Book Launch with Alli Frank and Asha Youmans 

Join us for the launch of the new novel by Alli Frank and Asha Youmans: Never Meant to Meet You, a riotously funny, emotionally real look at race and religion, love and heartache, and the realities of parenting through it all. The authors will be in conversation with librarian Aly Wepplo.

Wednesday, October 12, 2022, 6:00pm – 7:00pm in the Lecture Hall.

The novel follows two smart, strong women caught in mid-life tragedies who manage to laugh through the tears and heartache of the modern world they are navigating. Frank and Youmans share that, “For the two of us, the profound grief of all that we lost living through a pandemic needed a place to land.’” They married their feelings of isolation and sadness with a desperate need to laugh by writing a semi-autobiographical novel about a Jewish woman and a Black Baptist woman who are dealing with their own grief in their own ways but are forced together to process and support one another to move forward in life.  

In Never Meant to Meet You, Marjette Lewis, self-appointed fixer of other people’s woes, is uncharacteristically determined to keep to her side of the driveway when it comes to her flawless neighbor Noa Abrams. Professionally, Marjette has her hands full as she prepares for a new class of kindergarteners and her first year of teaching without her best friend, Judy. And at home, her son’s budding manhood challenges her expectations, and her vexing ex-husband continues to be a thorn in her side. But when tragedy strikes Marjette’s street, and an unexpected child shows up on the first day of school with an uncle who has all the class moms aflutter, Marjette is forced to contend with both her neighbor and her own heartache over losing the life she once thought was guaranteed. Through laughter, tears, and the gift of found family, Marjette and Noa navigate the rituals of loss together and discover the strength to remake their lives―whether they meant to or not.

A book signing with Iconoclast and light reception with the Wood River Jewish Community will follow.

 

Sandra Cisneros’ lecture is proudly presented by The Community Library and Sun Valley Museum of Art. Cisneros is an award-winning poet, short story writer, novelist, and essayist whose work explores the lives of the working-class.

Her novel The House on Mango Street has sold over seven million copies, has been translated into over twenty-five languages, and is required reading in elementary, high school, and universities across the nation. As part of her stay, Cisneros will address over two hundred 9th grade students at Wood River High School who have read her novel. A new book, Martita, I Remember You/Martita, te recuerdo, a story in English and in Spanish, was published in 2021. In the fall of 2022, a new collection of poetry, Woman Without Shame, Cisneros’s first in 28 years, will be published by Knopf and by Vintage Español in a Spanish language translation, Mujer sin vergüenza, by Liliana Valenzuela.

Her presentation will be in both English and Spanish. Cisneros is a dual citizen of the United States and Mexico. As a single woman, she chose to have books instead of children. She earns her living by her pen.

This event will be held at the Wood River High School Performing Arts Theater in Hailey. Tickets are $15 for adults and $5 for students 18 & under. Tickets will be on sale at 10:00 a.m. on Tuesday, September 13 at www.svmoa.org.

This program will not be livestreamed or available for later viewing. A book signing with Chapter One Bookstore will follow.

As a special introduction for the evening, Denice Carlos and Hector Flores of Las Cafeteras will perform a song prior to Sandra Cisneros’ lecture. Las Cafeteras will be in residence with SVMoA the week of the lecture and will be performing a concert and will work with students. Both the lecture and residency are part of The Museum’s Community Celebration “Honoring Traditions: Día de los Muertos,” made possible in part through a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Democracy demands wisdom.

 

The Community Library Story Time presents: Spanish Story Time. Cándida Miniño reads stories in Spanish. This is an evening event (5:30 pm) for kids and families, with a fun craft to follow! It is held in the Treehouse in the Children’s Library on alternate Wednesdays. See our event calendar for details.

No unattended children please.

with Karima Walker 

Hemingway Writer-In-Residence Karima Walker leads a workshop in Deep Listening, a helpful tool for those who want to broaden their sensory and cognitive range. In this workshop we will be collectively sounding and listening, communicating and moving alongside each other and the environment around us. Come ready for gentle movement and with a yoga mat or blanket.

Deep Listening is a meditative and musical compositional practice developed by the late contemporary composer Pauline Oliveros, utilizing listening, moving and dreaming to expand one’s awareness of the wider environment, as well as one’s own inner and bodily world. Deep Listening can be a helpful tool for just about anyone, but especially artists and creative folks who want to broaden their sensory and cognitive range in approaching their creative work. In this workshop we will be collectively sounding and listening, communicating and moving alongside each other and the environment around us.

No registration required.

The group will meet in the Library’s Lecture Hall, but may also spend time outdoors on the 4th Street Lawn (weather permitting).

This event is sponsored in part by the Deep Listening® Institute.

with Francisco Cantú 

For Francisco Cantú, the border is in the blood: his mother, a park ranger and daughter of a Mexican immigrant, raised him in the scrublands of the Southwest. Driven to understand the hard realities of the landscape he loves, Cantú joins the Border Patrol. He and his partners learn to track other humans under blistering sun and through frigid nights. They haul in the dead and deliver to detention those they find alive. Plagued by a growing awareness of his complicity in a dehumanizing enterprise, he abandons the Patrol for civilian life. But when an immigrant friend travels to Mexico to visit his dying mother and does not return, Cantú discovers that the border has migrated with him, and now he must know the full extent of the violence it wreaks, on both sides of the line.

Hemingway Writer-In-Resident Francisco Cantú joins us to discuss his book, The Line Becomes A River: Dispatches From the Border, which was named a Top 10 Book of 2018 by NPR and The Washington Post, was winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Current Interest, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Nonfiction Award.

Two special guests will also join Cantú to discuss their organizations’ work in our community. Alejandra Hernandez is Executive Director at Unity Alliance of Southern Idaho, a Twin Falls-based nonprofit that promotes understanding of the value of all immigrants and their contributions to the region’s competitive economy, workforce, and communities. Luis Campos is an attorney with The Alliance of Idaho, a Wood River Valley-based nonprofit working to protect the human rights of immigrants and their families and building safe, just, and welcoming communities for all. Campos represents clients across the U.S. and globally in all areas of U.S. immigration law, international human rights law, and related compliance law for organizations working with foreign nationals and/or in foreign jurisdictions. 

A book signing with Iconoclast Books will follow. This program will be livestreamed and available to view later on Vimeo. Click here to watch online.

with John Maclean 

Hemingway Writer-In-Residence John Maclean will share and discuss a new piece he’s writing for a book of essays celebrating the centennial of Ernest Hemingway’s short story, “Big Two-Hearted River.” The collection will be published in 2023—the centennial of the first notes for the short story-—by the University Press of Kentucky. 

Maclean’s personal essay traces the importance of the Hemingway short story in the lives and writing of John and his late father Norman Maclean, but it also surveys the publishing and critical history of the story. Join us as John shares this new essay and invites your questions and feedback on this soon-to-be-published piece.

This event will be livestreamed and available to view later. Click here to watch online. A book signing with Chapter One will follow.

John Maclean is an award-winning author and journalist. He spent thirty year at the Chicago Tribune, most of that time as a Washington correspondent. He is the author of six books, most recently Home Waters: A Chronicle of Family and a River. He has also written five nonfiction books about wildland fires—Fire on the Mountain, Fire and Ashes, The Thirtymile Fire, The Esperanza Fire, and River of Fire—that are considered a staple of fire literature as well as training material for firefighters. An avid fly-fisherman, Maclean divides his time between his residence in Washington, D.C. and the Maclean family cabin in Montana.

Register here.