PRESS RELEASE: September and October 2024 Lunch With Books Programs at the Ohio County Public Library
Sept. 3 at Noon: Frances Perkins: History Alive
As the first female Cabinet member and U.S. Secretary of Labor, Frances Perkins had a far-reaching, lasting impact on American workers’ lives, and helped pave the way for women to enter the male-dominated world of national politics. Perkins started out as a young social reformer in New York City, but embarked on a more ambitious quest for change after witnessing the horrific Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in 1911, which killed nearly 150 workers. As a member of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Cabinet in the 1930s and 1940s, Perkins relentlessly fought for and facilitated many of the New Deal programs which helped the nation weather the Great Depression. Known as the “Mother of Social Security,” Perkins’ legacy lives on through child labor laws, unemployment insurance, minimum wage, the 40-hour work week, worker’s compensation, and workplace safety laws. Brought to you by the WV Humanities Council’s History Alive program for Reuther-Pollack Labor Heritage Week. Frances Perkins is portrayed by JoAnn Peterson of Fort Ashby, WV.
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Sept. 10 at Noon: Benwood Memories
Larry Freeland, along with Nick Sparchane and Joey Tellitocci, will take us on a trip down memory lane in that beloved old mill town of Benwood, WV, Wheeling’s Ohio River Valley neighbor. Bring your memories, photos, and artifacts, and be prepared to share.
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Sept. 17 at Noon: Commemorating Simon & Garfunkel’s Concert in Central Park
On September 19, 1981, folk rock duo Simon & Garfunkel held a free benefit concert on the Great Lawn in Central Park, New York City, performing in front of 500,000 people. Proceeds went toward the restoration of the park, which had deteriorated due to lack of municipal funding. The concert marked the start of a three-year reunion of Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel. The concert was filmed by HBO and an album of the live performance was released in February 1982. The set list included classics like “The Sound of Silence”, “Mrs. Robinson”, “The Boxer” and Simon’s “Late in the Evening.” Now, 43 years later, join our friend The Troubadour, Bob Gaudio, as he returns to LWB perform many of these songs in commemoration of the Concert in Central Park. Original Concert.
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Sept. 24 at Noon: Writer Annette Dashofy
USA Today best-selling author Annette Dashofy has spent her entire life in rural Pennsylvania surrounded by cattle and horses. When she wasn’t roaming the family’s farm or playing in the barn, she could be found reading or writing. After high school, she spent five years as an EMT on the local ambulance service, dealing with everything from drunks passing out on the sidewalk to mangled bodies in car accidents. These days, she, her husband, and their spoiled cat, Kensi, live on property that was once part of her grandfather’s dairy. Annette’s standalone, Death by Equine, a traditional mystery set in the world of Thoroughbred racing, was the 2021 Dr. Tony Ryan Book Award winner. Her Zoe Chambers mysteries include six past Agatha Award finalists, plus the 12th in the series, HELPLESS, has been nominated for the Agatha for Best Contemporary Novel of 2023! Where The Guilty Hide was released in January 2023 and is the first of her new Detective Honeywell mysteries. The second in the series, Keep Your Family Close, was released December 8, 2023, in digital format and in early January in paperback in the UK from One More Chapter/HarperCollins. It will coming to the US in paperback soon. Her short fiction, including a 2007 Derringer finalist, has appeared in Mysterical-e, Spinetingler, Fish Tales: the Guppy Anthology, and Lucky Charms: 12 Crime Tales. She has also released Crime in the Country: A Zoe Chambers Anthology which includes six short stories featuring the characters from the series.
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Oct. 1 at Noon: Matthew Ferrence: I Hate It Here, Please Vote For Me
When a progressive college professor runs for the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in a deeply conservative rural district, he loses. That’s no surprise. But the story of how Ferrence loses and, more importantly, how American political narratives refuse to recognize the existence and value of nonconservative rural Americans offers insight into the political morass of our nation.
In essays focused on showing goats at the county fair, planting native grasses in the front lawn, the political power of poetry, and getting wiped out in an election, Ferrence offers a counter-narrative to stereotypes of monolithic rural American voters and emphasizes the way stories told about rural America are a source for the bitter divide between Red America and Blue America.
Matthew Ferrence lives and writes at the confluence of Appalachia and the Rust Belt. With I Hate It Here, Please Vote For Me, he has completed a trilogy (of sorts) focused on rural Appalachian identity and political narrative. He teaches creative writing at Allegheny College.
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Oct. 8 at Noon: Pulling the Thread: Untangling Wheeling History
Pulling the Thread: Untangling Wheeling History is a new collection of thirty-three essays by Dr. Christina Fisanick, an English professor with a passion for historical storytelling. From her childhood beginnings in Moundsville, West Virginia, to her return to Wheeling after earning a PhD, Fisanick’s journey through local, state, and national archives unfolds a tapestry of Wheeling’s rich past. Each essay is a thread pulled, leading to unexpected connections and revelations. From Indigenous peoples to contemporary Juneteenth celebrations, Fisanick weaves a narrative that transcends time, bringing to light forgotten stories and hidden ties. Through meticulous research, she uncovers Mark Twain’s unexpected links to Wheeling, the birth of the town of Power spurred by a Parisian exhibition, and even the connection between Oglebay Park and the tragic wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Fisanick’s prose is as engaging as it is informative, blending the rigor of historical research with the flair of a novelist. Readers will learn about Wheeling’s Jewish heritage, the city’s role in the film industry, and stories such as the Black Panther demonstration at Wheeling High School.
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Oct. 15 at Noon: The Meteor of War – The Upper Ohio Valley Responds to John Brown’s Raid
John Brown’s 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry is considered a cataclysmic event that catapulted the United States towards civil war. Though situated more than 200 miles from Harpers Ferry, Brown’s raid reverberated deeply across the Upper Ohio Valley, where Brown and several of his raiders were personally known, and their cause championed or condemned. Jon-Erik Gilot, author of John Brown’s Raid: Harpers Ferry and the Coming of the Civil War, October 16-18, 1859 (Emerging Civil War Series), will examine local connections to the raid, as well as reactions and fallout on both sides of the Ohio River, from the Wheeling militia companies who were present at Brown’s execution to the arms race along Virginia’s western border.
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Oct. 22 at Noon: Wheeling Poetry Series Presents: Raechel Peckham & Sara Henning
Rachael Peckham is the author of Alight: Flights of Prose (UnCollected Press) and Muck Fire: Prose Poems (Spring Garden Press). Her essays and prose poems appeared most recently in Blood Tree Literature, Cloudbank, Club Plum, and Still: The Journal. Rachael is a professor of English at Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia, where she lives and teaches alongside her husband, poet and essayist Joel Peckham.
Sara Henning is the author of the poetry collections Burn (Southern Illinois University Press, 2024), a 2022 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Editor’s Selection; Terra Incognita (Ohio University Press, 2022), winner of the 2021 Hollis Summers Poetry Prize; and View from True North (Southern Illinois University Press, 2018), winner of the 2017 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition Award and the 2019 High Plains Book Award. She was awarded the 2015 Crazyhorse Lynda Hull Memorial Poetry Prize and the 2019 Poetry Society of America’s George Bogin Memorial Award. She’s a recipient of scholarships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and Appalachian Writers’ Workshop. She is an assistant professor of creative writing at Marshall University, where she coordinates the A.E. Stringer Visiting Writers Series.
The Wheeling Poetry Series is curated and hosted by WV Poet Laureate Marc Harshman.
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Oct. 29 at Noon: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner- a Shadow Play
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a 1798 poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In it, the Mariner delays a young man on his way to a wedding in order to share a bizarre story of a long sea voyage. The Wedding Guest is mesmerized, then terrified by what he hears. But what is the meaning of Coleridge’s potent and perplexing poem, with its archaic language, judgmental Christianity, hellish scenery, and deranged but irresistible narrative drive? In this re-telling, the Mariner’s Rime will be interpreted through shadow play–an Asian style of storytelling, wherein flat images are manipulated by puppeteers between a bright light and a translucent screen, on the other side of which sits the audience. The poem has been adapted for shadow play by Jamie Hamilton.
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Oct. 31: (Thurs. at Noon) Ghastly GHOST STORIES!
For Halloween, join the OCPL Players as we share some of Wheeling’s most infamously spine-tingling, bloodcurdling classic Ghost Stories, as well as a few we totally made up ourselves! Join storytellers Laura Jackson, Christina Fisanick, Ellery McGregor, and Sean Duffy. Festivities will commence with the world premiere of “America’s Most Haunted Library!” a found-footage, ghost-hunting nightmare.
