MyNorth News Service

(Press Release provide by TADL)

TRAVERSE CITY: The Traverse Area District Library (TADL) is pleased to welcome award-winning author, Stuart Dybek on May 13 at 6:30 p.m. for a reading and Q&A session with the writer. This event will be in the McGuire Community Room at the Main Library located at 610 Woodmere Ave. in Traverse City, and is free and open to the public.

Dybek is the author of several works of fiction and poetry and considered a master of the short story. His work has been included in both the Best American Fiction and Best American Poetry series and has appeared in “The New Yorker,” “Harper’s,” “The Atlantic,” “Poetry,” “Tin House,” and many other magazines. He is the recipient of many awards, including the PEN/Malamud Prize and the O. Henry Prize, as well as fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

“I am so thrilled to have Mr. Dybek visit us, as a librarian, but also as a writer,” said Annie Spence, TADL adult services librarian. “His stories are powerful and expertly written and, on top of this, having spent 30 years teaching, he is also eloquent when speaking about the art of writing. I’ve been to see him before and the crowd is always furiously scribbling down everything he says. So for readers and writers, I think it will be an inspiring evening.”

He was born and raised on the South Side of Chicago, attended Loyola University in Chicago and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Much of Dybek’s work unfolds in the working-class Slavic and Mexican neighborhoods of Chicago, areas bounded by the freeways, cement rivers, and rail lines of the “city of big shoulders.” Dybek’s poems and fiction both feature a kind of shifting realism, one in which dreams and the imagination are just as present as gritty details of urban life. The public is invited and encouraged to spend an evening with Dybek, enjoy a public reading, and a question and answer session with the visiting writer.

The Traverse Area District Library (TADL) is a public library system funded by a dedicated countywide millage. TADL operates under a Board-approved $4.7 million budget providing support for library services online and in six facilities in addition to operations from the TADL Talking Book Library. Learn more at www.tadl.org.