FridayNovember 15th
6:30pm
A memoir of reading and working with books by the renowned Booklist editor.
With the infectious curiosity of an inveterate bibliophile and the prose of a fine stylist, Donna Seaman charts the course of her early reading years in a book-by-book chronicle of the significance books have held in her life. River of Books recounts Seaman’s journey in becoming an editor for Booklist, a reviewer, an author, and a literary citizen, and lays bare how she nourished both body and soul in working with books. Seaman makes palpable the power and self-recognition that she discovered in a life dedicated to reading.
“A ‘constant reader’ who generously advocates for a wide diet of literature, from novels to poetry to narrative nonfiction to essays and all that lie between, Seaman counsels that 'the more varied our reading, the more detailed, intricate, and vital our perceptions become.' A lively and entertaining contribution to the shelf of books about books."— Kirkus
"Donna Seaman reads with her whole body, and River of Books is a hymn to her vocation, a testament to her immersions, the story her transports. The surface is calm, but the water runs deep in this memoir of intense responses, of enchantments and ecstasies." — Edward Hirsch author of Stranger by Night, editor for 100 Poems to Break Your Heart
Donna Seaman is Editor-in-Chief for Booklist. A recipient of the Louis Shores Award for Excellence in Book Reviewing, the James Friend Memorial Award for Literary Criticism, and the Studs Terkel Humanities Service Award, Seaman is a member of the Content Leadership Team for the American Writers Museum, and an adjunct professor for Northwestern University’s MA in Writing and MFA in Prose and Poetry Programs. Seaman is the author of Identity Unknown: Rediscovering Seven American Women Artists and River of Books: A Life in Reading.
John Freeman is the author and editor of a dozen books, including How to Read a Novelist, the poetry collection Wind, Trees, and The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story, which he edited. The former editor of Granta and Freeman's, he is now an executive editor at Alfred A. Knopf. His work has appeared in the New Yorker and Paris Review and been translated into over 20 languages.
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