Freedom To Read Roundtable
Sunday, October 15
2:30 – 4 pm
In person at Miller Branch – register
online session – register

“Tikkun olam,” the Hebrew expression for “repairing the world,” is woven throughout the novel. Why? – asks Sydney Page of The Washington Post, as she interviews James McBride about his new novel The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store.*

I just love it; I love the innocence of it, I love the purity of it and I love that it works. “Heal the world” is a big phrase. How do you heal the world? You start right where you are. – says James McBride

*The Washington Post, September 23, 2023.

James McBride goes on to elaborate that our commonalities outweigh our differences and how we need to celebrate our common ground rather than fight over differences. Eschewing cynicism, he believes that we’re driven by kindness, and there’s a moral sense which underpins the American dream. McBride is, without question, one of America’s great storytellers and an essential voice in the literary landscape. This summer he returns with his signature hope, humor, and humanity in The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, which begins in 1972 when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania find a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Long-held secrets emerge in Chicken Hill, a neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans have lived side by side for decades.

You can borrow the title in print or large print, as an e-book, or as an audiobook on CD, or an e-audiobook.

Hear more from National Book Award-winning author, musician, and screenwriter James McBride at the Freedom To Read Roundtable happening on Sunday, October 15 from 2:30 – 4 pm. Join with librarians, publishers, poets, authors, and your community in supporting the essential right to read at the Freedom to Read Roundtable.

The Roundtable also features a distinguished panel of speakers:

• Emily Drabinski is the current President of the American Library Association (ALA) and Associate Professor at the Queens College Graduate School of Library and Information Studies.

• Dr. Richard Bell is Professor of History at the University of Maryland. He is an Andrew Carnegie Fellow (2021-2023) and has held research fellowships at more than two dozen libraries and institutes. He is also one of the conveners of the Washington Area Early American Seminar, a member of the Board of Trustees of the Maryland Center for History and Culture, an elected member of the Massachusetts Historical Society and the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.  

• Alexandra Petri is a humorist and columnist for The Washington Post. She studied English and classics at Harvard and has received the National Press Club Angele Gingras Award for Humor Writing and the Shorty Award. She has been recognized in Forbes 30 Under 30 and in the Fifty Funniest People Right Now (Rolling Stone).

• In-person readings by Maryland Poet Laureate Grace Cavalieri and Truth Thomas.

You may attend in-person or virtually. The in-person event happens at HCLS Miller Branch. Register HERE. To attend online, register HERE.

This event is presented in partnership by Howard County Library System (HCLS) and Howard County Poetry and Literature Society (HoCoPoLitSo).