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Sunday, November 16th

FRANK KRAMER:

A Celebration

Harvard Book Store is pleased to present a special Open House on Sunday, November 16th, during which esteemed local authors will salute Frank Kramer and his legacy of independent bookselling and intellectual dialogue in Harvard Square during the past forty-plus years. As ownership of Harvard Book Store transitions to a new era, local literary luminaries who've had a longstanding relationship with Frank pay tribute to what he and Harvard Book Store have meant to them.

Beginning at the top of each hour, featured authors--listed below--will speak briefly, followed by an intermission for conversation, hors d'oeuvres, and refreshments. While this schedule is subject to change, the authors are set to appear as follows:

2 to 3 pm

intermission

3 to 4 pm

Anne Bernays
Justin Kaplan
Susanna Kaysen
Joshua Rubenstein

intermission

4 to 5 pm

Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Randall Kennedy
Gail Mazur
Robert B. Parker

Please sign the Guest Book on your way in or out of the Open House.

We look forward to seeing you!!

CONTACT:

General Info:
617.661.1515

Media:
617.661.1424 ex.1

Email:

Sven Birkerts is the author of Art of Time in Memoirs; Reading Life: Books for the Ages; Readings; The Gutenberg Elegies; and a memoir, My Sky Blue Trades. He teaches at Harvard and at the Bennington Writing Seminars and is the editor of AGNI. He lives in Arlington.

James Carroll was raised in Washington, D.C., and ordained to the Catholic priesthood in 1969. He served as a chaplain at Boston University from 1969 to 1974, then left the priesthood to become a writer. His New York Times best seller Constantine's Sword is now the subject of an acclaimed documentary, directed by Oren Jacoby and distributed nationally by First Run Features and Red Envelope Entertainment.

Alexandera Marshall is the author of Tender Offer, The Brass Bed, and Still Waters. She lives in Boston with her husband, the writer James Carroll, and their two children.

Gail Mazur is a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Her book, Zeppo's First Wife: New & Selected Poems, published in 2005, won the Massachusetts Book Award and was finalist for the LA Times Book Prize.  Previously, Mazur functioned as a Distinguished Writer in Residence at Emerson College’s Writing, Literature and Publishing Program and founding director of the Blacksmith House Poetry Center. Her book They Can’t Take That Away From Me was a finalist for the 2001 National Book Award. She has won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College as well as the St. Botolph Club Foundation Distinguished Artist Award.

Anne Bernays is a novelist and coauthor, with her husband, Justin Kaplan, of Back Then: Two Literary Lives in 1950s New York. Ms. Bernays currently teaches at Harvard's Nieman Foundation for Journalism. She and Mr. Kaplan live in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Truro, Cape Cod.

Justin Kaplan won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for his biography Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain. His Walt Whitman: A Life also won the National Book Award.

Susanna Kaysen is the author of the novels Far Afield and Asa, As I Knew Him and the memoir Girl, Interrupted. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Joshua Rubenstein is Northeast Regional Director of Amnesty International USA. He is author of Tangled Loyalties: The Life and Times of Ilya Ehrenburg, and co-editor (with Vladimir Naumov) of Stalin's Secret Pogrom and The Unknown Black Book. He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., is the Director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American research and the Alphonse Fletcher, Jr. University Professor at Harvard University. The author of several award-winning works of literary criticism, he has also written a memoir, Colored People; The Future of the Race, co-authored with Cornel West; and Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man.

Alice Hoffman is the best-selling author of twenty-five acclaimed novels, including The Third Angel, The Ice Queen, Practical Magic, The Foretelling, and Here on Earth. She is also the author of two books of short stories, and eight books for children and young adults. Her work has been translated into more than twenty languages and published in more than one hundred foreign editions. She divides her time between Boston and New York City.

Photo by Deborah Feingold.

Randall Kennedy is the Michael R. Klein Professor of Law at Harvard University. He is a member of the bars of the District of Columbia and the Supreme Court of the United States, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the American Philosophical Association. His book Race, Crime, and the Law won the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award.

Jasper White is the chef and partner of Summer Shack and author of The Summer Shack Cookbook; 50 Chowders: One-Pot Meals—Clam, Corn & Beyond; Lobster at Home; and Cooking from New England. He lives in Boston, Massachusetts.

Robert B. Parker has long been acknowledged as the dean of American crime fiction. His novel featuring the wise-cracking, street-smart Boston private-eye Spenser have earned him a devoted following and reams of critical acclaim. Robert Parker’s most recent bestsellers include his Spenser novel, Widow’s Walk, and Death in Paradise, his third Jesse Stone novel. He married his wife Joan in 1956; they raised two sons, David and Daniel. He and Joan now live in the Boston area.