Live! from the Library

Live! from the Library is the Foundation’s free speaker series featuring leading local and national personalities from the media and the political, economic, literary and artistic arenas.

Live! from the Library is made possible by donations to the Foundation’s Annual Fund. View past programs on our Video page.

Upcoming Programs:

Student Poetry Celebration

April 27, 2013

11:00 a.m. Walnut Creek Library, Oak View Room

The Walnut Creek Library Foundation, Ygnacio Valley Library and Walnut Creek Library are celebrating poetry with our 5th Annual Student Poetry Contest for students at Walnut Creek schools. Join us on April 27 at 11 am to hear the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners read their poems in the Oak View Room.

Tell It Like It Is: An Evening of Memoir and Mayhem 

Tuesday, 4/23/13
Oak View Room, WC Library, 7 pm

Reserve your seat HERE.

Cheryl Dumesnil and Marilyn Abildskov will present an evening of boundary-bending stories – poignant and hilarious – as they share and expand upon their adventures and misadventures as told in their memoirs, Dumesnil’s “Love Song for Baby X: How I Stayed (Almost) Sane on the Rocky Road to Parenthood,” and Abildskov’s “The Men in My
Country.”

Dumesnil’s memoir is a journey to parenthood, following her and her unlawfully wedded wife through four conceptions, three miscarriages, a temporarily legal wedding during San Francisco’s Winter of Love in 2004, a stint as poster children for the marriage equality movement, and finally the arrival of their longed-for-son after twenty-five hours
of labor. Dumesnil is also the author of “In Praise of Falling,” the 2008 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize. In previous library programs, she has entertained audiences with her delightful gift for storytelling.

In her memoir, Abildskov tells the story of her journey from Utah to Matsumoto, Japan, to teach English to junior high school students. She falls in love with the place but searches for a deeper connection. In time, she meets three men, each of whom will shape her transformation. Her memoir becomes a story of how, in losing herself in a foreign place, she became dangerously – and gloriously – undone. Abildskov is a professor of English at Saint Mary’s College, teaching in the MFA in Creative Writing Program. She is the winner of a Rona Jaffe Writer’s Award and has published widely literary essays, short stories and poems.

An Evening with Anchee Min

Tuesday, 5/7/13
Oak View Room, WC Library, 7 pm

Bestselling novelist and author of “Red Azelea,” comes to the Walnut Creek Library to introduce her new book, “The Cooked Seed.” In 1994, Anchee Min made her literary debut with a memoir of growing up in China during the violent trauma of the Cultural Revolution. “Red Azalea” became an international bestseller and propelled her career as a successful, critically acclaimed author. Twenty years later, Min returns to the story of her own life to give us the next chapter, an immigrant story that takes her from the shocking deprivations of her homeland to the sudden bounty of the promised land of America, without language, money, or a clear path.

Reservations required, click HERE.

Thank you to Beverly Bortin and Fitzgerald Abbott & Beardsley LLP for sponsoring the 2013 Live! Programs.

The Live! from the Library programs are very popular and we strongly encourage people to reserve their free seat by clicking one of the links above. Reserved seats will be held until 10 minutes before the beginning of the program. Please allow time for parking, the library lot can be full after 6 pm,try the free lot at Civic Park or the Broadway Garage which is $.50 an hour.

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Visit our video page for past Live! from the Library videos.