… with John Lundin

Thursday, March 28, 2024
5:30-6:30 p.m..
John A. and Carole O. Moran Lecture Hall
The Community Library

Register here.

Historian and author John W. Lundin will explore Ernest Hemingway’s relationship to skiing, from the Alps to Idaho, and how skiing was an important part of the writer’s life, key to his coming of age, and provided themes he incorporated into his later writings.

Hemingway developed his love for skiing in the Alps during the 1920s while dealing with gruesome injuries suffered during World War I and living as an expatriate in Paris as a member of the “lost generation.” Between 1922 to 1926, he spent winters in the Alps, perfecting his craft and writing his first works, and skiing in the afternoons with his first wife Hadley Richardson. Hemingway threw himself into skiing, excited by the physically demanding nature of the sport in the 1920s, the challenge of climbing mountains using skins, and racing down glaciers in untracked snow, experiencing avalanches and crevasses, perhaps as a way of dealing with troubled memories of his traumatic war years.

His association with Sun Valley, Idaho, began in 1939 when he accepted an invitation to stay at the resort compliments of Union Pacific in exchange for its right to use his image for publicity. He fell in love with the area, returning often over the next twenty years. His fourth wife Mary Welsh learned to ski in Sun Valley, while Hemingway skied on Bald Mountain a few times with friends, but was more often found writing. His athletic pursuits and writing were affected by failing health in the 1950s before his death by suicide in 1961.

John W. Lundin is a lawyer, historian and author, founding member of the Washington State Ski and Snowboard Museum, and splits his time between Seattle and Sun Valley. He is the author of numerous magazine articles and four award winning books: Early Skiing on Snoqualmie Pass (2017); Sun Valley, Ketchum and the Wood River Valley (2020); Skiing Sun Valley: a History from Union Pacific to the Holdings (2020), (recipient of three national book awards); and Ski Jumping in Washington State: a Nordic Tradition (2021). John helped organize two exhibits on ski jumping: “Sublime Sights: Ski Jumping in Nordic America” at Seattle’s National Nordic Museum in 2021; and “Skiers in Flight: Sun Valley’s Ski Jumping Roots” at The Community Library’s Regional History Museum in 2022. He won the 2023 Western Heritage Prize from the Far West Ski Association and Steamboat Springs Resort for his multi-year “Work to Preserve Ski Jumping History, Expressing Norwegian Identity and Its Role in the Development of Skiing History.”

A Woman’s Life in the CIA, Unmasked with Jonna Mendez

Thursday, March 21, 2024
5:30pm – 6:30pm
John A. and Carole O. Moran Lecture Hall

The bestselling co-author of The Moscow Rules and Argo tells her riveting, courageous story of being a female spy at the CIA and battling against the prevailing culture of sexism at the time, all while undertaking dangerous missions for America’s safety during the height of the Cold War.

Jonna Hiestand Mendez began her CIA career as a “contract wife,” a second-class citizen who was hired as a convenience to her husband’s career, a young officer stationed in Europe. She needed his permission to open a bank account or shut off the gas to their apartment, and she performed secretarial duties for the CIA.

Mendez’s talent for espionage was clear, and she soon took on bigger and more significant roles at The Agency. She lived under cover and served tours of duty all over the globe, as well as at CIA Headquarters. She confronted dangerous situations that called on her spy training: coming face to face with a rogue Jihadi who had brought down an American plane, and helping steal a top-secret encryption machine from a Soviet embassy, among other high stakes situations. She became an international spy and ultimately Chief of Disguise at CIA’s Office of Technical Service–a kind of female American version of James Bond’s famous “Q.”

In this breakthrough memoir, Mendez recounts not only the drama of her international spy career but the grit and good fortune it took for her to navigate a misogynistic world. She was undermined, harassed, and intimidated,  all while maintaining a patriotic mission and working to advance her own career.   She was a firsthand witness to the cost of this gendered culture, both to the women who worked there, and to the interests of the agency and the nation it serves.

In True Face is both clear-eyed and dramatic: the story of an incredible spy career, and what it took to achieve it.

In partnership with Dent. Registration required to save a seat. A book signing will follow. This program will be livestreamed, but will not be available to view later.

More/register here.

…and Status in the Valley with Sierra Robatceck 

Thursday, March 14, 2024
5:30pm – 6:30pm
John A. and Carole O. Moran Lecture Hall

Sierra Robatcek, Idaho Fish & Game Regional Wildlife Biologist, joins us to discuss wildlife migration and the current status of big game in the Wood River Valley. Robatcek’s research has focused on modeling pregnancy rates of elk in Idaho, as a function of habitat quality and habitat use. Robatcek holds a MS in Natural Resources from the University of Idaho.

This program will be livestreamed and available to watch later.

The final lecture in the annual Thinking Globally, Acting Locally Speaker Series, in partnership with the Wood River Land Trust.

More/register here.

Ketchum Remote Collective aims to bridge the intangible gap between the Wood River Valley’s physical community and the remote workplace for many of its residents. Come meet and spend part of your week working alongside other remote workers. Drop in Fridays between 1:00 and 4:00 p.m.

Tuesday, March 12, 2024
5:30pm – 6:30pm
John A. and Carole O. Moran Lecture Hall
More/register here.

For more than a decade Cheryl Strayed has written the popular “Dear Sugar” advice column, which has been collected in her bestselling book Tiny Beautiful Things that was recently adapted for an Emmy-nominated Hulu television show.

In this talk, Cheryl will share stories about everything she’s learned about the art of writing advice—and indeed, writing honestly in all of her work—about the wildly human and universal experiences that connect us all. Cheryl will also take questions from the audience and sign books afterwards.

This program will be livestreamed, and a recording will be available upon request. 

Cheryl Strayed is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, which was made into an Oscar-nominated film. Her bestselling collection of Dear Sugar columns, Tiny Beautiful Things, was adapted for a Hulu television show and as a play that continues to be staged in theaters nationwide. Strayed’s other books are the critically acclaimed novel, Torch, and the bestselling collection Brave Enough, which brings together more than one hundred of her inspiring quotes. Her award-winning essays and short stories have been published in The Best American Essays, the New York Times, the Washington Post Magazine, Vogue, and elsewhere. Strayed has also made two hit podcasts, Dear Sugars, which she co-hosted with Steve Almond, and Sugar Calling.

A Virtual Conversation with Nghi Vo and Anna-Marie McLemore 

Thursday, March 7, 2024
5:30pm – 6:30pm
Lecture Hall
More/register here.

As part of the 2024 Winter Read of The Great Gatsby, join us for a virtual conversation with authors Nghi Vo and Anna-Marie McLemore, whose novels retell F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic through new lenses. Vo and McLemore will join us over Zoom, but all are welcome to join us in the Library’s John A. and Carole O. Moran Lecture Hall, or over Vimeo. Livestream link forthcoming.

Nghi Vo’s debut novel, The Chosen and the Beautiful, reinvents Fitzgerald’s classic as a coming-of-age story full of magic, mystery, and glittering excess, and introduces a major new literary voice. In Vo’s telling, Jordan Baker is our narrator. Baker grows up in the most rarefied circles of 1920s American society—she has money, education, a killer golf handicap, and invitations to some of the most exclusive parties of the Jazz Age. She’s also queer and Asian, a Vietnamese adoptee treated as an exotic attraction by her peers, while the most important doors remain closed to her. But the world is full of wonders: infernal pacts and dazzling illusions, lost ghosts and elemental mysteries. In all paper is fire, and Jordan can burn the cut paper heart out of a man. She just has to learn how. Vo’s novel was listed as a Most Anticipated in 2021 Pick for Oprah Magazine and a Best of Summer Pick for TIME Magazine.

Anna-Marie McLemore, a Stonewall Honor recipient and two-time National Book Award Longlist selectee, weaves an intoxicating tale of glamor and heartache in Self-Made Boys: A Great Gatsby Remix, part of the Remixed Classics series. Her novel centers on Nicolás Caraveo, a 17-year-old transgender boy from Wisconsin, who has no interest in the city’s glamor. Going to New York is all about establishing himself as a young professional, which could set up his future—and his life as a man—and benefit his family. Nick rents a small house in West Egg from his 18-year-old cousin, Daisy Fabrega, who lives in fashionable East Egg near her wealthy fiancé, Tom—and Nick is shocked to find that his cousin now goes by Daisy Fay, has erased all signs of her Latine heritage, and now passes seamlessly as white. Nick’s neighbor in West Egg is a mysterious young man named Jay Gatsby, whose castle-like mansion is the stage for parties so extravagant that they both dazzle and terrify Nick. At one of these parties, Nick learns that the spectacle is all meant to impress a girl from Jay’s past—Daisy. And he learns something else: Jay is also transgender. As Nick is pulled deeper into the glittery culture of decadence, he spends more time with Jay, aiming to help his new friend reconnect with his lost love. But Nick’s feelings grow more complicated when he finds himself falling hard for Jay’s openness, idealism, and unfounded faith in the American Dream. McLemore’s novel was longlisted for the National Book Award in Young People’s Literature.

Nghi Vo is the author of the novels Siren Queen and The Chosen and the Beautiful, as well as the acclaimed novellas Mammoths at the Gates, Into the Riverlands, When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain, and The Empress of Salt and Fortune, a Locus and Ignyte Award finalist and the winner of the Crawford Award and the Hugo Award. Born in Illinois, she now lives on the shores of Lake Michigan. She believes in the ritual of lipstick, the power of stories, and the right to change your mind.

Anna-Marie McLemore (they/them) is the author of William C. Morris Debut Award Finalist The Weight of Feathers; Wild Beauty; Blanca & Roja, one of Time Magazine’s 100 Best Fantasy Novels of All Time; Indie Next List title Dark and Deepest Red; Lakelore; and National Book Award longlist selections When the Moon Was Ours, which was also a Stonewall Honor Book; The Mirror Season; and Self-Made Boys: A Great Gatsby Remix. Their latest release is Venom & Vow, co-authored with Elliott McLemore, and their next novel is Flawless Girls, forthcoming in May 2024.