Visiting Authors

Being an international librarian has afforded me the honor of meeting many acclaimed authors. At ASB we were honored to meet Rita Golden Gellman, author of "Tales of a Female Nomad" for high school students/adults and "More Spaghetti, I Say" for children, and many many more favorite stories. We also had a visit from the poet Paul Janezco and he shared stories from his interesting life with us. My last year we hosted Arthur Dorros, which was wonderful because most of his books (the most famous of which is "Abuela") are English stories with Spanish phrases throughout.

In London we co-hosted a visit by Robert Muchamore, author of the Cherub series, which are very popular with middle and high school boys. His visit also taught me the importance of pre-screening edgy YA authors. I also met many of my favorite children's authors at the Bath Children's Literature Festival, most exciting of whom was Anthony Horowitz. He autographed books and posters to use for giveaways in the library. It was incredibly exciting!

In Tanzania we have hosted stupendous storyteller Stuart Stotts, performance poets Sara Holbrook and Michael Salinger (who then marched alongside me in the Women's March in Dar!), sports writer John Coy, and author Andrew Hallam spoke to our staff about financial plans and investment advice for expats. Tanya Crossman will be visiting IST In April 2018 to talk about Third Culture Kids and the impact of growing up overseas in the 21st Century.

By far, though, my personal favorite was hosting author and UN activist Ishmael Beah. We invited Ishmael to be the keynote speaker for the AISA Global Issues Service Summit hosted by IST, and he was gracious enough to stay on as our Author In Residence for a week. Meeting him changed the lives of students and teachers and challenged us to be better readers, writers, storytellers, and people.