Booklovers ended yet another Midwinter Meeting Monday afternoon sipping tea and dining on finger sandwiches while listening to a group of authors tell stories and read from their works before attendees lined up for autograph copies at the Gala Author Tea, hosted by the Association of Library Trustees, Advocates, Friends, and Foundations.
Former American Libraries Editor and Publisher Leonard Kniffel shared anecdotes and behind-the scene tidbits based on his compilation of interviews during his editorship (Reading with the Stars: A Celebration of Books and Libraries ALA Editions, 2011). Stories included a tale about the unnamed White House staff contact who was a no-show as Kniffel arrived for a talk with then–First Lady Laura Bush because the staffer had overslept, and an unexpected opportunity to talk to Olivia de Havilland during a visit to the American Library in Paris. Kniffel revealed that his favorite interview was with actress and author Jamie Lee Curtis.
“Without fail, celebrities who speak out for libraries do so because of a positive experience they had as children and an experience with librarians who instilled a lifetime of reading and learning,” he noted.
“Libraries are my biggest supporters,” said Taylor Stevens (The Innocent, Random House, 2011). “If anyone knows books, it’s librarians.”
Stevens revealed that she was “very under-read” due to being born and raised in a religious cult that deprived her of an education and any books from the outside. “I’m probably the least book-aware person who you’d ever hope to meet.” In an emotional moment, she added, “I never would have thought I’d be here.”
First-time novelist Erin Duffy (Bond Girl, HarperCollins, 2012) said her appearance was “my first trip to any kind of conference like this.”
“My mother manipulated me into going to the library,” she told the audience. The only girl of four children, Duffy told how she and three brothers were all involved in different activities and relied on her mother as their source of transport. “The library was the lone place where we could all be in one place, including my mother.”
Duffy said her road to Dallas was “a bit unusual. I wanted to be a writer when I was little—but I also wanted to be a circus lion tamer and a backup artist for Madonna.” After becoming a victim of the Wall Street crash in 2008, Duffy said she became jobless. She enrolled in pastry school, dropped out, and then began to “read all the books on how to write books. To think that my book would end up in a library, I guess I’ve come full circle.”
“I love libraries, places where dreams are made,” said Kim Edwards (The Lake of Dreams, Penguin, 2011), who once worked in a college library. “I spent a lot of time in my hometown library. I love being in the presence of people who love books.”
Concluding the literary event, Pam Houston (Contents May Have Shifted, W. W. Norton, 2012) told of the birth of her book in 2006 during the Wisconsin Book Festival. She read passages from the novel, which filled the room with laughter.
“I was the only child of much older alcoholics and spent much of my time in the Bethlehem Public Library,” Houston revealed at one point. She also told a story about a couple in the Winter Park ski area of Colorado, where she once lived, who agreed to marry in a fundraising campaign to build an area library.