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Welcome to Open Book / Open Mind, the Library’s long-running, popular author conversation series! Over the past decade we’ve hosted literary luminaries like Colson Whitehead, Matthew Desmond, Michelle Zauner, Isabel Wilkerson, Richard Rothstein, Nicholas Kristof, Maggie Haberman, Jhumpa Lahiri, Charles Blow, Christina Baker Kline, Sandra Cisneros, Alice Hoffman, Isabel Allende, Mary Roach, Elizabeth Kolbert, Michael Schmidt, Jonathan Alter, Rachel Swarns and so many more. We’re proud that attending our events has become a Montclair tradition.
Use the blue navigation buttons above to learn more about the origins of Open Book / Open Mind and to view yearly lists of programs with YouTube links. Scroll down to find out more about the generous sponsors and our advisory committee of outstanding volunteers who make this series possible, year after year.
For more information, contact MPL librarian Ariel Zeitlin.
May 11, 7 p.m. Christina Baker Kline, “The Foursome.” In conversation with Alice Elliott Dark (“Fellowship Point”).
A #1 New York Times bestselling author talks with Dark, her friend and colleague, novelist and Rutgers writing professor about Kline’s latest historical novel, a boldly original reimagining of an astonishing true story: two sisters in 19-century North Carolina—Kline’s own distant relatives—who married world-famous conjoined twins from Siam.
An early book event in collaboration with The Montclair Literary Festival
Tickets cost $35 and include a copy of the book.
June 4, 7 p.m. Ann Patchett, “Whistler.” In conversation with Jeanine Cummins (“Speak to Me of Home,” “American Dirt”).
SOLD OUT. A #1 New York Times bestselling author talks to her friend and fellow novelist about her favorite literary topic: the lodestar of “found family.” When a woman runs into her former stepfather in an art gallery, they set off surprising sparks of light throughout their lives.
The event will take place at the First Congregational Church. Tickets cost $35 and include a pre-signed copy of the book.
NEW VENUE: Tuesday, September 15, 6:30 p.m. Tayari Jones, “Kin.” In conversation with Cleyvis Natera (“The Grand Paloma Resort”). An instant New York Times bestseller and a selection for both Oprah’s Book Club and The New York Times Book Review Book Club. The author of “An American Marriage” written a new historical novel set in the civil rights era about the intertwined lives of two very different motherless friends . “A lush, beautiful novel about the family we make…When reading “Kin,” I wanted nothing more than to keep reading it. That’s the circle Jones creates, the one that connects her voice, her characters and her readers.” —The New York Times
A ticketed event at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation at Montclair. Tickets cost $35 and include a signed copy of the book.
Co-presented by the Montclair Alumnae Chapter of the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority.
Tuesday, October 13, 7 p.m. Heather McGhee, “The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together.” In conversation with Michelle Alexander (“The New Jim Crow”). At the First Congregational Church of Montclair. An influential economic and public policy expert discusses her landmark social justice bestseller with a renowned civil rights lawyer and author. “[‘The Sum of Us’ is] stunning, sobering…hopeful….Society is a cooperative project, not a zero-sum game. Abandoning the zero-sum thinking at the heart of U.S. history — which pits racial groups against one another, as if one can win only if others lose — will unlock the benefits of social cooperation. The result can be a ‘solidarity dividend’ that easily outweighs the meager rations of racist division and purely psychic wages.”—The Washington Post
Join our community read of “The Sum of Us” from June through September and receive free copies of the book while supplies last. Find out more about our supporting public programs too!
Co-sponsored by Partners for Health Foundation.
Co-presented by The Montclair Local, The College for Community Health at MSU, and Dumpling Diplomacy.
Tuesday, November 17, 7 p.m. Patrick Radden Keefe, “London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family’s Search for Truth.” In conversation with D.T. Max, staff writer at The New Yorker. At the First Congregational Church of Montclair. An instant New York Times bestseller. “London Falling’ [is] a gripping real-life thriller that takes you on a deeply researched tour of the city’s criminal underground…Keefe is not only a dazzling historian and storyteller, but the kind of genial and just-expressive-enough narrator you feel you know personally by the end.” —The New York Times
A ticketed event. Tickets cost $40 and include a copy of the book.
May 2, 11:15 a.m. Daniel Okrent, “Stephen Sondheim: Art Isn’t Easy.” In conversation with Alexandra Jacobs of The New York Times Book Review.
A distinguished journalist and author talks with a leading book critic about the complex inner world of one of the 20th century’s most beloved theatrical composers. Part of Yale University Press’s Jewish Lives series.
” I have had the same conversation with three musical theater fan friends, where we started out wondering what else we needed to know about Sondheim but found Okrent’s book a marvelous feast full of new insights. And if you’re a newbie, Okrent’s book is a great place to begin. As Noël Coward put it in his delightful ‘I Went to a Marvelous Party,’ I couldn’t have liked it more.”―John McWhorter, The New York Times
In collaboration with The Montclair Literary Festival
NO VIDEO AVAILABLE
Thursday, April 23, 6:30 p.m. Michael Luo, “Strangers in the Land: Exclusion, Belonging, and the Epic Story of the Chinese in America.” In conversation with Matthew Purdy, editor at large of The New York Times.
A landmark study by the executive editor of The New Yorker. “You can’t paint a complete picture of America without [the story of Chinese Americans], and the New Yorker journalist Michael Luo tells it persuasively in ‘Strangers in the Land‘… [The book] succeeds through its little biographies of individuals – a range of quirky and fascinating figures, both Chinese and white, who drive the narrative. . . [and offer] a view on the full complexity of American immigration.” —The New York Times Book Review
Co-presented by AAPI Montclair.
Tuesday, April 7, 6:30 p.m. Nicholas Lemann, “Returning: A Search for Home Across Three Centuries.” In conversation with Dale Russakoff (“The Prize).
The New Yorker writer and dean emeritus of Columbia Journalism School talks with his friend, a former longtime Washington Post reporter, about his exploration of his Southern Jewish forebears and his own reckoning with assimilation, identity and religious observance. “What does it mean to belong? ‘Returning’ offers a profound mediation on family, Jewish identity, and the meaning of home in a world constantly shaken by economic, social, and cultural change.”―Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Co-presented by Bnai Keshet, Congregation Shomrei Emunah, Temple Ner Tamid, and Temple Sholom of West Essex
Sunday, March 8, 4 p.m. Nicholas Boggs, “Baldwin: A Love Story.” In conversation with Rachel Swarns (“The 272”) associate professor at NYU journalism school.
An instant New York Times bestseller. “Lively and vigorously researched . . . Boggs has dug much deeper than his predecessors . . . “Baldwin: A Love Story” is superlative, and it should become the new gold standard for Baldwin studies.” ―Los Angeles Times
Co-presented by Out Montclair
Saturday, February 21, 4 p.m. A’Lelia Bundles, “Joy Goddess: A’Lelia Walker and the Harlem Renaissance.” In conversation with Khalil Gibran Muhammad, founder of Princeton’s Institutional Antiracism and Accountability Project. “In this scintillating account, biographer Bundles (“On Her Own Ground”) revisits the pioneering glamour and cultural patronage of her own great-grandmother, the hair-care heiress and Harlem Renaissance socialite A’Lelia Walker…a luminary described by Langston Hughes as the ‘joy goddess of Harlem.'”—Publishers Weekly
ONLINE. Wednesday, February 4, 7 p.m. Amy Wallace, “Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice” by Virginia Roberts Giuffre. In virtual conversation with Gabrielle Glaser (“American Baby”), New York Times bestselling author and documentary film producer. Wallace was the ghostwriter for this instant #1 New York Times bestseller by the late Giuffre, Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s most outspoken victim. “Make no mistake: this is a book about power, corruption, industrial-scale sex abuse and the way in which institutions sided with the perpetrator over his victims. . . . But it is also a book about how a young woman becomes a hero. . . . Important [and] courageous.” —The Guardian
Thursday, January 15, 6:30 p.m. Tim Weiner, “The Mission: The CIA in the 21st Century.” In conversation with Jonathan Alter, (“American Reckoning”) bestselling author, historian and columnist. A New York Times bestseller. The epic successor to ‘Legacy of Ashes,’ Weiner’s National Book Award–winning classic about the CIA’s first sixty years. “No one has opened up the CIA to us like Weiner has, and ‘The Mission’ deserves to win Weiner a second Pulitzer.” —The Guardian
We are grateful to all of the wonderful authors, conversation partners, library staffers, and, of course, attendees who make Open Book / Open Mind Online such a success.
Special thanks to the Open Book / Open Mind Advisory Committee: Co-chairs Alice Elliott Dark and Kate Tuttle; Jonathan Alter, Reagan Arthur, Neal Carruth, Catherine Chung, Jennifer Dorr, Elisabeth Egan, David Folkenflik, Dionne Ford, Jon Fortt, Gabrielle Glaser, David Jones, DT Max, Cleyvis Natera, Dale Russakoff, Juan Milà, Margot Sage-EL, Rachel Swarns, Susan Weinberg, and Kate Zernike.
Open Book / Open Mind is presented by the Montclair Public Library through the unstinting financial support of The Montclair Public Library Foundation, Watchung Booksellers, First Congregational Church of Montclair, The George Montclair, and Amanti Vino. Many thanks to our generous donors, Anonymous and Dr. Alex and Doris Malaspina, and our individual Underwriters: Connie Alexis-Laona, Sheila Boyd, Alice Elliott Dark and Lawrence Dark, Dagmara Domińczyk and Patrick Wilson, Deb Ellis and Hal Strelnick, Stephen Engelberg and Gabrielle Glaser, Kelley Holland and Steve Kanengiser, Rosemary Iversen, David and Mary Lee Jones, Joyce Michaelson, Jonathan and Sidney Simon.
