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 Special Events
Pre-Con*
Effective Marketing: How to Sell Your Story
Monday, October 19 - Tuesday, October 20
Location: Cleveland Public Library
Sponsored by Public Library Association, Ohio Library Council, and Cleveland Public Library
This two-day program will provide working librarians with the skills and knowledge they need to effectively market the library's programs and services. The program is interactive and it includes a variety of group exercises based on a case study about a medium-sized county library with multiple branches. Using the same case study throughout the training will give participants an opportunity to apply what they are learning in a practical way in the “real” library – and to see the effects of the decisions they make throughout the two-day program.
*More information is available on the OLC Web site. Registration for this event is separate from the OLC Convention and Expo.
OLC Annual Business Meeting
Wednesday, October 21
The OLC Business Meeting will be held in conjunction with the Opening General Session.
Author Luncheon Featuring Henry Cole*
The Art of Illustration
Wednesday, October 21
12:00 – 1:30 PM
| Henry Cole is an award-winning illustrator whose quirky, sensitive illustrations have graced more than 70-picture books, including On Meadowview Street, Jack's Garden, both of which he also wrote; And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell; The Sissy Duckling by Harvey Fierstein; and Moosetache and Bad Boys, both by Margie Palatini. |
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| National attention was given to the title And Tango Makes Three as it is based on the true story of Roy and Silo, two male chinstrap penguins in New York's Central Park Zoo who for six years formed a couple. The book follows part of this time in the penguins' lives. This book aims to send the reader the message that it is okay to be in, or know someone who has, a "non-traditional" family. Issues of intellectual freedom were addressed at the time as controversy followed the title. The American Library Association reported that And Tango Makes Three was the most challenged book of 2006 and 2007. Reviews, however, were elaborate in their praise calling the book "a touching and delightful variation on a major theme" and "a little miracle for children—funny, tender, and true, the story of Tango will delight young readers and open their minds." Join Cole as he discusses “The Art of Illustration.” |
*Additional cost for this event (pre-registration is required)
Author Luncheon Featuring Donald Ray Pollock*
An Ohio Author's Journey: From One Side of the Paper Mill to the Other
Wednesday, October 21
12:00 – 1:30 PM
The Boston Metro International wrote, “When former paper mill worker Donald Ray Pollock went through a midlife crisis, he didn't buy a Ferrari, have an affair with a younger woman or make the unfortunate decision of getting hair plugs. Instead, he began to write. That decision led to him getting his MFA, then an agent, a book deal and praise from literary luminaries such as Chuck Palahniuk and Katherine Dunn for his debut collection of short stories called Knockemstiff.” |
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| Donald Ray Pollock was born in 1954 and grew up in southern Ohio, in a holler named Knockemstiff. He dropped out of high school at 17 to work in a meatpacking plant, and then spent 32 years employed in a paper mill in Chillicothe, Ohio. Currently, he is a graduate student in the MFA program at Ohio State University and still lives in Chillicothe with his wife, Patsy, a high school English teacher. He hopes to someday teach fiction writing. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Third Coast, The Journal, Sou'wester, Chiron Review, River Styx, Boulevard, Folio, and The Berkeley Fiction Review. He is currently at work on a novel set in 1965, about two serial killers and a man named Arvin Eugene Russell. Join Pollock at the luncheon to learn more about his life's journey from “one side of the paper mill to the other.” |
*Additional cost for this event (pre-registration is required)
 Movie Night! Screening of Friday Night Lights
Wednesday, October 21
8:30 PM
Author Luncheon Featuring Lee Martin*
Does Your Mother Know You're Reading That? One Writer's Love Affair with Books
Thursday, October 22
12:00 – 1:30 PM
| Lee Martin, a Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Fiction in 2006 for The Bright Forever and a past Director of the Creative Writing Program at The Ohio State University, where he continues to teach, fell in love with stories at an early age. The only child of older parents, he spent a good deal of time either inventing narratives or listening to the tales told on front porches, around kitchen tables, or at general stores, grain elevators, pool halls, and barber shops in his native southeastern Illinois. |
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| He was the son of a farmer, who read little more than seed catalogs, equipment manuals, newspapers, and the Bible, and a grade school teacher who had a love for books.Each in his or her own way, nurtured his passion for storytelling. His presentation will provide an account of his childhood literacy, his love of books in a culture where reading was often disparaged, and the role public libraries played in his development as a reader and a writer. |
*Additional cost for this event (pre-registration is required)
Author Luncheon Featuring Michael Dirda*
Reading, Writing and Reviewing: A Life with Books
Thursday, October 22
12:00 – 1:30 PM
Pulitzer Prize-winning literary journalist Michael Dirda's memoir, An Open Book: Coming of Age in the Heartland, details his love of books and the written word. Dirda takes a sentimental journey back to his 1950s and 60s childhood in the steel town of Lorain, Ohio. The only son of four children, he grew up in a blue-collar family with a "worried" mother and a father who "hated his lot in life with every particle of his moody, dissatisfied soul." |
 Photo:ChesterSimpson.com |
To escape from home life, Dirda sought solace in books, thus beginning a lifelong literary love affair. The San Francisco Chronicle wrote, “ An Open Book is a lovely and gently humorous meditation. It is an unapologetically nostalgic remembrance of growing up in a more innocent America. But it is also the touching story of one person's lifelong affair with words." Dirda will recount some of his experiences as a writer for The Washington Post Book World and a member of the publishing, newspaper and literary world for the past 30 years. Dirda is looking forward to talking about every aspect of books, reviewing, publishing, and most of all, libraries. Expect time for audience participation and a special Q&A session. |
*Additional cost for this event (pre-registration is required)
Banquet Featuring David Kipen*
Thursday, October 22
7:00 – 9:00 PM
David Kipen is the Director of Literature and Program Director of The Big Read initiative for the National Endowment for the Arts. After joining the NEA in 2005, Kipen began managing The Big Read, the Arts Endowment's largest literary initiative.
The Big Read has expanded into more than [now 500] communities nationwide and was created to revitalize the role of literature in American culture as well as bring the transformative power of literature into the lives of its citizens. |
 Photo by Attleboro, MA, Sun Chronicle |
Recently Kipen narrowly averted gastric catastrophe for the greater good. If the 128 residents of Kelleys Island, Ohio hadn't all read To Kill A Mockingbird, Kipen vowed to eat the book. Luckily the Kelleys Islanders came through.
Kipen had said, "for most of the life of The Big Read, I've been wishing aloud for a town small enough and brave enough to accept the challenge of dragooning every last literate resident, without exception, into tackling its chosen book. If a lone holdout on Kelleys Island gets to feeling the same way about Harper Lee—if The Big Read can co-opt peer pressure into working for literature instead of, as so often, against it—then that's worth a little indigestion."
Kipen has also been a book critic and essayist for the San Francisco Chronicle and is the film critic for XM Radio's The Bob Edwards Show. He recently published The Schreiber Theory: A Radical Rewrite of American Film History and a new translation of Cervantes' The Dialogue of the Dogs. |
*Additional cost for this event (pre-registration is required)
OLC Awards and Honors Luncheon*
Friday, October 23
12:30 – 1:30 PM
The 2009 OLC Awards and Honors recipients will be announced in August 2009 and will be recognized at the luncheon.
* Additional cost for this event (pre-registration is required)
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