Community Read Kick-Off Celebration Planned

Famed Little Women author Louisa May Alcott will make a rare appearance at the Tompkins County Public Library Saturday, July 26, 2008.

What makes the appearance so rare is that Alcott has been dead since 1888. Fortunately, literature lovers still have the opportunity to get an up close and personal glimpse at “one of America’s most prolific writers” through a striking portrayal by Massachusetts-based actress Jan Turnquist.

Turnquist is the director of Orchard House, Alcott’s childhood home in Concord, Massachusetts, and the founder of InterAct Performances.

Through InterAct, Turnquist travels the Northeast using living history to bring the past alive. Rather than telling the story of Louisa May Alcott’s life, she assumes her identity.

During the hour-long performance, Turnquist will provide valuable insight into important 19th Century issues such as suffrage, abolition and the Underground Railroad. She will also share more personal information about Alcott’s life including her friendships with Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, her unusual Victorian family and her work as a Civil War nurse.

This performance, which begins at 1:00 PM in the Library’s Borg Warner Community Meeting Room, celebrates the kick-off of the 2008 Community Read. This year’s selection, the Pulitzer Prize-winning March by Geraldine Brooks, tells the story of March, the absent father from Alcott’s Little Women, important issues from the Civil War period and the impact of war on family and self.

The kick-off celebration will also feature music from the popular Buffalo-based band City Fiddle, who will delight audiences with their historical attire and lively traditional music.

Other programs being planned in conjunction with the 2008 Community Read are an August 16 reading and signing by 2008 Pulitzer Prize Winner John Matteson, whose biography, Eden’s Outcasts, tells the story of Louisa May Alcott and her father Bronson, book discussion groups and a lecture on the Underground Railroad.

All Community Read programs are free and open to the public. The 2008 Community Read and its corresponding programs are made possible by the Tompkins County Public Library Foundation through generous gifts from Elizabeth E. Reed and the Brooks Family Foundation.

For more information or to request copies of March for your book group, contact Sarah Glogowski at (607) 272-4557 extension 255.