Fiction or nonfiction? Rags to riches or romance? Historical novels or hysterical escapades? Whatever you enjoy, the 2012 AViD (Authors Visiting in Des Moines) Author Series is sure to have a program that is"just your type"!
Tracy Kidder
Tuesday, March 27
7:00 PM, Hoyt Sherman Place Theater
Tracy Kidder will kick off the 2012 AViD Author Series with a discussion of his best-selling story, Strength in What Remains, selected by the Iowa Center for the Book as this year’s All Iowa Reads title. It’s the story of Deogratias, a young man who flees from civil war in Burundi, then Rwanda, becomes homeless in New York City, graduates from Columbia University, and builds a heath care clinic in Burundi that is free for those who cannot pay.
Kidder earned an A.B. from Harvard and an M.A. from the University of Iowa. He has won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Robert F. Kennedy Award, and many other literary prizes. He is the author of Strength in What Remains, Mountains Beyond Mountains, My Detachment, Home Town, Old Friends, Among Schoolchildren, House, and The Soul of a New Machine.
Wil Haygood
Monday, April 23
7:00 PM, Central Library
Wil Haygood will share insights from his trilogy of biographies In Black and White: The Life of Sammy Davis, Jr., King of Cats: The Life and Times of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., and Sweet Thunder: The Life and Times of Sugar Ray Robinson, which was a runner-up for the inaugural 2010 PEN/ESPN Book Award for Literary Sports Writing. Haygood is also the author of The Haygoods of Columbus: A Love Story and Two on the River.
Haygood is a 2011-2012 Guggenheim Fellow and Washington Post national reporter. He has won many awards for his writing, including the New England Associated Press Award and the National Association of Black Journalists Award for Foreign Reporting. He is also a Pulitzer Prize finalist for his work at the Boston Globe.
Erik Larson
Wednesday, May 2
7:00 PM, Hoyt Sherman Place Theater
Erik Larson returns to Des Moines on tour for his best-selling book, In the Garden of Beasts, the story of William E. Dodd, a mild-mannered history professor from Chicago who was chosen by Roosevelt to be America's first ambassador to Nazi Germany.
Erik Larson, author of the international bestseller Isaac’s Storm, was nominated for a National Book Award for The Devil in the White City. He is a former features writer for The Wall Street Journal and Time magazine, where he is still a contributing writer. His magazine stories have appeared inThe New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, and other publications.
Steve Berry
Thursday, May 31
7:00 PM, Scottish Rite Temple
Steve Berry will stop in Des Moines to discuss his newest book, The Columbus Affair, a book that follows investigative journalist Tom Sagan, after his professional reputation crashes and burns. Fate intervenes in the form of Zachariah Simon, who desperately wants something only Sagan can supply: the key to a treasure with explosive political significance in the modern world.
Berry is the New York Times’ bestselling author of The Paris Vendetta, The Charlemagne Pursuit, The Venetian Betrayal, The Alexandria Link, The Templar Legacy, The Third Secret, The Romanov Prophecy, and The Amber Room. He has ten million books in print, translated into forty languages and sold in fifty-one countries.
Larry Baker
Monday, June 18
7:00 PM, Central Library
Iowa City author Larry Baker will talk about his upcoming book Love and Other Delusions, which follows the story of Alice Marcher, who is dying, but still trying to understand her life. She was thirty when she met eighteen-year-old Danny Shay. Twenty years later, they parted. Alice insisted, “It lasted so long, so it must have meant something, right? We weren’t a cliché, were we?”
Larry Baker was fifty in 1997 when he wrote his first novel,The Flamingo Rising, one of three finalists for the Barnes and Noble “Great New Voices” award, later adapted for a Hallmark TV movie. The Flamingo Rising was also selected by the Iowa Center for the Book to represent Iowa at the National Book Festival in 2010. His other works include Athens/America and A Good Man, which was nominated for the Southern Independent Booksellers Association Book of the Year in 2010.
Meg Cabot
Tuesday, July 10
7:00 PM, Hoyt Sherman Place Theater
Des Moines will be one of the first stops for best-selling author Meg Cabot as she promotes her newest book, Size 12 and Ready to Rock. This is the latest in her popular Heather Wells mystery series, which features a teen pop sensation who is dropped by her record label and takes on a new career as a spunky girl detective.
Cabot is a #1 New York Times bestselling author of books for both adults and tweens/teens. She is well known for the Princess Diaries series, as well as numerous other award-winning, bestselling standalone books, including All-American Girl and Avalon High. Her newest series include the tween hit Allie Finkle’s Rules for Girls, the Young Adult trilogies Airhead, and Abandon. Meg’s first paranormal romance for adult readers, Insatiable, was followed by a sequel, Overbite, in July 2011.
Each program begins at 7:00 PM. All events are free and open to the public, and seating is based on a first-come, first-served basis. Books will be available for purchase and signing from The Book Store or Beaverdale Books. The public is also invited to a dessert reception following each program hosted by the Des Moines Public Library Foundation.
The 2012 AViD Author Series is sponsored by the Des Moines Public Library Foundation with generous funding from Humanities Iowa and Douglas and Deborah West. Additional support has been provided by Wells Fargo, Dr. Richard Deming, Hoyt Sherman Place Theater, Drake University, the Scottish Rite Consistory, and the Des Moines Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.
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