Authors @ OWL
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He Writes, She Writes
A Conversation with Authors Frank Delaney & Diane Meier
Thursday, September 9th, 7:00 - 8:00 p.m.
Join Joseph Montebello as he facilitates a conversation with authors (and spouses) Frank Delaney and Diane Meier. In this engaging “He Writes - She Writes,” we’ll discuss how each author uniquely approaches their work, whether gender plays a role in their development of style and character, and how married writers work with each other – or not. Are they each other’s best/worst critic? The focus will be on Frank’s latest book Venetia Kelly’s Traveling Show and Diane’s latest The Season of Second Chances.
In Venetia Kelly’s Traveling Show, Frank weaves Irish vaudeville and politics of the 1930s into a mix that is both delightful and astonishing. The novel opens with young Ben McCarthy's father abandoning the farm to join a traveling theater troupe. Devastated, Ben's mother sends him off to bring his father home. He finds the troupe and falls in love with the same young actress who seduced his father. Venetia is a stunning young woman, the child of a famous actress and a villainous political opportunist named King Kelly. This rollicking tale is magically intimate and emotionally real; chockfull of Irish wit, superstition, and sentiment, and features a larger-than-life cast of suitably eccentric characters.
Frank Delaney was born in Tipperary, Ireland, and after a fledgling career in banking became a broadcaster with RTE radio and television, the Irish state network, working on documentaries, music programs and finally as a newsreader. In the mid 1970’s he joined the Northern Ireland region of the BBC in Belfast as their current affairs man in Dublin and covered an intense period of the virtual war know as the Irish ‘Troubles.” Later, after half a decade of reporting bombings, shootings, kidnapping and sieges, he moved to London and began to work in arts broadcasting. Bookshelf, which he inaugurated for BBC Radio Four, became an award winner; on television he wrote films for Omnibus and other arts programs and in the early 1980’s hosted his own talk show, Frank Delaney, featuring an array of cultural and literary personalities. Delaney is the author of six books of non-fiction, twelve novels, one novella, and a smattering of short stories published in both magazines and collections.
Sure to be much-loved and often-shared, Diane Meier’s graceful, funny novel The Season of Second Chances nudges its characters and readers toward self renewal, change, and a chance for greater happiness. A world of possibilities opens up for Joy Harkness when she sets out on a journey that’s going to show her the importance of friendship, love and what makes a house a home. Setting aside the divisive thinking of an either/or world, this liberating novel values both the arcane scholarship of college professors and the practical, artistic insights of handymen and real estate agents. It is a healing book. It suggests that for a person who has the courage to seize a second chance, there’s also the opportunity for a rewarding third chance, or fourth, or fifth.
Diane Meier is the founder and owner of Meier, Inc., a New York City marketing firm whose clients include Neiman Marcus, DeBeers, Elizabeth Arden and Pierre Balmain. Her career has honed skills from strategy, writing and design to public speaking. She is also the author of the acclaimed The New American Wedding: Ritual and Style in a Changing Culture.
Diane and Frank live in New York and Litchfield County.
A wine & cheese reception will follow the event.
The Hickory Stick Bookshop will provide books for signing & sale.
Space is limited REGISTRATION IS REQUIRED
The Terrorist: A Thriller
A Conversation with Mystery Writer Peter Steiner
Thursday, October 14th 7:00 - 8:00 p.m.
Best know for his cartoons in the New Yorker, author Peter Steiner will discuss his latest book The Terrorist: A Thriller. This is Peter’s third spy thriller to feature 71-year-old ex-CIA agent Louis Morgan (after Le Crime and L'Assassin). Booklist calls this a
“beautifully written tale of a man probably looking at the last decade of his life, who, unexpectedly, has again found love but who is sucked back into a cynical, dangerous milieu he abhors.”
Join Joseph Montebello as he facilitates this conversation with Peter Steiner. They will explore what led this American author to write mysteries set in France and discover how this unusual path develops - what obstacles and/or opportunities an author faces when doing this and more.
Peter was born and grew up in Cincinnati. After the University of Miami and the Free University of Berlin, and then after serving in the army in Germany, he got a PhD in German literature. He taught at Dickinson College for eight years, but left teaching to become an artist and cartoonist. For the next twenty-five years he made his living as a cartoonist for the New Yorker and many other publications. In the late 1990s he began writing novels, at first for his own amusement. He lives in Connecticut and spends a good part of each year in rural France, where all three of his books take place. He divides his time between writing and painting. His paintings can be seen on his website www.plsteiner.com.
A wine & cheese reception will follow the event.
The Hickory Stick Bookshop will provide
books for signing & sale.
Space is limited REGISTRATION IS REQUIRED
Promises to Keep
A Conversation with Jane Green
Thursday, October 21st 7:00 - 8:00 p.m.
In Jane Green’s twelfth novel, Promises to Keep, Callie Perry seems to have it all: a handsome husband she adores, two adorable children, and a thriving business as a portrait photographer. But then Callie, a breast cancer survivor, is diagnosed with a rare and incurable complication of the disease. Suddenly realizing that she has only months to live, she begins the painful process of saying good-bye. While the subject matter is intense and personal, it's far from depressing; the characters are warm, funny and realistic.
Jane Green Warburg, who writes as Jane Green, was born in London and has lived in Connecticut for seven years. One of the founding writers behind the genre known as ‘chick lit,’ Jane now writes novels that reflect the lives of real women today, with all the trials and tribulations that come with real life: from in-laws, motherhood, mid-life crises and loss, all of which are told with her trademark warmth, wit and wisdom.
The winner of a Cosmopolitan Fun Fearless Fiction Award, contributor to the most recent Chicken Soup for the Soul: Power Moms book, Jane lives with her husband, Ian Warburg, and their blended family of six children, where her passions are food, gardening and entertaining. Her website is www.janegreen.com.
A wine & cheese reception will follow the event.
The Hickory Stick Bookshop
will provide books for signing & sale.
Space is limited REGISTRATION IS REQUIRED
Dead End Gene Pool: A Memoir
A Conversation with Wendy Burden
Thursday, November 11th 7:00 - 8:00 p.m.
For generations the Burdens were one of the wealthiest families in New York, thanks to the inherited fortune of Cornelius “The Commodore” Vanderbilt. By 1955, the year of Wendy's birth, the Burdens had become a clan of overfunded, quirky and brainy, steadfastly chauvinistic, and ultimately doomed bluebloods on the verge of financial and moral decline-and were rarely seen not holding a drink. In Dead End Gene Pool, Wendy invites readers to meet her tragically flawed family, including an uncle with a fondness for Hitler, a grandfather who believes you can never have enough household staff, and a remarkably flatulent grandmother.
Wendy Burden is a confirmed New Yorker who, to her constant surprise, lives in Portland, Oregon. She is the great-great-great-great granddaughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt, which qualifies her to comment freely on the downward spiral of blue blood families. A Parsons School graduate, Wendy has worked as an illustrator, a zookeeper, and a taxidermist; and as an art director for a pornographic magazine from which she was fired for being too tasteful. She was also the owner and chef of a small French restaurant, Chez Wendy. She has yet to attend mortuary school, but is planning on it. Her website is www.wendyburden.com.
A wine & cheese reception will follow the event.
The Hickory Stick Bookshop will provide books for signing & sale.
Space is limited - REGISTRATION IS REQUIRED
