Mary Jacobs Library event slated Thursday
By Katie Wagner
Staff Writer
ROCKY HILL — Three award-winning writers, representing a variety of literary genres will be speaking about the writing process at the Mary Jacobs Library on Thursday.
”Writers Talk About Writing” will feature the authors James Richardson, Mimi Schwartz and Robbie Clipper Sethi. The fall literary program is sponsored by the Friends of Mary Jacobs Library, a volunteer group dedicated to providing support to the library and its programs.
”I think it’s a very significant cultural event for people who are really interested in literature,” said Judy Di Domenico, a Friends of Mary Jacobs Library board member. “It’s a fabulous opportunity to see into a writer’s mind.
”Anyone who’s involved with writing recognizes the threat of the blank page, how difficult it is at times to put whatever is in your heart on paper,” Ms. Di Domenico added. “If anybody is actually interested in composing literature, it’s a wonderful opportunity to learn where people who are actively writing get their inspiration, what is their pattern on writing, how they are putting things together and what works for them and what doesn’t.”
Mr. Richardson is an English professor and acting director of the Program in Creative Writing at Princeton University. He is author of several books, including his most recent publication, “Interglacial: New and Selected Poems and Aphorisms,” for which he was finalist in the 2004 National Book Critics Circle Award. A winner of an Academy Award in Literature 2002 from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, he has contributed pieces to “Best American Poetry” 2001 and 2005, the New Yorker, Slate, Paris Review, Science News, Poetry Daily and Great American Prose Poems.
Ms. Schwartz is a professor emeritus at Richard Stockton College. She has published five books, including “Thoughts from a Queen-Sized Bed,” a memoir about life in a long marriage, and “Writing True, the Art and Craft of Creative Nonfiction”.
She continues to teach at writers’ conferences and to lead workshops in memoir and creative nonfiction nationwide and abroad.
Five of Ms. Schwartz’s essays have been named “Notables” in “Best American Essays.” Her articles in writing have appeared in the magazines Writer’s Digest, Writing on the Edge and the Writer’s Chronicle. Her latest book, “Good Neighbors, Bad Times — Echoes of My Father’s German Village” is due out in February.
Ms. Clipper Sethi is author of “Fifty-Fifty” and “The Bride Wore Red,” a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection.
Ms. Sethi’s stories and poems have appeared in Atlantic Monthly, Mademoiselle, The Philadelphia Inquirer, USI and a variety of literary magazines and anthologies.
She co-edits fiction for the Kelsey Review, is an English professor at Rider University and the winner of numerous awards, including Rider’s Distinguished Teacher Award in 2002. She is currently working on a new novel.
The Friends of the Mary Jacobs Library subsidizes and initiates programs, purchases and events beyond the limits of the library’s normal funding and endowment for the benefit and enrichment of the community served by the Mary Jacobs Library. Last spring, the group hosted a similar event and hope to continue bringing local writers to speak about the writing process to the library annually, Ms. Di Domenico said.
”Writers Talk About Writing” will begin at 7:30 p.m.