“OneBookAZ” Author Nancy Turner Speaks April 30

BISBEE, AZ – Nancy E. Turner, author of These Is My Words: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine, 1881-1901 and winner of the 2008 “OneBookAZ” statewide vote, will make a special appearance on April 30 at 6:30pm in the Meeting Room of the Copper Queen Library, 6 Main St., to discuss her novel.

Inspired by her original family memoirs, These Is My Words introduces readers to the questing, indomitable Sarah Prine, one of the most memorable women ever to survive and prevail in the Arizona Territory of the late 1800s.

As a child, a fiery young woman, and finally a caring mother, Sarah forges a life as full and as fascinating as our deepest needs, our most secret hopes and our grandest dreams. She rides Indian-style and shoots with deadly aim, greedily devours a treasure trove of leatherbound books, downs fire, flood, Comanche raids and other mortal perils with the unique courage that forged the character of the American West.

Brought to Arizona in 2002, and coordinated by the Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records, OneBookAZ is an exciting program that brings communities together through literature.

Beginning in April every year, the program encourages communities across the State of Arizona to read the same book at the same time and participate in discussions and programs centered around that book.

This presentation is sponsored by the Friends of the Copper Queen Library and is free and open to all members of the public.

For additional information, contact the library at 432-4232.

Riedell Discusses "Nature Writing and Its Authors"

BISBEE, AZ – In conjunction with World Habitat Awareness Month, Arizona Humanities Council Scholar Dr. Karyn Riedell, an English instructor at Arizona State University where she teaches both traditional and online classes including composition, professional writing, American literature, popular culture, and creative nonfiction, will discuss "Nature Writing and Its Authors" on April 23 at 6:30pm in the Library Meeting Room.

Dr. Riedell will examine and discuss current nature writing and authors such as Annie Dillard, Barry Lopez, Simon Ortiz, bell hooks, Terry Tempest Williams, Barbara Kingsolver, and others and will consider the following questions: What does this writer have to say about nature? What is his or her reason for writing about nature? Do these writers see their art as a way of bringing about environmental activism?

Sponsored by the Friends of the Copper Queen Library and made possible in part by a grant from the Arizona Humanities Council, this presentation is free and open to the public. Elevator access is available.

For further information, contact the library at 432-4232.

Poet Alison Deming Discusses "Encounters with the Archdruid”

BISBEE, AZ – In conjunction with World Habitat Awareness Month, Arizona Humanities Council Scholar Dr. Alison Deming, poet, essayist, and Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Arizona, will facilitate a book discussion of John McPhee’s Encounters with the Archdruid at the Copper Queen Library on April 16 at 6:30pm in the Library Meeting Room.

Encounters with the Archdruid is John McPhee's superb recounting of three episodes in the life of famous mountaineer, outdoorsman, environmental activist, and Sierra Club leader David Brower.

Born in 1915, Brower has arguably been the single most influential American environmentalist in the last half of the 20th century; even the Department of the Interior grudgingly credits him with having nearly single-handedly halted the construction of a dam in the heart of the Grand Canyon, and he has converted thousands, even millions, of his compatriots to the preservationist cause through his work with the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, and other organizations.

In Encounters, McPhee takes Brower into the wilderness – first backpacking in the North Cascades with Charles Park, a mining engineer who discusses plans for a copper mine in a protected wilderness area; then camping on Cumberland Island with Charles Fraser, the developer of nearby Hilton Head who also wants to develop Cumberland (and who provided the title for McPhee's book, commenting that conservationists are at heart druids who "sacrifice people and worship trees"); and, finally, boating on Lake Powell and then rafting down the Grand Canyon with former Interior Secretary Floyd Dominy, who oversaw the construction of Glen Canyon Dam, a structure that for Brower stands as one of the most hated creations of our time.

Few writers would be more qualified to discuss McPhee than Arizona Humanities Council Scholar Alison Deming. The author of three nonfiction books – Temporary Homelands, The Edges of the Civilized World (which was a finalist for the PEN Center West Award), and Writing the Sacred into the Real (Credo Series: Notable American Writers on Nature, Community and the Writer Life) – she also co-edited with Lauret E. Savoy The Colors of Nature: Essays on Culture, Identity and the Natural World, published three volumes of poetry, Science and Other Poems (selected by Gerald Stern for the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets), The Monarchs: A Poem Sequence, and Genius Loci, and edited Poetry of the American West: A Columbia Anthology.”

Deming received an MFA from Vermont College (1983) and held a Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University (1987-88). Her writing has won two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (1990 and 1995), fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown (1984-85), the Arizona Commission on the Arts, and the Tucson/Pima Arts Council, a Residency Award from the National Writer's Voice Project, the Pablo Neruda Prize from NIMROD, the Pushcart Prize, the Gertrude B. Claytor Award from the Poetry Society of America, and the Bayer Award in science writing from Creative Nonfiction for the essay “Poetry and Science: A View from the Divide.”

She has held residencies at Yaddo, Cummington Community for the Arts, the Djerassi Foundation, Mesa Refuge, The Sitka Center for Art and Ecology, The Island Institute in Sitka, Alaska, Hawthornden Castle International Retreat for Writers in Scotland, and the H. J. Andrews Experimental Forest.

Sponsored by the Friends of the Copper Queen Library and made possible in part by a grant from the Arizona Humanities Council, this book discussion is free and open to the public. Elevator access is available.

For further information, contact the library at 432-4232.

Return Overdues Free During National Library Week

BISBEE, AZ – Are you afraid to come to the library because you’ve forgotten to return those books or movies you borrowed months ago? Did you just unpack that moving box and find the library book you swore you had returned? Do you tremble when you think about paying overdue fees?

Well, fear no more! To celebrate National Library Week, the Copper Queen Library is extending amnesty on all overdue materials returned between April 13 – April 19 to the Main Library (located at 6 Main Street), the Main Library bookdrop (located just outside and to the left of the Main Post Office entrance), the Warren bookdrop (located outside City Hall on 118 Arizona Street), and the San Jose bookdrop (located outside the Bisbee Senior Center on 300 Collins Road).

This means that all overdue fines and charges for “assumed lost” materials (but not charges for items which are actually lost) will be removed from patrons’ library accounts if the materials are returned between Sunday, April 13 and Saturday, April 19.

For further information, contact the library at 432-4232.