Library Foundation

Consider the Book Club Rewritten

Club Book with Terry McMillan

The author of several New York Times bestsellers, including Waiting to Exhale, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, and A Day Late and a Dollar Short, Terry McMillan has had immeasurable impact on African-American literature. Author of more than ten books, McMillan made her fiction debut with Mama, which won both the Doubleday New Voices in Fiction Award and the American Book Award. Her books have sold millions throughout the world and been made into successful movies. Recipient of Essence Magazine’s Lifetime Achievement Award, McMillan's ability to capture the dilemmas facing modern-day women with humor and verve has led to a world-wide following. Her newest release, Getting to Happy, revisits the four protagonists of Waiting to Exhale fifteen years later, each is at her own midlife crossroads, but still full of same spirit and sass.

Club Book with Nancy Pearl

Nancy Pearl is the best-selling author of Book Lust, creator of the internationally recognized program, “If All of Seattle Read the Same Book,” and model for the world-famous "Librarian Action Figure.” Described as “the talk of librarian circles” by the New York Times, she has worked as a librarian and bookseller in Detroit, Tulsa, and Seattle. The former Executive Director of the Washington Center for the Book, Pearl is a regular commentator about books on National Public Radio's Morning Edition, has appeared on the Today Show, and hosts a monthly television program “Book Lust with Nancy Pearl” on the Seattle Channel. Named the 50th winner of the Women’s National Book Association Award for her extraordinary contribution to the world of books, Pearl’s other books include the Now Read This series, Book Crush: For Kids and Teens, and Book Lust to Go: Recommended Reading for Travelers, Vagabonds, and Dreamers (due to be released fall 2010).

Club Book with Faith Sullivan

Faith Sullivan is the author of four novels set in the fictional town of Harvester, Minnesota: The Cape Ann, The Empress of One, What a Woman Must Do, and Gardenias. Devoted to her readers, Sullivan estimates that she has visited over 1,000 different book clubs to speak about her books. Sullivan has lived in Los Angeles and New York, and currently lives with her husband in Minneapolis, Minnesota. A finalist for several Minnesota Book Awards, she won the Milkweed National Fiction Prize and the Midwest Booksellers' Choice Award.

Club Book with Gish Jen

Gish Jen is the author of three novels, Typical American, Mona in the Promised Land and The Love Wife, – as well as a collection of stories, Who’s Irish? She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim foundation, a Lannan Literary Award, and a $250,000 Harold and Mildred Strauss Living award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her short work has appeared in periodicals such as the New Yorker, the Atlantic Monthly, and the New Republic, and has been reprinted in numerous textbooks and anthologies, including The Best American Short Stories of the Century. Named one of the eight most important contemporary American women writers by critic Elaine Showalter, she is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her new novel World and Town, will be published in fall 2010.