Friday, April 18, 2014 at 7:30PM
Lydia Davis | Can’t and Won’t: Stories
Central Library
1901 Vine Street, 19103
215-686-5322
“One of the quiet giants of American fiction,” (The Los Angeles Times
Book Review), Lydia Davis received the 2013 Man Booker International
Prize for her witty, poetic, and minimalist fiction. She is the author of several short story collections, including Break It Down, winner of the Whiting
Award, and Varieties of Disturbance, which was nominated for the National Book Award. She is also a noted French-to-English translator of novels, biographies, and scholarly writing, including a new edition of Swann’s
Way by Marcel Proust and Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. Called “the best
prose stylist in America” (Rick Moody), Davis was named a Chevalier of
the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government for her adept
translations. Can’t and Won’t is her fifth collection of stories.
Saturday, April 19, 2014 at 7:30PM
Doug Fine | Hemp Bound: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Cannabis Economy
Central Library
1901 Vine Street, 19103
215-686-5322
Investigative journalist and muckraking author of the “eye-opening and
persuasive” (The New York Times Book Review) best-sellerToo High to Fail:
Cannabis and the New Green Economic Revolution, Doug Fine peeks into
dank corners to find the straight dope on the burgeoning American hemp
industry. In Hemp Bound: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Cannabis Economy, Fine takes a road trip across North America to investigate
the misunderstood plant’s pioneering 21st century uses—from powering
cars to insulating houses to healing damaged farmland—and posits that
its decriminalization would bring in more taxable income than its smokable
cousin. Fine is also the author of Farewell, My Subaru: An Epic Adventure in
Local Living and Not Really an Alaskan Mountain Man.
More information on the festival at
http://libwww.freelibrary.org/bookfestival/
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