Enoch Pratt Free Library

Happy Birthday to Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803) and Dashiell Hammett (May 27, 1897)!

In works such as Nature, Essays, Essays: Second Series, The American Scholar, The Divinity School Address, and Poems, Emerson established a distinctly American philosophy that blended an optimistic faith in the potential of humanity with a belief in individuality and a touch of mysticism into a philosophy that became known as the Transcendental Movement. A former minister who turned writer, Emerson stressed a religion that backed away from the importance of the miracles of Jesus and rather focused on the miraculous in each human. Emerson's thought contained the Eastern concept of the universality of all life; for him nature was the source of revelation and inspiration. His work, all of which grew out of such ideas, inspired an entire generation of writers and poets, from Henry David Thoreau to Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson.

Excerpted from "Ralph Waldo Emerson." Authors and Artists for Young Adults. Vol. 60. Thomson Gale, 2005. 
Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Gale, 2010.

"I'm one of the few--if there are any more--people moderately literate who take the detective story seriously," Dashiell Hammett wrote to his publisher in 1928 at the beginning of his novel-writing career. "I don't mean that I necessarily take my own or anybody else's seriously--but the detective story as a form. Some day somebody's going to make 'literature' out of it . . . and I'm selfish enough to have my hopes." In fact, Hammett did just that; he made real literature out of crime fiction by removing it from the drawing room where British and other mystery writers had cosseted it since the time of Edgar Allan Poe and giving it a realistic edge with hard-hitting action and slangy dialogue. His novels, Red Harvest, The Dain Curse, The Glass Key, The Maltese Falcon, and The Thin Man, were bestsellers when published in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and have remained in print ever since.

Excerpted from "Dashiell Hammett." Authors and Artists for Young Adults. Vol. 59. Thomson Gale, 2005. 
Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Gale, 2010.

We had a bevy of beautiful flowers in the library this week when the St. George's Garden Club held a Flower Show here at the library.  Everyone ohhh'ed and ahh'ed at all the lovely arrangements.

For those who missed it, I took a few to show you what you missed.

Enjoy!

Baltimore in Hollywood (It's Hairspray!)

Cafes in Roland Park

Harry Potter's Quidditch Cup!

Roland Park's own Schneider's Hardware and Paint

Writers for Writers = Great Success!

To a standing room only crowd of 25, poet Brooke Bognanni and author Evan Balkan (both teach writing in the CCBC system) presented a wonderful discussion of the pitfalls and quirks of getting published.  Each presented personal examples of do’s and don’t’s as well as recommending some standard sources, such as The Writer’s Market. 

And in a supreme act of beneficence, Evan was kind enough to share his personal stash of rejection letters!

Audience comments included:

It was a great workshop!  I certainly learned a lot from it.

Excellent!

I really enjoyed the workshop—very entertaining and informative.

More programs for writers, please.  (We’ll do our best!)

Evan Balkan & Brooke Bognanni responding to an audience member's question.

Mario Bognanni, Paula Bognanni, Jennifer Orr, Evan Balkan and Brooke Bognanni