Join Amy Biancolli for lunch at Friends of the APL Book & Author event, Sat., April 25

PLEASE join

The Friends of the Albany Public Library

for the

Spring Book & Author Event

Saturday, April 25, 2015

Community Room, Albany Public Library, 161 Washington Ave

Second floor (across from the new children’s room), 1:30 p.m.

Speaker:  Amy Biancolli

Topic: "Living and writing in Smalbany: A love story."

Amy Biancolli was born in Queens, grew up in Connecticut and holds degrees from Hamilton College and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

She has published three books so far: one musical biography, "Fritz Kreisler: Love’s Sorrow, Love’s Joy"; and two memoirs, "House of Holy Fools: A Family Portrait in Six Cracked Parts" about her childhood family; and “Figuring Sh!t Out: Love, Laughter, Suicide, and Survival,” about her husband, who died in 2011, and dealing with the blessings of life in the aftermath.

Luncheon Buffet

University Club

141 Washington Avenue (1 block from the APL)

12 NOON

Good food for $20.00

Checks payable to the Friends of the Albany Public Library may be sent to:

Friends of the APL, 161 Washington Ave, Albany, NY 12210

Reservations by Tuesday, April 21, 2015

For more information, please contact Roger Green, rogerogreen@gmail.com

Photo credit: Danny Richardson. Bio via timesunion.com and figuringshitout.net

Lawrence Wittner on May 5: Friends of the APL Book & Author Event

Author of Year Lecture by Allen Ballard

Capital Region author Allen B. Ballard, Ph.D., will be honored by the Friends group on Saturday, Nov. 13, at 1:30 p.m. at the Main Library. The Friends will present Ballard, a professor of history and Africana studies at the University at Albany, with the 2010 Author of the Year Award. Ballard will also give a lecture. His most recent novel, “Carried by Six,” received the 2010 Honor Book Prize in Afro-American literature from the American Library Association’s Black Caucus. This event is free and open to the public.

Book & Author Lunch November 13

Please mark your calendar for the Friends annual Book & Author Lunch at noon on Saturday, November 13th. We will honor writer and history professor Allen Ballard at the University Club and later at the library where he will speak.

Invitations will be sent out shortly.

Arts critic Joseph Dalton at the Albany Public Library

Sponsored by the Friends of the APL.


Date: Thursday, April 23, 2009
Time: 7:00pm - 9:00pm
Location: Albany Public Library
Street: 61 Washington Ave.
City/Town: Albany, NY

Dalton discusses his new book and the crisis facing arts critics as newspapers cut back copy.

You can never have too many Friends

Join the Friends of APL as Pat Illnicki, past president of the Friends, reviews The Girls of Riyaldh by Rajaa Alsanea.
Tuesday, October 21, High Noon At the Main

On Saturday, October 25th, you can enjoy the Annual Book and Author Luncheon featuring Ron Bassman, the author of A Fight to Be: A Psychologist's Experience From Both Sides Of The Locked Door.
Tickets are $15 per person for lunch at 12pm, but the Author talk (at 1PM) is free and open to the public.

Friends Book and Author Lunch

As part pf the Friends of Library Week, the Friends of the APL are offering our Friends Book and Author Lunch, Saturday, October 25th at noon.

Featuring Ron Bassman, Ph.D author of A Fight To Be: A Psychologist's Experience From Both Sides Of The Locked Door.

Lunch catered by Christopher Stallmer; Lunch is $15 per person
Author talk is free and open to the public

Send your check c/o Margaret Lazarczyk, Friends of the Albany Public Library, 161 Washington Ave., Albany, NY 12210

Leonard S. Marcus, author of Minders of Make-Believe, at U Albany

Leonard S. Marcus will be speaking about his book Minders of Make-Believe: Idealists, Entrepreneurs, and the Shaping of American Children’s Literature

When: Thursday October 23, 2008, 4:00 PM,

Where: Standish Room, Science Library, University at Albany, SUNY

Free and open to the public

Leonard Marcus, one of the foremost authorities on the history of children’s literature, will discuss and sign his new book, Minders of Make-Believe (2008, Houghton Mifflin), an animated first-time history of the visionary editors, authors, librarians, booksellers, and others whose passion for books has transformed American childhood and American culture.

What should children read? Marcus tackles this three-hundred-year-old question that sparked the creation of a rambunctious children’s book publishing scene in Colonial times. And it’s the urgent issue that went on to fuel the transformation of twentieth-century children’s book publishing from a genteel backwater to big business. Marcus delivers a provocative look at the fierce turf wars fought among pioneering editors, progressive educators, and librarians - most of them women - throughout the twentieth century. His story of the emergence and growth of the major publishing houses - and of the distinctive literature for the young they shaped - gains extraordinary depth through the author’s path-finding research and in-depth interviews with dozens of editors, artists, and other key publishing figures whose careers go back to the 1930s.

Leonard S. Marcus began his publishing career with Awakened by the Moon, a widely acclaimed biography of Goodnight Moon author Margaret Wise Brown, and last fall Random House released Golden Legacy: How Golden Books Won Children’s Hearts, Changed Publishing Forever, and Became an American Icon Along the Way. Marcus, a consummate professional, capable of discourse on a wide range of topics, also possesses a wry wit, hinted at in the picture book he created with his wife, Amy Schwartz, Oscar: The Big Adventure of a Little Sock Monkey (HarperCollins/Katherine Tegen Books).


Free and open to the public. Seating is limited. RSVP to: Brian Keough, at bkeough@albany.edu or 518-437-3931. Sponsored by the University at Albany Libraries & the Marcia J. Brown Fund

Rezsin's Review!

The grande dame of the local peace and environmental movements, Rezsin Adams, reviews China Road: A Journey Into The Future Of A Rising Power by Rob Gifford.
Rezsin is a longtime member of the national board of the US-China Peoples Friendship Association and a frequent traveler to China.
Stop into the Main Library for the Friend's weekly program on Tuesday, July 1 at 12:15.

Friends of APL Honor Author Frankie Y. Bailey

The Friends of Albany Public Library will honor Frankie Y. Bailey, as Author of the Year for 2007 at their annual Book & Author Luncheon on Saturday, December 1 at 12 noon at the Main Library. In for YOU SHOULD HAVE DIED ON MONDAY, released in April of this year, Professor Bailey continues to weave the tale of African American university professor and crime historian Lizzie Stuart as she comes face-to-face with her long lost mother, Becca. Following threads from her earlier cases, Lizzie uses her keen investigative abilities to research her own family's past and uncovers a web of murder and mayhem centered around her other. As the pursuit of Becca runs from the gangster-led Chicago of the 1960s to modern, pre-Katrina New Orleans, Lizzie rattles the wrong people, jeopardizing her interracial relationship with homicide detective John Quinn while putting her own life in danger. Ultimately, Lizzie learns that some things are better buried in the past.

You Should Have Died on Monday is the fourth novel in her mystery series featuring crime historian Lizzie Stuart. Frankie Y. Bailey is also the author of Out of the Woodpile: Black Characters in Crime and Detective Fiction, which was nominated for the Mystery Writers of America 1992 Edgar Award for Criticism and Biography. She is the co-author of "Law Never Here": A Social History of African American Responses to Issues of Crime and Justice, and co-editor of Famous American Crimes and Trials and Media
Representations of September 11th. Ms. Bailey has been on faculty in
the School of Criminal Justice at SUNY Albany since 1990. Her research focuses on criminal justice and American popular culture/mass media and social history, with emphasis on issues of race/ethnicity, class, and gender. Her fiction gives her an outlet to explore issues of race, class, gender, and justice that reaches beyond the classroom and academic journals.

The Luncheon at 12 noon is $15 and the lecture at 1:00pm is free of charge. To make a reservation for lunch, send a note with payment to the Friends of Albany Public Library, 161 Washington Avenue, Albany, NY 12210, leave a message at 427-4333, or e-mail at friendsofapl@yahoo.com.