First, Roger Rosenblatt whose work has been published in different languages and the author of five notable times books of the year which was originally an essay in the new yorker. The collection on writing came out in april. The he performed and played piano and it will go to the center for the arts in new york. He also wrote the screenplay for which will store doctor channing and is currently in production. He is a distinguished professor of englisprofessorof english any brook and formerly held among his many honors and the president s medal for the institution for his body of work. We are incredibly pleased to have him with us. Asked of the community would change outreach and engagement at the Library System she works with the four member libraries and communities to help people live there best wife. Along with her colleague from these other Library Systems have been coordinating leaving our fingerprint documenting to collect firsthand accounts to create a peoples history of covid19. We are working in tandem with communities to document this historical pandemic. Everyone is welcome to participate in this collaborative effort to capture the impact of the virus in the region. Finally, certainly not least is alec is the founder and president of the saratoga book festival. Ellen is a former International Book editor in publishing executive at National Geographic books. She managed Editorial Development and multilingual publishing projects. While serving as a volunteer reading coach she became interested in promoting literacy and encouraged the love of reading and is the driving force behind the saratoga book festival and with that i will turn it over to you. Thank you very much. I am very thrilled as all of us are to launch the First Virtual event. We are sad of course but they are not launching our actual first in person book festival this year, but we are working on plans for 2021, and during this pause but they are all going through a, we wanted to find ways to stay connected and also to make sure we ar weve are heg authors get their message out to all of you. We are thrilled to partner with Saratoga SpringsPublic Library and north shire bookstore, whos been so important in launching the book festival and we are thrilled to present to you roger and eric a. For any of you would like to volunteer and suggest ideas for churchill to be for future Virtual Event is, please visit us at saratoga book festival. Org and of course we are on facebook as well. So, enjoy the authors in this defaults to you. I hope you find the content useful as well. The most recent book to is a collection about your love or obsession i would say about the writing some of these are new and some were previously published and its getting rave reviews. Theyve called it a warmhearted testimony of humility and Jericho Brown who recently won a pulitzer for poetry that will inspire anyone to make the next [inaudible] would you care to share that with us . I would share my gratitude for this generous comments. This is the way the book begins to get the sense i think most writers can identify with. This is from coyote morning memoir from a few years ago. The characters are in control of itself. A two legged dog travels so low and plays bluegrass on banjo, gatekeeper has become a beekeeper to try to open and close the gate. There are so many by now. This is what happens when you do not Pay Attention a character that stuck his nose in and a vampire that needs a transfusion, that is a bad idea, dont you think . [inaudible] people would come to my shop to get what they want and i would give them what they want and we they would both take satisfaction in the transaction. The trouble wit with writing ist you give people what they dont want and by the time they realized theyd been, they forgot. Meanwhile you never noticed them in the first place. You were intent on your word. I read a book the other day cover to cover and there was only one point to writing it allows you impossible things. [inaudible] every so often theres a moment in the dead of morning something invades your room like a bird has flown through the window and floor filled with joy and then you think i can do anything. Thank you for that. I believe the topic of tonights conversation you talk about the bubonic plague and the dispute whether that should be considered fiction or not. Most would agree that its a novel rather than history or recorded and that is where we librarians classify it and that begs the basic question of what exactly is a journal. Are you asking me click yes, sorry. It is a wonderful question because if it were fiction it might not be a journal. They were real and notes of actuality but im not sure that it makes much difference when you are reading. There are some events that are so preposterous and unbelievable and this is one of them. No doubt people would think that you are making that up, but of course you are not. It does feel like something we have read a lot about. Correct me if im wrong but it provides props to the students and in many ways a do you want to tell us a bit about the project . Absolutely and if it is okay with you im going to take over the screen and share some pictures i love stories but i also love pictures. So, let me go back. There we go. Ive always lived on stories and that shouldnt be surprising from someone that is a librarian and journalist. Words have always been my comfort zone and the resignation of being so profoundly, the collection that we tell and hear and absorb and thats what gives us life and make our world. And its what to become a librarian and journalist and really enjoy the written word. But when it comes to the pandemic it was off my radar until about february when i was traveling home from nashville. And while i was in airports and airlines began making a lot of coaching just and they were asking people that used the tickets to hold it above and they were trying to get people to take paper tickets instead and i thought that struck me as something serious and a couple of months ago it was such a simpler time in our world. By the time i was working from home in march, the pandemic have pretty much taken over my life. I was scrolling through twitter as i shouldnt do because i was procrastinating writing this story tha that there was a postt recommended keeping a journal to document what they were experiencing during this pandemic. Even though i was the laziest diary keeper stuck with me at the same time i was working on a story about how covid19 was affecting libraries across the country and i can only equate trying to do that to rustling in the water. Each time i wanted to paste kiss together a narrative it would slip away. There was just no way to get my arms around it. So as the pandemic continued and moved from deep concern to other catastrophe, the interview is it wrestling with people took on a very earnest quality. It became much more personal and even though we would start with inquiring about Peoples Health and Employment Status and anxiety levels and all of a sudden it was more about the initial twitter post i saw. So in the Library System, we were holding weekly meetings with the directors of the library is to keep in touch with everyone and figure out whats going on and its my job to kind of think about how we can work with our communities and i was struggling to really do that when our buildings were closed and people were socially distanced and away from everybody. Then at the beginning of april i thought about the power of stories and how transformative that can be and the importance of story in dark times when we are looking for a light or the e way forward, and i started thinking about what it would be like if we could help people to tell the story of what it was like to be in the pandemic. When i mentioned this idea at one of the weekly meeting, i thought about my epiphany or what i thought was an epiphany wasnt unique. Everybody else was thinking the same thing which was great, including the association of public historians of new york state. And who i went to their website and one of the directors said do you know about their initiative and they were talking about the journals that were kept during the spanish flu and how that informs the work of scientists and epidemiologists and historians and it kind of gave us the lens to think about what they were doing and thats when a member of our Amazing Library directors including our fabulous host a had all been thinking about doing similar projects. It is just its just a matter ot together but there was a lot of talent to tap into and as we kind of formed this band that included the local history librarian at the Saratoga Springs, michelle from skyler ago and my wonderful colleague who was meeting to talk about how to capture very personal and unfiltered history of our friends and neighbors in real time and in their own words or images because as we were talking, michelle, who has a teenage daughter, said that her daughter and her friends didnt communicate as much through writing as the data through either a memes were tiktok videos. So there was a Simple Survey about 20 questions and this was our big reveal tonight and i will put the link in the chatterbox if everybody goes in. Fullstop the information. You dont have to do all the questions. You can pick and choose what to respond to with wha but what wee trying to do is create a robust resource for communities to kind of have a chance to sit back and reflect on the collective experience while also preserving peoples histories for the generation. All of the responses are anonymous. We ask for a first name and last initial and for people to identify where they live. Thats mostly so we can share the information with local historians as well. So, im going to stop sharing my screen and get out of this, maybe or maybe not. But i will put a link to the project into the chatterbox. Thank you. Youre welcome. Thank you. So, roger, your bestknown books are memoirs and i wondered if you have any thoughts on the distinction between journals and memoirs. I havent thought of it that way but ive written my last eight books as if they were journals, but a that is they wee written in segments. I play piano and i like the idea of the movements in the buck to mount into one song eventually, one tune. So, there really is no distinction between writing a memoir and fiction. The book that is coming out is a hymnal to life and responsibility and it just plays the tune. A wonderful songwriter, lyricist wrote what are they getting the rest of our lives and the standards we already know. They said one key here is the words in the music and that is where the lyrics come from. I know that when i write, thats what comes out. That is a longwinded answer to your question. I guess that is one reason that it feels to me it is an act of faith and so i count it as close to fiction and still believe you are telling the truth. Thank you for that. I dont believe either one of you are therapists but it does seem you talk about your description of this project people often journal therapeutically in addition to a reading documentary. And roger, i loved your writing feels therapeutic. I pity the patient. [laughter] it feels very revelatory. I suppose that is what memoirs do, but if either of you have any thoughts about journaling at a time like this as therapy or recordkeeping. Or an act of generosity. That means you want what you do to do some good. It can have the potential of doing a lot of good even if you just write the facts. There are scenes where they are in a frenzy not caring if they live or die and then you can chart the path to the breathtaking heroes of people working in hospital. I busted my shoulder recently and so i was in the hospital ad felt a little foolish. Im looking around at all these people imperiled and these amazing nurses and doctors. One byproduct of the time is nurses have come into their own and realize they are a gift to society. You have these people on the one hand speed to and what i saw and a beach in alabama or new jersey or wherever, people say in a sense [inaudible] its interesting that you mentioned that the therapeutic quality because they just posted, we just went live today and havent done a promotion that weve already had 11 people respond and start filling out the form, so people from the youngest is 16 and the oldest and 7of77 but at least three ofe responses have said directly remarked how therapeutic it was coming and i think what it is is we are living in, although we are supposed to be socially distant and hunkered down at home we are in this chaotic universe and to stop and be still and quiet and reflect on whats going on in our lives i think its really powerful and for people to start to think, just to give the time and space to think about the grief and the anxiety and Everything Else going on but also the tremendous beauty Mike Boettcher is talking about, Different Things emerge from this. There are horrible things but also extraordinary moments of kindness and beauty that come out of these unimaginable situations. That is what i think is interesting. We are all stunned and at least we get a glimpse of the other side of life. It has been a joy for me to see like every day people. You mentioned nurses. Every day grocery clerks elevated to the status of hero really putting their lives on the line for us, for society. Along that line, how adaptable we are. A few months ago we were strolling around the street wondering about a boyfriend or girlfriend or whatever it is. A couple weeks pass and we just turn on a dime to be able to survive ourselves and how our neighbors survive. I hope we do it obviously, but in my life this is the most impressive part. That was a commonality we seen so far in the responses is people talking about this kind of endless generosity of friends and neighbors where people maybe didnt know each other very well before now we are checking in to see if anybody needs anything. Especially if they were concerned about people going out for whatever help for h. Reason and really a sense of community that is coming out of this extraordinary situation. As you are keeping a journal, watch the thing is that shes talking about and write it as carefully as you can about what you see. It will tell future generations about what was going on here. Argue keeping a journal . I had plans to. [laughter] but you know, im a journalist so unless i have a hard deadline on im going to procrastinate. [laughter] i did try to explain it is my journal like i only made two entries, but it was interesting to see the progression and how moving from the stage of how the resource everything we need to have in the house to moving forward like im going to spend some time in the garden and put my hand in the dirt and feel okay about things. But one of the things i was thinking about that was extraordinary because we have moved to this Virtual World we were talking about earlier is a kind of authenticity and vulnerability we have seen because we are seeing people in their home and kids come up and we were at a work meeting and theres all this other stuff so the idea of being professional or whatever that is drift away and you see the full humanity in a different way and then i think that is just a real gift. Ive gotten a kick out of watching hosts on television who always show up madeup but they are not now. I think they look a thousand times better. We were talking yesterday about we are in a profession that attracts introverts and so i think theres something to what you are saying. Working this way, the way i normally work im in my office at the labor, but my house is very much like this. But working from home [inaudible] it does force you to open up in a way that is more vulnerable in multiple ways not just letting people in but letting people in here as well. Very good. I wonder if there are questions over here in the qanda. Roger, jenin says she used to work with you and wants to say hello. Janine and i remember a world in which we didnt have much choice in terms of getting our work done. You could procrastinate for so long that it came out once a week. Jenny may remember how msi bus. Now i pay more attention [inaudible] it was something of a likabili likability. I would walk him in the morning since i was the essayist and lance was another wonderful essayist. We had a great group of guys and women. The editor would say to me what do we think of that. I have no idea what he was referring to but the chances of it being good for minimal. I would always say its terrible and then i would find out what he was talking about. But at the end of the day you have to show up with something. Someone here is sharing, where did it go. Julie is sharing a great memory at the Library Association in boston handing out copies of your book. Do you recall which book that was . [inaudible] having a great time handing out my own. [laughter] i think many of us wish we could do that. Theres a question we traditionally ask at the beginning of the book group at the library before discussing the book that we are about to discuss we go around the room and introduce ourselves and talk about. People want to know what books folks are reading during the pandemic are you reading anything noteworthy . Im ashamed. I havent read for pleasure in a very long time. I reviewed a book for the book review just now and it was very good. Most of the time i read and see something that gives me an idea. The worst person to ask about this experience i will meander a bit in the last god knows how many years its been a disgrace. Im not far from that. I havent been a super reader during this time but i hav thate been reading my stuff and working my way through the nylon that those whole systems thinking which turns out to be perfect for this time because its about what happens when you dont consider an entire ecosystem and only consider parts of it. It ended up being perfect but for right now. For the book group im reading since nobody has access to the physical library we are choosing selections from the always Available Online collection for things freely Available Online so we had a very interesting discussion which was a nice diversion. That would be a great book for you to write a. What doe does a girl that loves social life do now. [laughter] have you seen these books, pride and prejudice and zombies . [l