Billings Events
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Parmly Billings Library Announces Louise Erdrich WFOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – July 13, 2009
Contact: Bill Cochran, Director, Parmly Billings Library
cochranb@ci.billings.mt.us 406-657-8292
Parmly Billings Library Announces Louise Erdrich
as Winner of the 2009 EMERITUS Award
Graduate of both Dartmouth and John Hopkins University, Native American author Louise Erdrich has been named the 2009 Emeritus Award Writer, one of the annual High Plains Book Awards sponsored by the Parmly Billings Library. The ceremony and banquet is scheduled for Friday, October 2, 2009, in Billings and the public is encouraged to attend. Information is available at www.billings.lib.mt.us.
In her journey as an author, Erdrich has penned twelve novels, multiple volumes of poetry, children’s books and even a memoir about her early motherhood experiences. Her novel, The Plague of Doves, appeared on The New York Time’s Best Seller list and Love Medicine, her debut book, won the National Book Critics Award.
Born in 1954, in Little Falls, Minnesota, Erdrich grew up in Wahpeton, North Dakota where her parents worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Her Chippewa background and Indian reservation experiences have greatly influenced her writing.
In her powerful first award-winning novel, Love Medicine, Louise Erdrich introduces several generations in the interrelated families living in and around a Chippewa or Ojibwa reservation near the fictional town of Argus, North Dakota . The lives of these characters will unfold further in The Beet Queen, Tracks, and The Bingo Palace. Spanning fifty years, from 1934 through 1984, the novel is told through the voices of a series of vivid characters, mostly Chippewa men and women who are caught up in the emotional tangle of their families’ histories, but who struggle to gain some control over their lives. Sometimes compared to Faulkner’s multi-narrated family sagas, Love Medicine creates an intense vision of a world that is at once violent and tender, ugly and lyrical, realistic and gothic. At their best, the separate stories that make up the novel convey the subtle pressures upon the souls of people who are culturally mixed—of those whose lives are shaped by both Native American and non-Indian values, habits, and customs.
Other High Plains Book Awards to be announced at the Awards Banquet include winners in Best Fiction, Best Nonfiction and Best First Book categories and the Zonta Woman Writer Award. The Native American theme of this year’s event is derived from Love Medicine,. Concurrent with the Parmly Billings Library Book Awards is the 7th annual High Plains BookFest sponsored by the YMCA Writer’s Voice. For information on the BookFest contact Corby Skinner corby@skinnerbenoit.com
The Parmly Billings High Plains Books Awards have been established to recognize regional authors and/or literary works which examine and reflect life on the High Plains including the states of Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska, Colorado, and Kansas, and the Canadian provinces of Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan.
The Parmly Billings Library and the YMCA Writer’s voice also selected Louise Erdrich first novel Love Medicine for the National Endowment for the Arts Big Read project.
The Big Read will kick off on September 25 at MSU-Billings as a part of the American Indian Heritage Day Celebration. The Big Read will continue programs and workshops at school, libraries, museums and other public venues in South-Central Montana throughout the month. The 2009 High Plains BookFest, scheduled for October 2-4, 2009, will also focus on Native and non-native contemporary regional writers, whose works address the culture, history and lives of the Northern Plains Indians.
The BookFest and The Big Read are designed to engage new audiences, and foster conversations about how literature addresses the challenges, rewards and many unique aspects of Native American life.
YMCA Writer's Voice 402 North 32nd 59101 248-1685 ext 231 www.billingsymca.org The Writer's Voice is a literary program of the Billings YMCA. Related:
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