Former President Jimmy Carter will be visiting the Central Branch of the Free Library of Philadelphia on Oct. 20 to sign copies of his novel The Hornet’s Nest. This is Carter’s first novel, and the first novel published by an American president.
Carter served as president from 1977 to 1981 and has been active in many humanitarian causes around the world since leaving office.
In 1982, Carter, along with his wife Rosalynn, founded the Carter Center to advance human rights and eliminate unnecessary human suffering. In partnership with Emory University, the Carter Center works in over 65 countries on five continents.
In 2002, President Carter received the Nobel Peace Prize for his “untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights and to promote economic and social development,” according to the Nobel Foundation.
The Carter Center is also devoted to promoting democracy through its Americas Program. Established in 1986, the Americas Program seeks to promote inter-American relations and monitors elections throughout the Western Hemisphere.
In a Sep. 27 editorial in the Washington Post, Carter spoke out about the upcoming presidential election. Carter expressed concern that despite the work of himself and former President Gerald Ford, a repeat of the “debacle in Florida,” as Carter puts it, seems likely.
Carter’s appearance at the Free Library will be a book signing only and requires a ticket, which can be obtained for free at the Free Library’s Central Branch starting at 9 a.m. on Oct. 20. The event begins at 7 p.m.
Coming in November to the Central Branch will be Irish humorist/author Roddy Doyle. Doyle is the author of several novels including the Barrytown Trilogy, which includes The Commitments, The Snapper and The Van as well as the 1993 Booker Prize winner Paddy Clarke, HA HA HA.
Doyle’s novels focus on the working class experience and are full of slang and colloquialisms that would leave many sticklers for standard English sobbing into their Oxford English Dictionaries.
Doyle’s latest offering, A Star Called Henry, is the first in the Last Roundup series. For this novel, the 1916 Easter Rebellion serves as backdrop for the story of Henry Smart who grows up during the evolution of modern Ireland and goes to fight in the Irish Rebellion.
Doyle will be appearing at the Central Branch on Wednesday, Nov. 10 at 7 p.m. The event is free of charge.
Also coming to the Central branch in November is Philadelphia Inquirer foreign affairs columnist Trudy Rubin. Rubin has covered wars in Lebanon, Bosnia, Chechnya, the West Bank and Gaza and now Iraq. She was also one of the few female journalists to cover the conflict in Lebanon in the early 1980s.
Her new book, Willfull Blindness details the Bush administration’s miscalculations and failings leading up to and following major combat operations in Iraq.
Rubin will appear at the Central Branch on Nov. 17 at noon free of charge.
For a full calendar of events at the Free Library visit www.library.phila.gov.
Brendan I. Keegan can be reached at bkeegan@temple.edu.
Be the first to comment