SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome, Boomer listeners. I'm Peggy Sweet, and this is Belonging in the Bluffs, brought to you by the Iowa West Foundation. I'm joined in studio today with my good friend Antonia Kapitchka Smith. She's the library director here for us at our Council Bluffs Library. Welcome, Antonia.

SPEAKER_01 0:15

Hi, Peggy. How are you?

SPEAKER_00 0:16

I'm great. How are you?

SPEAKER_01 0:18

Doing good. Getting through summer. Yeah, it is toasty. It's toasty. It's busy. It's buggy. It's all the things.

SPEAKER_00 0:25

But you've got some great things coming up. You're going to talk about the author of the community reads. I'm going to let you just, you've got a lot of information, so I'm just going to let you take over. Take over. Here we go.

SPEAKER_02 0:35

So I'm here to talk about Council Bluffs Reads. Okay. Council Bluffs Reads is a brand new author community reading initiative that uh the Council Bluffs Public Library announced a couple weeks ago with our first author. So this program is something that we brought in authors previously. We had a community read previously. These are things we've been doing, and we decided to just mesh it all together, call it Councilbless Reads, and have it run from August to April.

SPEAKER_01 1:05

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:05

So each quarter we're going to bring in a genre-based adult author for our community. And we are going to have a book discussion of the popular book from that author leading up to their author visit. These author visits are free to the public. We ask that you register on our website, so councilbluffslibrary.org, just so that we have an idea for how many people are going to come. But they'll be at our location on Willow, on 400 Willow, and they're going to be different times a day. So we're really excited about that because we know that it can be in different days of the week. Because we know that in our in our past experience with author visits, evenings can be hard for people sometimes, especially those winter months. So we want to try to do a matinee one for our winter quarter, just so that people don't have to worry so much about traveling after dark and things of that nature. But I'm here to kind of talk about our very first one, which will be in August. So on August 24th, we're going to kick off this um initiative with a historic fiction author. Um her name is Kristen Harmel. Okay. So Kristen Harmel um has written so many amazing books. Some of her most popular ones are The Paris Daughter, The Forest of Vanishing Stars, The Book of Lost Names, and The Winemaker's Wife. Um, we're gonna do a book discussion leading up to her author visit. So on Monday, August 10th at 6:30, we're gonna be doing a book discussion for her book, The Stolen Life of Colette Marcio. And that is a book that you can pick up at the library. We have copies available. Um, so you don't need to worry about if you've got a copy or where do you get a copy. You can just stop in at the library. Or if you are an ebook listener, you can download it on Libby and not have to wait in line. We bought extra copies online for you to be able to do that. And then join us for that book discussion on August 10th, because then two weeks later, on August 24th, the author will be here. Oh, that's so cool. Yeah, so Kristen will be joining us on August 24th, Monday, August 24th at 6:30 p.m. Um, the doors will open at 6. Um, again, we encourage you to register online just so that we can communicate with you directly then because when you register, you get your email in there and then we can send you updates and information, and you'll be in the know on the event. Um, there also will be books for sale and a book signing after the event. Um, and again, it's completely free to the community and it's just a way for us to get everybody together and discussing.

SPEAKER_00 3:34

So that's incredible. And again, more that is coming up the 10th is when the book is released, right? Book discussion. Book discussion. And then August 24th is when the author is here.

SPEAKER_02 3:44

Exactly. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 3:44

And you'll have all that information on your website. Yep, councilbluffslibrary.org. Perfect. Thanks so much, Antonia. What great information. It is just another reason to live and love Council Bluffs. This has been Belonging in the Bluffs, brought to you by the Iowa West Foundation.