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WKU Libraries’ announcement of coming events and new collections.

WKU Library Professor Haiwang Yuan’s book was recognized with storytelling award


Yuan- official

WKU Libraries Professor Haiwang Yuan’s book Tibetan Folktales recently received an Honorable Mention in the Special Storytelling Resources category of the 2016 Storytelling World Resource Awards. Yuan coauthored the book with Awang Kunga, who is a native Tibetan, and Bo Li. Its  publisher is Libraries Unlimited, an imprint of ABC-CLIO. Incidentally, another of Yuan’s books Princess Peacock: Tales of Other Chinese Peoples won the same recognition in 2010.

For more than 20 years, the Storytelling World Resource Awards Program has a panel of judges who evaluate new books in the field and identify outstanding works to help storytellers connect with the resources that will be most impactful for their practice.

Tibetan Folktales contains more than 30 traditional Tibetan stories that give readers a taste of the land, people, culture, history, religion, and psyche of this remote region. The tales are gathered from contemporary Tibetan storytellers and translated from written sources that represent a rich oral and written literary tradition.

“I feel honored to get this recognition on a national level, and I believe my coauthors will feel the same way,” said Yuan. “I surely hope that this award will help my book reach a wider audience so that more people will be able to learn about a great people like the Tibetans and their wonderful culture and folklore.”

Yuan has been a member of Western Kentucky University’s Department of Library Public Services for 19 years. He has edited, authored, and contributed to several books and dozens of articles. Visit TopSCHOLAR to learn more about his works and his website about his other creative activities.

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Former Fulbright Scholar Paul Griner awarded 2016 Kentucky Literary Award

The Southern Kentucky Book Fest partnership announced Paul Griner as the winner of this year’s Kentucky Literary Award for his book Hurry Please, I Want to Know, published by Sarabande Books (Louisville, KY). First awarded in 2003 and reintroduced in 2012 after a brief hiatus, the Kentucky Literary Award is a celebration of Kentucky Literature. Eligible books include those written by Kentuckians or books with a substantial Kentucky theme. Fiction and non-fiction books are recognized in alternating years, this year being the year for fiction.

2016 KY Literary Award

Griner’s book is a collection of short stories. Publishers Weekly says “Griner overlays tales of family, artistry, and parent-child relationships with elements of the surreal, in order to create, in the words of one character, ‘an undercurrent of mournfulness.’ The collection’s best stories…offer just enough detail to produce strong emotions while remaining cryptically open-ended.”

Paul Griner, a former Fulbright Scholar and current English professor at the University of Louisville, is the author of the short story collection Follow Me (Random House), a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers pick, and the novels Collectors (Random House) and The German Woman (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). His works have been published in numerous magazines, journals and anthologies, and have been translated into a half-dozen languages. He is the recipient of U of L’s Outstanding Teaching Award as well as the Graduate School’s Outstanding Mentor Award. He has a BA in History from the University of New Hampshire, an MA in Romance Languages and Literatures from Harvard, and an MA in Creative Writing from Syracuse University.

Griner

“Paul Griner has created an inventive array of characters found in amazingly varied circumstances in his short story collection Hurry Please, I Want to Know,” said Jonathan Jeffrey, department head of WKU Library Special Collections and member of the selection committee for the award. “His creativity is so pervasive that no one story even vaguely resembles the other and each one is enhanced by his tight, crisp writing.

The award announcement was made at the Knicely Conference Center at the Southern Kentucky Book Fest Meet the Authors Reception on Friday, April 22–the night before the main Book Fest event. Griner was recognized with a commemorative certificate and a monetary gift.

The Southern Kentucky Book Fest partners include Barnes & Noble Booksellers, Warren County Public Library, and the Western Kentucky University Libraries. The award was made possible with the generous support of Friends of WKU Libraries. For more information about the award, please visit sokybookfest.org.

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Chinese Martial Arts: From Antiquity to the Twenty-First Century

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The final speaker for the WKU Libraries’ 2015-2016 season of “Far Away Places” was Peter Lorge, who is an Assistant Professor of History and Asian Studies at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN specializing in the history of 10th and 11th century China, war history and military thought, guns and gunpowder, Chinese martial arts, and Chinese film. Lorge spoke about his book Chinese Martial Arts: From Antiquity to the Twenty-First Century on the evening of April 22, 2016 at the Barnes & Noble Booksellers in Bowling Green, Ky, a co-sponsor of the event.

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150 authors and illustrators expected at the 2016 SOKY Book Fest

SOKYBF_Flier2016_FinalMore than 150 authors and illustrators are expected to be in attendance for the Southern Kentucky Book Fest weekend of April 22-23, including New York Times bestselling authors J.A. Jance, Garth Stein, and Jay Asher, well-known for his young adult novel Thirteen Reasons Why.

“We are incredibly excited to be able to host this line-up of quality authors and illustrators this year,” said Sara Volpi, Literary Outreach Coordinator for WKU Libraries and Book Fest organizer. “There are authors for audiences of all ages and reading levels, and the event is free and open to the public.”

Held at the Knicely Conference Center, SOKY Book Fest weekend is full of author presentations, panel discussions, and book signings as well as the Kentucky Writers Conference featuring writing workshops on Friday, April 22 presented by several authors who will be at the main event on Saturday. Friday also includes Children’s Day, with hundreds of school-aged children and teens visiting presentations and getting books signed by favorite and newly discovered authors. Our Teen Writers Conference, now in its second year, is geared toward youth in grades 9 through 12, and each session is taught by a SOKY Book Fest author. For more information or to register, go to sokybookfest.org and click on Children’s Day/Teen Writers Conference under the Events tab.

Michael Morris, V.E. Schwab, and Michael Hingson are a few well-known authors who will be on hand at SOKY Book Fest. Bestselling picture book author Adam Rex, whose book The True Meaning of Smekday was adapted into the Dreamworks film Home, will be attending both days along with illustrator Lauren Castillo, whose latest work, Twenty Yawns, was written along with Pulitzer Prize winning author Jane Smiley.

SOKY Book Fest is a partnership of Barnes and Noble Booksellers, Warren County Public Library, and WKU Libraries. For more information, visit the website at sokybookfest.org or contact Book Fest organizer Sara Volpi at WKU Libraries at (270) 745-4502.

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Diane King’s “Kurdistan on the Global Stage: Kinship, Land and Community in Iraq”

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WKU Libraries’ Far Away Places series featured Dr. Diane King, Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Kentucky. Dr. King spoke on her recent book Kurdistan on the Global State: Kinship, Land and Community in Iraq, published in 2014 by Rutgers University Press. The book explores how people in Kurdistan connect socially through patron-client relationships, patrilineage and citizenship. King offers a sensitive interpretation of the challenges occurring between tradition and modernity in a land where honor killings and female genital mutilation coexist with mobile phones and increasing education of women.

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Join us this weekend for the Meijer Used Book Sale

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212° Academy students win Young Authors contest

212° Academy students Emma Jayne McGuffey and Shelby Cockrill have been selected as the winners of the SOKY Book Fest – 212° Academy Young Authors Contest. DSC_0485McGuffey, daughter of Karen and Steven McGuffey, wrote A Family of Spies: Sunrise – A New Dawn, and Cockrill, daughter of Wendy and Rhett Cockrill, wrote Game Warning. McGuffey is a 6th grader from Richardsville Elementary School, and Cockrill is a 6th grader from Oakland Elementary School.DSC_0466

SOKY Book Fest Coordinator Sara Volpi said there was a wonderful variety of books this year. “We were once again so impressed with the imagination and effort put into each book the 212° Academy students wrote,” said Volpi.

According to Jennifer Sheffield, teacher for the 212° Academy, the goal of this project was to experience the process of crafting a book for publication from start to finish.

“Students were given the assignment to write a book with an elementary school-aged reader in mind,” said Sheffield. “Each book was published through lulu.com, an online book self-publishing website, printed in full-color and assigned an official library ISBN number.”

The contest is a combined effort between the Southern Kentucky Book Fest partners (Barnes & Noble Booksellers, Warren County Public Library, and WKU Libraries) and the teachers at the Academy. The two students will receive certificates of recognition and are invited to sign copies of their books at the Southern Kentucky Book Fest on April 22-23.

For more information, visit www.sokybookfest.org or contact Sara Volpi at (270) 745-4502.

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Iceland: Extreme Learning in the Land of Fire and Ice

Iceland (3)

WKU Libraries kicked off the spring season of “Far Away Places” with Dr. Jason Polk and Dr. Leslie North, Asstant Professors from the Department of Geography and Geology at WKU, who talked about leading a study abroad group to Iceland in the summer of 2015. The speaker series event took place at Barnes & Noble Booksellers, Bowling Green, KY on the evening of February 18, 2016.

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SOKY Book Fest partners select finalists for 2016 Kentucky Literary Award

The Southern Kentucky Book Fest partnership announces the three finalists for the 2016 Kentucky Literary Award. This year’s award will go to a work of fiction by a Kentucky author or with a significant Kentucky theme that was published in 2014 or 2015. The three finalists include:

The Marble Orchard, Alex Taylor

Taylor

Cementville, Paulette Livers

Livers

Hurry Please, I Want to Know, Paul Griner

Griner

The winner will be announced at the Southern Kentucky Book Fest’s Meet the Authors Reception to be held Friday, April 22– the night before the main Book Fest event. The Kentucky Literary Award is presented annually by the Southern Kentucky Book Fest partnership. The 2016 award is sponsored by the Friends of WKU Libraries. For more information about the award, contact Sara Volpi, Book Fest and Literary Outreach Coordinator, at sara.volpi@wku.edu or 270-745-4502.

The Southern Kentucky Book Fest is a partnership of Barnes & Noble Booksellers, Warren County Public Library, and Western Kentucky University Libraries. For more information, visit sokybookfest.org.

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Gift Donation to WKU Libraries from Sister City Kawanishi, Japan

Since 1995 the City of Bowling Green has participated in the Sister City Program with the City of Kawanishi, Japan, a city of 156,000 located in Hyogo Prefecture near Kobe, Japan. As part of this program WKU Libraries annually exchanges library materials with the public library in the City of Kawanishi. WKU Libraries sends materials related to Kentucky to Japan. This year’s gift from Japan range from novels to the history of Japanese paper, from children’s books to works with amazing photography and art.

Keiko Fujii, Project Manager of Cultural & International Exchanges, and Brian Coutts, DLPS Dept. Head coordinate these exchanges annually.

Among the books received include:

Maruyama-Okyo Maruyama-Okyopic

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tokubetsuten Maruyama-Okyo by the Osaka Museum featuring the artwork of 18th century Japanese artist Maruyama Ōkyo.

arikawa railway

Hankyū Densha (Hankyu Railway) by Hiro Arikawa

arikawa library wars

Toshokan Sensō (Library Wars) by Hiro Arikawa

Toshokan Sensō (Library Wars) and Hankyū Densha (Hankyu Railway) by young adult novelist Hiro Arikawa.

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Washi bunkashi by Yasuo Kume about the history of Japanese style of paper known as “washi”.

Baba

11 Cats and a Pig by Noboru Baba

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Picture of the Tōdai-ji

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The gift also included children’s picture books such as 11 Cats and a Pig by Noboru Baba and Tōdai-ji Temple by Takeshi Kobayashi, featuring photography of Tōdai-ji. The 8th century Buddhist temple in Nara, Japan is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site and it also features the world’s largest bronze statue of the Buddha.

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