Library Life
What happens when you put trained engineers and science-savvy kids in a room together for two days and ask them to battle it out with LEGO robots? We found out the answer on a recent Saturday at the Plaza Branch.
Kansas City atheists may not believe in God, but they definitely believe in Sue Sanders. Find out how our meeting room scheduler is making connections all over the city.
The readers have spoken. Voting in the finals for the 2012 Publitzer Prize for Fiction has closed, and a worthy novel has been democratically awarded the highest prize in mock American literary awards. Where the real Pulitzer Prize committee left off, you, the public, picked up.
Congratulations to Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Marriage Plot, the landslide victor of the Publitzer Prize readers’ vote. Now, in addition to being a New York Times Notable Book of 2011, Plot has the official stamp of approval of the Kansas City Public Library’s uppermost echelon of fiction connoisseurs.
You found them in the beaches, you found them on the streets. You even found them in your school. The Alphabet KC scavenger hunt to capture photos of letter-shaped objects found around town is over, and the submissions have been dazzling.
You nominated, the experts judged, and now it's time to vote. It’s been a fast and rollicking road to the final lineup in the first ever Publitzer Prize for Fiction – the Kansas City Public Library’s democratically driven answer to the real Pulitzer committee’s inability to award a prize for fiction for 2012.
After collecting your nominations all week long, on Friday, we posted the Publitzer readers’ booklist, which featured many thoughtful and compelling comments sent in by lit-lovers like you. It was a fantastic roundup of the fiction books that most resonated with our local reading community this past year. Seriously, if you've been looking for a good new novel to read, look no further.
As our jurors prepare to hunker down and choose the finalists for the first-ever "Publitzer" Prize for Fiction, it’s time to share what books you, the public, nominated.
Folks who have been following the race know that over the past week, the Kansas City Public Library has been conducting a campaign to undo the wrong wrought by the Pulitzer committee in giving no award for fiction for 2012.
We’ve been asking readers to nominate their favorite works of fiction from 2011, and our jurors would take your nominations and choose three finalists to be put to the vote beginning Monday, April 30.
We wanted you to be the faction that picks the fiction, and that’s exactly what you were. Well done.
As you dig in to what your fellow readers submitted below, check out the jury’s nominations:
When the Pulitzer Prize board failed to award a prize for fiction this year, we came up with one of our own, the Publitzer Prize. This week, we’re letting you – the public – nominate potential finalists. But first, our team of expert jurors will share their official nominations.
Last week, when the Pulitzer board failed to reach a majority vote, three finalists were summarily stiffed: The Pale King by David Foster Wallace, Train Dreams by Denis Johnson, and Swamplandia by Karen Russell.
To make up for the Pulitzerian failure, we’re asking you to nominate your favorite fiction book from 2011 to enter the running for the Publitzer Prize. (Nominate now.)
Because any good fiction contest needs guidance from the experts, we’ve assembled a top-notch team of local literati to help direct the proceedings: Steve Paul of The Kansas City Star, Scott Wilson of The Pitch, novelist Whitney Terrell (New Letters writer-in-residence at UMKC), and our own Kaite Mediatore Stover, director of Readers’ Services.
When the Pulitzer Prize board failed to award a prize for fiction this year, we came up with one of our own, the Publitzer Prize. This week, we’re letting you – the public – nominate potential finalists. But first, our team of expert jurors will share their official Publitzer nominations.
Last week, when the Pulitzer board failed to reach a majority vote, three finalists were summarily stiffed: The Pale King by David Foster Wallace, Train Dreams by Denis Johnson, and Swamplandia by Karen Russell.
To make up for the Pulitzerian failure, we’re asking you to nominate your favorite fiction book from 2011 to enter the running for the Publitzer Prize. (Nominate now.)
Because any good fiction contest needs guidance from the experts, we’ve assembled a top-notch team of local literati to help direct the proceedings: Steve Paul of The Kansas City Star, Scott Wilson of The Pitch, novelist Whitney Terrell (New Letters writer-in-residence at UMKC), and our own Kaite Mediatore Stover, Director of Readers’ Services.
When the Pulitzer Prize board failed to award a prize for fiction this year, we came up with one of our own, the Publitzer Prize. This week, we’re letting you – the public – nominate potential finalists. But first, our team of expert jurors share their official Publitzer nominations.
Quick re-cap: As true fictionados like you already know, last week the Pulitzer board announced that due to a deadlock in voting, no fiction prize could be awarded in this year’s awards. Three finalists were summarily stiffed: The Pale King by David Foster Wallace, Train Dreams by Denis Johnson, and Swamplandia by Karen Russell.
This week we’re asking you to make up for the Pulitzer committee’s failure by nominating your favorite book, any fiction work from 2011, to enter the running for the 2012 Publitzer Prize. (Nomination Form)
Silent movies were almost never silent. There was always music. The Library and the People’s Liberation Big Band will recreate the silent film experience with a screening of the classic Soviet silent feature Battleship Potemkin.
When the Pulitzer Prize board announced that there was no fiction winner this year, we came up with an award of our own: The Publitzer Prize. This week, we're letting you – the public – nominate potential finalists. But first, our jurors share their official Publitzer nominations.
Quick re-cap: As true fictionados like you already know, last week the Pulitzer board announced that due to a deadlock in voting, no fiction prize could be awarded in this year’s awards. Three finalists were summarily stiffed: The Pale King by David Foster Wallace, Train Dreams by Denis Johnson, and Swamplandia by Karen Russell.
As the literary world looks back in anger, we’re asking you to make up for the Pulitzer committee’s failure by nominating your favorite book from 2011 to compete in a vote to determine the winner of the 2012 Publitzer Prize. (Nomination Form)
When it was announced earlier this week that no award was given for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, we thought: Why not let the public decide? So, we cooked up the first-ever Publitzer Prize for Fiction. Cast your vote now!
If you were thinking of founding a library anytime soon, we have some exciting news: Our Pin Your Perfect Library Pinterest contest created a plethora of patron-sourced ideas for what objects, people, and books should go into the Perfect Library
For those just walking through the virtual turnstile, here's what went down. For National Library Week, April 8-15, 2012, we invited library-loving Pinterest users to collect their ideas for what items should go in their vision of “the perfect library." Books, bookshelves, fireplaces, hammocks, writers-in-residence, pets, plants, celebrity staffers, food, crafts -- if you could dream it, you could pin it.
Over the course of the week, entrants filed in from New York to Los Angeles. There was a strong local contingency, too. All in all, ten Pin-testants contributed 460 pins. The ideas ranged from eye-popping public art displays, to quirky bookshelves, to Ryan Gosling memes.
Have you ever spotted letters in unlikely places? Perhaps it’s a crack in the sidewalk shaped like an “R,” or a bridge railing that looks like an “N.” Stephen T. Johnson’s Caldecott Honor book Alphabet City is full of images of ABC’s spotted in city scenes.
This week at the Library, we want you to hit the streets of KC to find your own letters in the landscape and share them with us on social media.
An award-winning artist and children’s book illustrator, Stephen T. Johnson grew up in Kansas and lives in Lawrence. He got the idea for Alphabet City over ten years ago.
He was walking down a New York sidewalk and saw an ornamental keystone that looked like the letter S. “Then suddenly I saw the letter A in a construction sawhorse and the letter Z in fire-escapes,” he writes.
Pretty soon, he’d found the whole alphabet.
Johnson’s Alphabet City paintings are part of an exhibit at Central called Art, Language & Play. He will be conducting a kids’ workshop on Friday, April 20, at 10:30 a.m. at the Central Library (RSVP now).