NEA Big Read: Mid-Columbia

Mid-Columbia Libraries, together with our partners, is proud to host NEA Big Read: Mid-Columbia featuring “Station Eleven” by bestselling author Emily St. John Mandel. Pick up a free copy of "Station Eleven" from any Mid-Columbia Libraries branch while supplies last, or check out a copy from our collection.

Please join us for A Conversation With Emily St. John Mandel on Nov. 8, 2018 at 7 pm at Southridge High School Auditorium, located at 3520 Southridge Blvd. in Kennewick. This event is free and suitable for teens and adults. Books will be for sale; a book signing will follow the presentation.

NEA Big Read is a program of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest. NEA Big Read: Mid-Columbia literary festival encourages communities throughout the Mid-Columbia region to engage with the same book and come together to explore and celebrate the written and spoken word. At Mid-Columbia Libraries, we strive to build community through the collective experience of reading, thinking, and discussing ideas and themes that raise important social issues while also building future readers and writers in our region.

Do you live in the Connell or Prosser areas? We are pleased to offer free bus travel from both Connell and Prosser to A Conversation With Emily St. John Mandel in Kennewick. Bus riders receive reserved event seating and priority book signing. Seating is limited; click here to RSVP.

About the Book

One snowy night a famous Hollywood actor slumps over and dies onstage during a production of "King Lear." Hours later, the world as we know it begins to dissolve. Moving back and forth in time—from the actor's early days as a film star to fifteen years in the future, when a theater troupe known as The Travelling Symphony roams the wasteland of what remains—this suspenseful, elegiac, spellbinding novel charts the strange twists of fate that connect five people: the actor, the man who tried to save him, the actor's first wife, his oldest friend, and a young actress with The Travelling Symphony, caught in the crosshairs of a dangerous self-proclaimed prophet. Sometimes terrifying, sometimes tender, "Station Eleven" tells a story about the relationships that sustain us, the ephemeral nature of fame, and the beauty of the world as we know it.

-From the author's website

About the Author

Emily St. John Mandel is the author of four novels, most recently "Station Eleven," which was a finalist for a National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award and won the 2015 Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Toronto Book Award, and the Morning News Tournament of Books, and has been translated into 31 languages. A previous novel, "The Singer's Gun," was the 2014 winner of the Prix Mystere de la Critique in France. Her short fiction and essays have been anthologized in numerous collections, including Best American Mystery Stories 2013. She is a staff writer for The Millions. She lives in New York City with her husband and daughter.

-From the author's website