meeting while in college, they remain close friends years later, despite their differences.

Abigail confidently uses her charms both on and off stage, but is reluctant to make commitments. Dara, on the other hand, throws herself into every relationship with frightening intensity. Both young women seem to have found “true love” – Abigail with her academic boyfriend, and Dara with a tall, dark violinist.

Soon, however, trouble – in the form of an anonymous letter – threatens both relationships and their friendship. Meanwhile, a reconciliation between Dara and her distant father reawakens complicated childhood feelings.

Publisher’s Weekly called “The House on Fortune Street” “Absorbing…The pieces cross-reference and fit together seamlessly.”

According to Entertainment Weekly, “It’s a work that lingers long after the last page is turned.”

Kirkus Reviews said, “The House on Fortune Street” is “moving, gruffly tender and piercingly truthful.”

Margot Livesey grew up in a boys’ private school in the Scottish Highlands where her father taught and her mother was the school nurse. After earning her B.A. in English and philosophy at the University of York in England, she spent most of her twenties working in shops and restaurants and learning to write. Her first book, a collection of stories called “Learning by Heart,” was published in 1986.

Ms. Livesey is currently a distinguished writer in residence at Emerson College and the John F. and Dorothy H. Magee writer in residence at Bowdoin College. She lives with her husband, a painter, in Cambridge, MA.

Following her talk, Ms. Livesey will be happy to sign copies of her book. Refreshments will be available.

Ms. Livesey’s appearance is sponsored by The Friends of the Library.

To reserve your seats for this program, phone 781-246-6334, x2.