National Book Award-winner and MacArthur “Genius Grant” recipient Jacqueline Woodson is one of the nation’s most acclaimed authors writing for children, adolescents, and adults.

Weaving together lyrical language and powerful imagery to create rich and emotional stories, her work explores the complex intersections of race, class, gender, family, and American history. With more than two dozen award-winning books to her credit, her bestsellers include Red at the Bone, the National Book Award-winning Brown Girl Dreaming, and the Newbery Honor-Winning titles: After Tupac and D Foster, Feathers, and Show Way.

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Red at the Bone

Adults | Monday, September 9, 6:30 PM | NWL Board Room

Moving forward and backward in time, Jacqueline Woodson’s taut and powerful novel uncovers the role that history and community have played in the experiences, decisions, and relationships of these families, and in the life of the new child. Facilitated by River Bend Bookshop.

As the book opens in 2001, it is the evening of sixteen-year-old Melody’s coming-of-age ceremony in her grandparents’ Brooklyn brownstone. Watched lovingly by her relatives and friends, making her entrance to the music of Prince, she wears a special custom-made dress. But the event is not without poignancy. Sixteen years earlier, that very dress was measured and sewn for a different wearer: Melody’s mother, for her ceremony– a celebration that ultimately never took place.

Unfurling the history of Melody’s parents and grandparents to show how they all arrived at this moment, Woodson considers not just their ambitions and successes but also the costs, and the tolls they’ve paid for striving to overcome expectations and escape the pull of history. As it explores sexual desire and identity, ambition, gentrification, education, class, and status, and the life-altering facts of parenthood, Red at the Bone most strikingly looks at how young people must so often make long-lasting decisions about their lives–even before they have begun to figure out who they are and what they want to be.

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Another Brooklyn

Adults | Tuesday, September 24, 6:30 PM | NWL Board Room

Running into a long-ago friend sets memories from the 1970s in motion for August, transporting her to a time and a place where friendship was everything—until it wasn’t. For August and her girls, sharing confidences as they ambled through neighborhood streets, Brooklyn was a place where they believed that they were beautiful, talented, and brilliant—a part of a future that belonged to them. But beneath the hopeful veneer, there was another Brooklyn, a dangerous place where grown men reached for innocent girls in dark hallways, where ghosts haunted the night, where mothers disappeared. A world where madness was just a sunset away and fathers found hope in religion. Facilitated by Cindy Haiken, Readers Advisory Librarian, Wallingford Public Library.

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Harbor Me

Grades 5-7 | Wednesday, September 25, 4:00 PM | NWL Story Room

With her always honest, lyrical writing, Jacqueline Woodson celebrates the power of friendship, open-minded dialogue and empathy. Six fifth-graders meet together in the ARTT Room (“A Room to Talk”) for a weekly chat to talk about things that they usually keep private. When they are together, the group finds that they can express the feelings and fears they commonly hide from the world. Together, they can grow braver. You will receive a copy of the book prior to the start of the book clubs. Each participant will also receive a “goodie bag” of story-related items!

Register Starting 9/4

Before the Ever After

Grades 5-7 | Wednesday, October 9, 4:00 PM | NWL Story Room

ZJ’s Dad has been everybody’s football hero but is now moody and forgetting things.  ZJ is scared and has lots of questions. His strong group of friends are working hard to get him through this. This powerful novel, told in verse,  celebrates our ability to adapt and go bravely forth when trouble arrives. You will receive a copy of the book prior to the start of the book clubs. Each participant will also receive a “goodie bag” of story-related items!

Register Starting 9/18

Ticket distribution will begin on Tuesday, September 17. Tickets are free! Check back for more information.

Since 2000, many prominent authors have appeared in West Hartford including the following:

Nick Hornby (2023)

Gish Jen (2022)

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2019) (watch here)

Billy Collins (2018)

Anna Quindlen (2017)

Richard Russo (2017)

Luis Alberto Urrea (2016)

Amy Bloom (2002/2007/2015)

Wally Lamb (2014)

Sue Miller (2013)

Adriana Trigiani (2012)

Frank Deford (2011)

David Rhodes (2010)

Elizabeth McCracken (2009)

Ralph Nader (2009)

Anne Fadiman (2008)

Alice Mattison (2001/2008)

Mary-Ann Tirone Smith (2008)

Galway Kinnell (2007)

Stewart O’Nan (2007)

Jonathan Franzen (2005)

Anita Shreve (2004)

Elizabeth Berg (2003)

Jennifer Weiner (2002)

Thomas Cahill (2002)

Jill Ker Conway (2001)

Simon Winchester (2001)

Dominick Dunne (2001)

Bill Bryson (2000)