Like many of our clients, Kristie Lowry, Library Outreach Coordinator the West Kentucky University Libraries and coordinator for the Southern Kentucky Book Fest, wears more than one hat! She shared some of her experiences in arranging events for a book festival, community reads program, and library author events.

KL: Counting the 2014 Southern Kentucky Book Fest that I'm currently planning, I've worked on six book festivals, six community reading projects, six used book sales, and countless other author visits. I also help with the administrative aspect of two literary awards-the Kentucky Literary Award and the Evelyn Thurman Young Readers Book Award.

We recently sat down with New York Times bestselling author, Christina Baker Kline. Her novel Orphan Train is about a young Irish immigrant who, as a child, is sent away from New York on a train that regularly transported unwanted and abandoned children from the East Coast to the farmlands of the Midwest. Moving between contemporary Maine and Depression-era Minnesota, Orphan Train

BIC: Any idea about how many literary events you've done over the years?

CBK: Literally hundreds! ORPHAN TRAIN is my fifth novel and tenth book. I've been talking about writing - my own and other people's - at conferences, bookstores, libraries, historical societies, town halls, and at colleges and universities for years. And I've been on the road with ORPHAN TRAIN since its publication in April (2013).

BIC: What do you like about the Campus/Freshman Class and Community Reads structure as a literary event format? Any thoughts on how they could be more effective?

CBK: As an author I love interacting with people who have already read my book. I particularly like visiting classrooms where students are encouraged to explore questions about theme, identity, and research. Currently I'm working on a "Reading Group" tab for my website that will include - among other things - the top ten questions that reading groups ask me, along with my (detailed) answers. I think this will be a useful resource for book clubs, high school and college students, and Community Reads participants.

BIC: What lessons can be learned from your latest book, The Distance Between Us, that make it work well for a literary events program, especially those for college students?

RG: I think The Distance Between Us works so well for students because it gives them an insight into the issue of immigration--a hot topic issue that is often covered in the media from a more political perspective. But in my book, I address immigration from a very personal standpoint, giving readers a way to view immigration from a different angle. This helps them to understand that immigration is not only a political issue, it is also a very personal issue that affects millions of families in every way imaginable.

Another thing that I feel will resonate with college students is the belief that you can succeed despite the odds. Many students, especially those that are economically or culturally disadvantaged, are facing similar struggles to those that I faced when I was their age. By telling my own story, I've found a way to encourage and inspire students to fight hard for their dreams and to not let anything stand in their way of reaching their full potential.

Harvard educated neuroscientist Lisa Genova writes about the mind. Her moving novels follow families struggling with disease and injury of the brain, a topic that always leads back to the heart. Her most recent title, Love Anthony, deals with the difficult and often life-changing diagnosis of autism.  

Olivia's young son Anthony hated to be touched, and almost never made eye contact.   At first, Olivia is crushed and furious that medicine offers no real help. She and her husband try everything; they drain their bank account and their souls in a vain attempt to make their son behave like other children. Gradually, though, Olivia comes to accept that Anthony isn't normal and never will be, and that's not all bad. But just realizes that happiness and autism can co-exist, Anthony dies, and so does her marriage.

Two years later, she is living in their summer cottage in Nantucket, where she and her neighbor, Beth, find a way to heal through change. Love Anthony is both the closing of a letter from a loving son to his mother, and an appeal to the mother to love the son, no matter what.  Love Anthony is a perfect choice for an event in April, Autism Awareness Month. 

How can a young man adjust to life in America when his experience of a "normal" life is war-time chaos, danger, death, and deprivations? In Shards, Ismet Prcic captures the absurdity, tragedy, and slow-motion collapse of life in Tuzla, Bosnia, as civil war rips the former Yugoslavia apart.

Prcic's vivid, daring narrative structure brings across the incomprehensibility of war, trauma, and recovery. For college and high school students, many of whom may be too young to remember the Bosnian civil war, this provides opportunity to study ethnic and religious conflict, Balkanization, and their long-term effects - a timely topic given the ongoing Middle East conflicts. Among adult readers, both men and women will find a personal, intimate view into a war they only knew from the TV screen's safe, sterile distance, as well as a better understanding of the price and hardships war exacts from its youngest, most vulnerable citizens. Discussion topics and programming options abound in Shards.