Cognotes November Midwinter 2016 Preview [3]

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NOVEMBER MIDWINTER 2016 PREVIEW COGNOTES 3

Sunrise Celebration to Feature Mary Frances Berry

Acclaimed civil rights activist and academic Dr. Mary Frances Berry will keynote the 2016 Dr. Luther King, Jr. Holiday Observance and Sunrise Celebration during the American Library Association’s Midwinter Meeting and Exhibits in Boston. The 2016 Celebration will be held from 6:30 — 7:30 a.m. on Monday January 12 in the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center.

Berry has been one of the most prominent activists in the cause of civil rights, gender equality, and social justice in the United States. Her publications include such subjects as the history of constitutional racism in America and child care and women's rights. Power in Words: The Stories behind Barack Obama's Speeches, from the State House to the White House (Beacon Press, 2010) offers insight and historical context of President Obama's most memorable speeches. Her most recent book, We Are Who We Say We Are: A Black Family's Search for Home across the Atlantic World (Oxford University Press, 2014) offers a new angle of vision for looking at racial identity, demography and migration as themes of our national history. Her forthcoming book is Five Dollars and a Pork Chop Sandwich: Vote Buying and the Corruption of Democracy (Beacon Press, February 2016).

Berry is a fellow of the Society of American Historians and the National Academy of Public Administration. In 2014 she was named a distinguished fellow of the American Society for Legal History the highest honor awarded by the Society. Since 1988, she has been the Geraldine R. Segal professor of American social thought, history, law and Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Her participation is generously made possible by Beacon Press.

The 2015 Sunrise Celebration will bring together leaders from across the association, including 2015-2016 ALA President Sari Feldman and ALA Executive Director Keith Michael Fiels. Featured readings will include selected passages from the works of King. Coffee and tea will be served. Attendance is open to all attendees of the 2016 ALA Midwinter Meeting. For more information, please visit www.alamidwinter.org.

Mary Frances Berry

Author Forum

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and as people in Grover Cleveland Again!: A Treasury of American Presidents, which will be published in July 2016.

Terry Tempest Williams is an award-winning author of 14 books, a conservationist, and an activist whose writing is rooted in the American West and ranges from issues of ecology and wilderness preservation, to women's health, to exploring our relationship to culture and nature. Her books include Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place, Finding Beauty in a Broken World, and When Women Were Birds. Her forthcoming book, The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America's National Parks (June 2016) offers a literary celebration of our national parks, what they mean to us, and what we mean to them, and is timed to honor the centennial of the National Park Service.

The authors are appearing thanks to the generous sponsorship of their publishers, Random House Children's Books (Ken Burns) and Macmillan (Terry Tempest Williams).

Donna Seaman is Booklist's Editor for Adult Books. Her reviews and essays have appeared in the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, and other publications, and she has received the James Friend Memorial Award for Literary Criticism, the Studs Terkel Humanities Service Award, and Literacy Chicago's Literacy Hero Award. Seaman's author interviews are collected in Writers on the Air: Conversations about Books and she has moderated many author appearances for the American Library Association, the Chicago Public Library, and the Chicago Humanities Festival.

Mark Kurlansky is the New York Times bestselling author of twenty-eight books, including the forthcoming Paper: Paging Through History (Norton, May 2016), and a former foreign correspondent for the International Herald Tribune, the Chicago Tribune, the Miami Herald, and the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The Exhibits Round Table is pleased to sponsor the ERT/Booklist Author Forum as one of the many ways they collaborate with ALA staff and members to make the exhibits a dynamic part of ALA conferences. Booklist can be found at booth #1923 in the exhibits, where you can discuss all things book and media related with the editors and get a demo of the integrated print, online, and digital edition access.

Anti-bullying Activist Lizzie Velasquez is 2016 Arthur Curley Memorial Lecturer

Anti-bullying activist Lizzie Velasquez will bring her message of not allowing others to define you and of turning negativity into a motivating force to 2016 ALA Midwinter Meeting in Boston as the Arthur Curley lecturer on Saturday, January 9, 4:00 - 5:00 p.m.

Born with a rare syndrome that prevents her from gaining weight and causes accelerated aging, Velasquez was first bullied as a child in school for looking different and later as a teenager when she discovered a YouTube video labeling her “the world's ugliest woman.” Instead of giving in to the cruelty and vitriol expressed, Velasquez decided to respond to the bullies and tormentors by fighting back in a positive way. She was inspired to speak out against both cyber- and face-to-face bullying, becoming a motivational speaker and author as well as the subject of the documentary “A Brave Heart: The Lizzie Velasquez Story,” which premiered at SXSW in 2015. She also got involved in lobbying Congress to pass an anti-bullying bill, and presented a TEDx talk — “How do you define yourself?” — which has been viewed 9.6 million times. She credits her parents with teaching her not to allow herself to be defined by what was different about her. “You are the one that decides what defines you,” she says in the talk. She decided to let her goals, success, and accomplishments define her, not her outward appearance, and has used the many negative things directed at her “as a ladder to help me climb up to my goals.” She exhorts her audience to remember that “Brave starts here.”

The Arthur Curley Memorial Lecture series commemorates Arthur Curley's lifelong dedication to the principles of intellectual freedom and free public access to information.