TCCL News & Events

TulsaKids Magazine
November 2009
By Jackie Hill

Learning the art of conversation … listening to others … waiting to have your say … these are the elements of family dinner that make it the most favorite time of day for Pulitzer Prize-winning author Geraldine Brooks.

"I’m a bit old-fashioned about this but I think everyone should sit down together for dinner," said Brooks, who is coming to Tulsa Dec. 4 and 5 to receive the Tulsa Library Trust’s 2009 Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award. "Also, as we’re a multigenerational family spanning ages 6 to 90 it is important to hear from each other and not spin out entirely into our own worlds of work, adolescence, et cetera. Plus I love to cook so the food is pretty good most of the time."

The Australian-born author, who lives in Martha’s Vineyard with her husband, mom and two sons, says she leads a typical life.

"My sons leave for school by 7:30 and I go to work in the attic till they get home. Then I do Mom stuff – schlepping them to music or sport, working in the veggie garden, riding herd on homework and making dinner," said Brooks.

Life wasn’t always so typical for Brooks who in the late-1980s through mid-‘90s led an adventurous, dangerous life working as a foreign correspondent for The Wall Street Journal. Dodging bullets, running for cover while helicopter gunships hovered overhead, being arrested and accused as a spy were among the harrowing experiences Brooks encountered while covering conflicts in the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans.

During her career as an award-winning journalist, Brooks penned her first nonfiction book, Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women, in 1995. She followed it with the memoir Foreign Correspondence: A Pen Pal’s Journey From Down Under to All Over, chronicling her childhood in Sydney, Australia, where pen pals from around the world enriched her life and fulfilled her yearning for the exotic.

"Having pen pals connects you to the rest of the world in a wonderful and intimate way," said Brooks, who thinks children nowadays can benefit from the experience. "It made the rather small world of my childhood a much vaster place and helped me to see things through other people’s eyes."

During adolescence, Brooks’ favorite book to read was J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.

"I think I read The Lord of the Rings every spring for about five years," she said. "I associate it with sitting in the garden in Sydney in late September (which is spring there), munching on the new green peas from my mum’s veggie patch. It is a wonderful story, complicated and engrossing and thoroughly entertaining. At different times it spoke to me in different ways – as a kid I loved the idea that the small ones mattered most in the end; as an older person I was struck by the idea that confronting evil can often have huge costs to what is good – a lesson quite relevant to today’s predicaments."

After her first son was born, Brooks made the decision to hang up her career as a foreign correspondent and try her hand at writing historical fiction. Her first novel, Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague, hit the stands in 2001 and was an international best-seller. She followed it with the 2006 Pulitzer Prize winner March, a retelling of Louisa May Alcott’s beloved classic Little Women from the point of view of the girls’ absent father, Mr. March. Her latest novel, People of the Book, was an instant New York Times best-seller and has been translated into more than 20 languages. Catherine Zeta-Jones has acquired the film rights.

When asked about Jones’ plans for filming People of the Book, Brooks said she tries not to think too much about it.

"The book is the book and the film is something else entirely," she said. "The film business is an emotional rollercoaster, with so many moving parts. When you write a book it’s up to you. You just sit down and do it. With movies you have to get a good scriptwriter, you need to entice a luminous star and an esteemed director, and even when you’ve done all that, it still might not happen because the financing falls through. So, one day, I hope to be sitting in the darkened cinema as the credits roll on something based on the novel by Geraldine Brooks. Until then it’s really none of my business. But I would like, if a book of mine ever gets filmed, to play a corpse or something in it."

SIDEBAR

Meet Geraldine Brooks,
Winner of the 2009 Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award

Black-tie Dinner
Friday, Dec. 4 * Central Library, Fourth Street and Denver Avenue
Tickets: $125
Call 918-596-7897 to purchase tickets.

Free Public Presentation
Saturday, Dec. 5 * 10:30 a.m. * Central Library

Call 918-596-7977 or visit www.tulsalibrary.org for more information.

Vintage Newsmagazine
November 2009
By Jackie Hill

When Geraldine Brooks walks amongst the historic houses on the island of Martha’s Vineyard where she lives, she imagines the families who once inhabited these tiny modest homes and feels an overwhelming desire to protect and preserve these fragile structures so that their stories survive for future generations.

"Sadly, all over this island, historic houses are being lost, usually to build grandiose vacation compounds where people will come for, maybe, a month a year," said Brooks, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and award-winning journalist. "I’m just really disturbed that so often the rights of individuals in the here and now are the only thing that’s valued as a core American ideal. What about the rights of Americans in the future to experience what their own past was like – the struggle and the guts and the austerity of the lives of the people who built this country. It is the modest buildings that tell us the most about who we once were. They are the templates of ordinary American lives."

Just as these tiny old houses reveal pieces of the past, Brooks’ storied novels and nonfiction works share intriguing bits of history. Brooks is the author of two nonfiction books, Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women and Foreign Correspondence: A Pen Pal‘s Journey From Down Under to All Over; and three novels, Year of Wonders, March and People of the Book.

The Tulsa Library Trust and Tulsa City-County Library are honoring Brooks with the 2009 Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award for her major contribution to the field of literature and letters. Brooks will receive the Helmerich award at a black-tie dinner on Dec. 4 at Central Library, Fourth Street and Denver Avenue. The award consists of a $40,000 cash prize and an engraved crystal book.

Before Brooks turned novelist in the late-1990s, she worked for many years as a foreign correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, covering crises in the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. But after her first child was born, the Australian-born journalist decided to stay put and try her hand at writing historical novels. Her first venture, Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague, was an international best-seller. Set in Great Britain in the 1660s, the book recounts the true story of the village of Eyam, Derbyshire, and the self-sacrifice of the villagers who voluntarily quarantined themselves when bubonic plague struck.

Tulsa City-County Library’s popular "Novel Talk" series will explore this dramatic, haunting read as it presents "The Gifts of Tragedy" on Nov. 18 at 7 p.m. at Central Library, Aaronson Auditorium. Erin Christy, anchor, KJRH Channel 2 News, will moderate a panel discussion focusing on Year of Wonders. Panelists Dr. Tom Dafforn, clinical psychologist; the Rev. Todd Freeman, College Hill Presbyterian Church; and Dr. Elizabeth Williams, history professor, OSU-Stillwater, will confront the different ways people handle tragic events.

Brooks followed up Year of Wonders with the Pulitzer Prize-winning March, which focuses on what happened to John March, the father character in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, the year he was away from his wife and four daughters. Brooks based the character of March on Alcott’s own father, an educator, abolitionist and progressive thinker.

Her third venture, People of the Book, a New York Times best-seller translated into 20 languages, traces the perilous journey of a rare illuminated Hebrew manuscript known as the Sarajevo Haggadah and its possible adventures over five centuries.

Brooks is known for peppering her novels with odd details of her characters’ daily lives that delight and surprise the reader.

When asked if any of the characters in her books remind her of herself, Brooks said: "You really can’t tease out who is who in the characters you create. There are thoughts I’ve had, smells I’ve smelled, emotions I’ve felt, in all of them. But there are also many, many shards of other people’s lives that I borrowed. More of those, probably, than of myself."

Brooks will share more about her life and writings at a free public presentation on Dec. 5 at 10:30 a.m. at Central Library. Brooks will speak, answer questions from the audience and sign books. Copies of her works will be available for purchasing.

For more information about the Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award or to purchase tickets for the dinner, call 596-7897.