4 writers highlight fall Authors! Authors! series

8/10/2011
BY TAHREE LANE
BLADE STAFF WRITER
  • Rudy-Maxa

    Rudy Maxa

  • The 18th season of Authors! Authors! kicks off with tales and advice from Rudy Maxa, aka The Savvy Traveler, on Sept. 14 at the Stranahan Theater.

    This popular series will bring four writers to Toledo this fall, each of whom will deliver an hour-long talk, answer questions, and sign books.

    Also scheduled are Henry Louis Gates, Jr., on Oct. 20; Steve Pollick, The Blade's outdoors editor on Nov. 3; and best-selling novelist Lisa See on Nov. 17.

    Talks begin at 7 p.m. at the Stranahan Theater. Tickets ($10, $8 for students) will be sold at the door and beginning Aug. 19 at all library branches. Authors! Authors! is sponsored by the Toledo-Lucas County Public Library and The Blade.

    Rudy Maxa
    Rudy Maxa

    Rudy Maxa is a Cleveland native who graduated from Ohio University in 1971 and wrote for the Washington Post and other publications before developing a niche for travel reporting. His radio program, Rudy Maxa's World, and one-minute travel commentaries are broadcast on more than 110 mostly news/talk radio stations and on XM Radio. His nearly 100 public television episodes on great destinations of the world have won several Emmy Awards and many are owned by the library.

    Henry Louis Gates Jr.
    Henry Louis Gates Jr.

    Henry Louis Gates, Jr., is an African-American scholar and professor at Harvard University whose rise to fame began late one night in July, 2009, when he was arrested by police in Cambridge, Mass., for a possible break in. He was trying to get into his Cambridge home, but ended up being arrested and booked for disorderly conduct after "exhibiting loud and tumultuous behavior," according to the police report. Gates accused the investigating officer of being a racist and told him he had "no idea who he was messing with,'' the report said. The incident raised concerns that Gates was a victim of racial profiling.

    A prolific writer, Gates is editor-in-chief of the Oxford African American Studies Center, the first comprehensive scholarly online resource in the field of African American Studies and Africana Studies. In 2008, he founded The Root (theroot.com), an online news magazine that covers African American news, culture, and genealogy, and is owned by the Washington Post Co.

    Steve Pollick
    Steve Pollick

    He's also written literary criticism, published anthologies, and works such as African American National Biography (2008), an eight-volume set containing more than 4,000 biographical entries on both well known and obscure African Americans, coedited with Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham. In 2007, he published Finding Oprah's Roots, Finding Your Own (2007), a meditation on genetics, genealogy, and race, and America Behind the Color Line: Dialogues with African Americans (2004).

    Slated for the first Thursday in November is Steve Pollick, a 40-year-writer at The Blade who covers the Great Outdoors and has had adventures in remote regions around the planet. He's recently published the coffee-table sized 64-page Best of the Outdoors Page with Jeff Basting, an illustrator and designer at The Blade. Two collections of Pollick's nature essays were published in 1994 and 1990.

    Lisa See
    Lisa See

    Lisa See, who will speak Nov. 17, was born in Paris and grew up in Los Angeles. Her best-selling first book, On Gold Mountain: The One Hundred Year Odyssey of My Chinese-American Family (1995), traces the journey of her great-grandfather, Fong See, who overcame obstacles at every step to become the godfather of Los Angeles's Chinatown and patriarch of a sprawling family. For it, she spent five years collecting details of her family's history and interviewing nearly 100 of her relatives.

    Before writing Snow Flowerand the Secret Fan (2005), she traveled to a remote area of China to research a writing method invented and kept secret by women for over a thousand years.

    For more information about Authors! Authors!, call 419-259-5266.

    Contact Tahree Lane at tlane@theblade.com or 419-724-6075.