St. Louis Public Library

ST. LOUIS PUBLIC LIBRARY'S JANUARY AUTHORS @ YOUR LIBRARY LINEUP FEATURES PROMINENT ST. LOUIS AUTHORS

The St. Louis Public Library is proud to present some of St. Louis' prominent authors as part of the January installment of its popular Authors @ Your Library series including Congressman William L. Clay, Sr. and Rick Skwiot.  In addition, well-known authors Edna Campos Gravenhorst, Carol Ferring Shepley, and John Wright, Ph.D. participate in a panel discussion about the Gateway City. All events are FREE and open to the public.

• Congressman William L. Clay, Sr. discusses and signs his book, Clarence Thomas: A Knight in Tainted Armor. The program takes place at Central Library, 1301 Olive St., on January 15 at 7 p.m.

In A Knight in Tainted Armor, Clay traces how U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas joined other conservatives in an effort to reverse the historic advancement of Civil Rights for minorities, women, and the poor.

The first African-American representative from Missouri, Congressman Clay served in the United States House for more than three decades—longer than any other former black member. During his tenure, he used his experience as a Civil Rights activist and labor union representative in St. Louis to promote legislation to help minorities and U.S. workers.

Congressman Clay's previous works include:  Bill Clay: A Political Voice at the Grass Roots; Just Permanent Interests: Black American in Congress 1870-1991; The Jefferson Bank Confrontation; To Kill or Not to Kill: Thoughts on Capital Punishment; and Anatomy of an Economic Murder: A Statistical Review of the Negro in St. Louis Employment Field.

Books available for purchase courtesy of Congressman Clay. All proceeds will be donated to the William L. Clay Scholarship & Research Fund.

• An Invitation to the St. Louis Room!

If you love the St. Louis region and want to know more about it, there's really only one place to visit—your St. Louis Public Library. The topic is so important to us that when we restored Central we devoted an entire room (the St. Louis Room) to it on the Third Floor. A panel of three distinguished St. Louis authors discuss and sign their books about the Gateway City at Central Library, 1301 Olive St.,on January 22 at 7 p.m. The panelists include:

• Edna Campos Gravenhorst is a historical researcher and author of Southwest Garden,Benton Park West, as well as the new book, Famous-Barr: St. Louis Shopping at Its Finest. She is a member of the Society of Architectural Historians-Missouri Valley Chapter, the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture Organization, and the Society of Latino and Hispanic Writers of San Antonio, Texas. 
• Carol Ferring Shepley's newest book, St. Louis—An Illustrated Timeline: Blues, Baseball, Books, Crooks, Civil Rights and the River, tells the story of how the city lives and breathes.  She is also the author of Movers & Shakers, Scalawags and Suffragettes: Tales from Bellefontaine Cemetery, which won the 2009 Independent Publisher's Gold Medal for Best Regional Nonfiction.

o John Wright, Ph.D., is the author of Extraordinary Black Missourians, Pioneers, Leaders, Performers, and Athletes and Other Notables Who've Made History; St. Louis: Disappearing Black Communities; and Discovering African-American St. Louis: A Guide of Historic Sites. From the boyhood home of jazz great Miles Davis to the site of the house that sparked the landmark Shelley v. Kraemer court case, the maps, photographs, and text of Discovering African-American St. Louis records a history that has been neglected for too long.

After the panel discussion, librarian Adele Heagney leads guided tours of the St. Louis Room, the Library's hub for all things St. Louis.

Books available for sale courtesy of Left Bank Books and the authors.

 

• Rick Skwiot discusses and signs his book, Fail.  The program takes place at Central Library, 1301 Olive St., on January 28 at 6:30 p.m.

Exiled to the city's tough North Side, disgraced African-American St. Louis police lieutenant Carlo Gabriel fiercely wants to return to police headquarters. All he needs do is track down the missing husband of the mayor's vivacious press secretary. Instead he unwittingly and unwillingly unearths a morass of corruption, educational malpractice, and greed that consigns thousands of at-risk youths to the mean streets of America's erstwhile murder capital. Worse, it's the kind of information that could get a cop killed.

Fighting for his life and honor, Gabriel makes chilling discoveries that lead to a life-threatening and life-changing decision that could affect not only his future but also that of the city and its leaders.

Fail was named one of the Favorite Books of 2014 by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Skwiot is the author of four novels and two nonfiction books. He also works as a freelance and feature writer, ghostwriter, and editor. He has taught creative writing at Washington University in St. Louis and served as the 2004 Distinguished Visiting Writer at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Co-founder and director of the nonprofit Key West Writers Lab, Skwiot lives in Key West, Florida.

Books available for purchase courtesy of Left Bank Books.

For more information, call 314-539-0347.

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