Thurber House is celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2009, with a special line-up of its Evenings with the Authors series.
Evenings with Authors is a series that brings Columbus a notable roster of novelists, journalists, historians, poets, humorists and biographers, many of them award winners and bestsellers.
The Winter/Spring 2009 Evenings with Authors schedule is as follows:
Sue Miller, Jan. 14, 7:30 p.m., Columbus School for Girls, 56 S. Columbia Ave.
New York Times bestselling author Sue Miller returns to Thurber House to read from her latest novel, The Senator’s Wife, a portrait of two imperfect marriages and two women who unexpectedly change each other’s lives. She is the author of 10 books including The Good Mother, Inventing the Abbotts and the Oprah Book Club pick and bestseller While I’m Gone.
Merrill Markoe, Jan. 23, 7:30 p.m., Columbus Museum of Art, 480 E. Broad St.
Another author returning this anniversary year is Merrill Markoe, a former finalist for the Thurber Prize for Humor for her fun-loving doggie novel Walking in Circles Before Lying Down. Markoe is an Emmy Award-winning writer who will read from her latest novel, Nose Down, Eyes Up, a humorous story about four talking dogs, a man who won’t grow up and his confused relationships with women.
Henry Alford, Feb. 10, 7:30 p.m., Columbus Performing Arts Center, 549 Franklin Ave.
A former judge for the Thurber Prize for Humor, Alford will read from his new book, How To Live: A Search for Wisdom from Old People, an insightful and humorous narrative in which he talks to a variety of people over 70 — including Phyllis Diller and a pastor who thinks napping is a form of prayer — to answer the question: What is wisdom?
Meg Wolitzer, March 11, 7:30 p.m., Columbus School for Girls, 56 S. Columbia Ave.
Meg Wolitzer, a novelist and screenwriter, is the author of the New York Times Notable book, The Wife, and also The Position, and This Is Your Life, which was made into the Nora Ephron film, This Is My Life. She will read from her latest novel, The Ten-Year Nap, the story of a group of women who chose full-time motherhood over promising professional careers – and then find themselves questioning that decision a decade later.
Terri Cheney, April 28, 7:30 p.m., Columbus Museum of Art, 480 E. Broad St.
Throughout the course of her 16-year career as an attorney, Terri Cheney specialized in intellectual property and entertainment law at several prominent Los Angeles firms, all the while battling a debilitating bipolar disorder. Her New York Times bestseller, Manic: A Memoir, gives a harrowing yet hopeful insider’s account of what it is like to live and manage this disease, easily hidden in the bipolar nature of Hollywood life itself.
Tony Horwitz, May 15, 7:30 p.m., Columbus School for Girls, 56 S. Columbia Ave.
Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and New York Times bestselling author Tony Horwitz, will read from his latest work, A Voyage Long and Strange, a story of history, myth, and misadventure that explores what happened in the century between Columbus’ sail in 1492 and Jamestown’s founding in “16-oh-something.’ Embarking on his own epic trek retracing these hidden historic places, Horwitz discovered, as he did in one of his other bestsellers, Confederates in the Attic, the revealing gap between what we enshrine and what we forget.
Evenings with Authors begin at 7:30 p.m. The featured guest reads from his or her most recent work and then chats about writing. Sessions conclude with a question-and-answer session with the audience. Each event closes with a coffee and cookies reception and an opportunity to buy the author’s book(s) and get them signed.
Tickets are $18 in advance, $20 at the door. For more information, visit www.thurberhouse.org.