More information is forthcoming. Save the date!
The Community Library Lecture Room
A Conversation with Playwright Samuel D. Hunter
UPDATE: This program is moving indoors to the Library’s John A. and Carole O. Moran Lecture Hall. Chairs will be spaced out in the room. If you would prefer to join us virtually, you can watch the event HERE on Livestream.
MacArthur Genius award-winning playwright and Idaho native Samuel D. Hunter will discuss bringing his new play to the stage this summer in Sun Valley. Like all of Hunter’s work, this play, A Case For the Existence of God, is set in Idaho, this time in Twin Falls. Paul Lazar, a staple of the downtown New York theater scene, directs.
In conversation with Jenny Emery Davidson, the Library’s executive director, and Jonathan Kane of Sawtooth Productions, LLC, Hunter will discuss his process as well as the challenges of taking a play from the page into a fully fledged production.
VIRTUAL – Minidoka Civil Liberties Symposium
Minidoka was designated a unit of the National Park Service on January 17th, 2001. Please join us this January 17th as we commemorate the 20th anniversary of Minidoka National Historic Site through a day of conversations with survivors, partners, and the trailblazers who made it possible to establish the NPS site, the Minidoka Pilgrimage, and the Friends of Minidoka.
Minidoka Survivors Panel – 11:00 am (MST)
Join the livestream on Japanese American Memorial Pilgrimages Youtube (https://youtu.be/pH2iNqT1hEQ) or Friends of Minidoka Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/FriendsofMinidoka/)
The Origin Story of Minidoka National Historic Site – 1:00pm MST
Join the livestream on Japanese American Memorial Pilgrimages Youtube (https://youtu.be/rwfKmOwvyXM) or Friends of Minidoka Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/FriendsofMinidoka/)
The Origin Story of the Minidoka Pilgrimage – 3:00pm MST
Join the livestream on Japanese American Memorial Pilgrimages Youtube (https://youtu.be/twy7r_W3gvI) or Friends of Minidoka Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/FriendsofMinidoka/)
Library CLOSED: Staff Training
An Evening with Hisham Matar
Photo by Diana Matar ©
When Hisham Matar was a nineteen-year-old university student in England, his father went missing under mysterious circumstances. Matar would never see him again, but he never gave up hope that his father might still be alive. Twenty-two years later, he returned to his native Libya in search of the truth behind his father’s disappearance. His 2016 Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir, The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between, is the story of what he found there.
The Pulitzer Prize citation hailed The Return as “a first-person elegy for home and father.” Transforming his personal quest for answers into a brilliantly told universal tale of hope and resilience, Matar has given us an unforgettable work with a powerful human question at its core: How does one go on living in the face of unthinkable loss?
Born in New York City to Libyan parents, Hisham Matar spent his childhood in Tripoli and Cairo and has lived most of his adult life in London. His debut novel, In the Country of Men, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and won numerous international prizes, including the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize, a Commonwealth First Book Award, the Premio Flaiano and the Premio Gregor von Rezzori. His second novel, Anatomy of a Disappearance, published in 2011, was named one of the best books of the year by The Guardian and the Chicago Tribune. His first memoir, The Return, was one of The New York Times Book Review’s ten best books of the year, winner of the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
After finishing The Return, Matar, seeking solace and pleasure, traveled to Siena, Italy. Always finding comfort and clarity in great art, Matar immersed himself in eight significant works from the Sienese School of painting, which flourished from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries. Artists whom he had admired throughout his life, such as Duccio and Ambrogio Lorenzetti, evoke earlier engagements he has had with works by Caravaggio and Poussin, and the personal experiences that surrounded those moments. A Month in Siena is about what occurred between Matar, those paintings, and the city. That month would be an extraordinary period in Matar’s life: an exploration of how art can console and disturb in equal measure, as well as an intimate encounter with the city and its inhabitants.
Summer Reading Program Ends Today at NOON
Our Summer Reading Program: Imagine Your Story ends at NOON today. You must report the minutes you’ve read (kids) or pages read (teens) by NOON. You can report your Summer Reading on our website. Late entries will not be accepted.
Due to the current pandemic, a summer reading party is not being held this year. Instead, librarians will conduct a random drawing. Winners will be contacted by the end of day on Monday, August 10th.
Thank you for participating.