Freedom to Read Roundtable (Virtual)

Program Type:

Author & Literary Events, Book Clubs, Community Events, Race, Equity & Inclusion

Age Group:

Adults
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Event Details

This event is also being presented In-Person at the Miller branch library. To attend in-person, register HERE.

Chance to Win a Book: Five virtual attendees will be randomly selected to receive a copy of The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. Winners will be contacted by email with more details. 

 

Join with librarians, publishers, authors and your community in supporting the essential right to read at the Freedom to Read Presentation and Roundtable, presented in partnership by the Howard County Library System (HCLS) and the Howard County Poetry and Literature Society (HoCoPoLitSo).

This event will be free and open to the public. 

 (Read the entire American Library Association’s Freedom to Read Statement here.) 
 

Virtual Roundtable Panelists at 2:30 PM: 

James McBride is a national bestselling, award-winning author, musician, and screenwriter. His landmark memoir, The Color of Water (1996), has sold millions of copies and spent more than two years on The New York Times bestseller list. His 2013 novel, The Good Lord Bird, about American abolitionist John Brown, won the National Book Award for Fiction. In 2015, he was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Obama “for humanizing the complexities of discussing race in America.” 

Alexandra Petri is a humorist and columnist for The Washington Post. She studied English and classics at Harvard and has received the National Press Club Angele Gingras Award for Humor Writing and the Shorty Award, been recognized in Forbes 30 Under 30 and in the Fifty Funniest People Right Now (Rolling Stone).

Dr. Richard Bell is Professor of History at the University of Maryland. He is an Andrew Carnegie Fellow (2021-2023) and has held research fellowships at more than two dozen libraries and institutes including residencies at the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Abolition, and Resistance at Yale University and the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress.

Emily Drabinski is the current President of the American Library Association and Associate Professor at the Queens College Graduate School of Library and Information Studies.

Please register with an email address to receive an immediate registration confirmation.