Short story, book, play, film, and television discussion classes are scattered throughout the year to give you ample time for pleasure reading and viewing between each one. Pick a course or two to suit your literary tastes and register today!

October also includes three special literary events!

Time will be reserved for audience Q&A for all these events. The two Zoom-based talks will be recorded and distributed to enrolled students for viewing post-event. Register in advance to receive the video, even if you are unable to attend the live online session.

Author Visit: Chris Whitaker, All the Colors of the Dark (2024)

Wednesday, October 9 • 7:00pm-8:30pm • Scarsdale Public Library • Course 12869 • $35

In conversation with Crown Publishing’s Senior Vice President and Fiction Publisher Amy Einhorn, meet UK-based author Chris Whitaker during his limited US tour for a discussion of his latest bestseller, All the Colors of the Dark (2024), a book that Jenna Bush Hager is turning into a mini-series. This heart-wrenching genre-bending epic depicts the fine line that separates light and dark, triumph and tragedy, and devotion and obsession. Set in Missouri beginning in the 1970s and spanning over 25 years, the novel is part mystery, part serial killer thriller, and part love story. Girls in the small town of Monta Clare have been disappearing. When the daughter of a wealthy family becomes the target, an unlikely hero emerges in Patch Macauley, a local boy, born with only one eye, who saves her. Haunting and beautiful, the story explores how childhood wounds impact adulthood as it focuses on Patch, his best friend Saint, and Patch's multi-year effort to locate another one of the girls who had been abducted.

CHRIS WHITAKER is the award-winning author of Tall Oaks, All the Wicked Girls, We Begin at the End, and All the Colors of the Dark.

AMY EINHORN is the Senior Vice President and Fiction Publisher at Crown Publishing. Previously, she was President at Henry Holt & Co., Publisher at Flatiron Books, and had her own eponymous imprint, Amy Einhorn Books, at Penguin Random House. Einhorn has published many New York Times bestselling fiction authors, including Chris Whitaker, Liane Moriarty, Min Jin Lee, and others, as well as bestselling memoirs and narrative nonfiction by authors such as James Comey, Jenny Lawson, and Amy Sedaris.

Author Visit: Ava Purkiss, Fit Citizens: A History of Black Women’s Exercise from Post-Reconstruction to Postwar America (2023)

Thursday, October 17 • 1:00pm-2:15pm • Zoom • Course 12818 • $35

Meet Ava Purkiss, Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan, as she shares insights from her groundbreaking book about historical figures including W.E.B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells, and Michelle Obama, who championed fitness for Black women and children alongside broader efforts for racial equality. Amidst the struggle against segregation and political oppression, Black women devised new approaches to the battle for full citizenship and social justice. Through exercises such as calisthenics, gymnastics, and nature walks, Black women demonstrated their physical and moral fitness for national belonging. Purkiss explores how physical activity was not merely a path to individual health but also a way for Black women to uplift their race and, over time, to ensure that citizens of all races have access to recreational spaces, including YMCAs, beaches, parks, and playgrounds.

AVA PURKISS is an assistant professor of women's and gender studies and American culture at the University of Michigan. Her research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of race, gender, health, and the body. Purkiss earned her PhD in history from the University of Texas at Austin and has received numerous fellowships and grants supporting her research. She is the recipient of the 2017 Organization of American Historians Lerner-Scott Prize for best dissertation in U.S. women’s history and the 2018 Letitia Woods Brown prize for best article in African American women’s history from the Association of Black Women Historians.

LORI ROTSKOFF is a cultural historian, writer, educator, and public speaker specializing in memoirs and narrative nonfiction, childhood and youth, women’s and gender studies, and arts and culture. She studied history and literature at Northwestern University and earned a PhD in American Studies at Yale.

Author Visit: Catherine Newman, Sandwich (2024)

Thursday, October 24 • 10:00am-11:30am • Zoom • Course 12790 • $30

In conversation with Anna Katsavos, Catherine Newman will discuss her instant New York Times bestseller, Sandwich (2024). Characteristic of her other publications, this novel concerns the ordinary, inevitable, and often messy daily struggles from the perspective of a woman sandwiched between her aging parents and grown children. The narrator is neurotic, sentimental, joyous, sorrowful, and slightly unhinged all at once. Funny observations about the constantly changing stages of life infuse the story that unfolds during the family's annual vacation in Cape Cod.

CATHERINE NEWMAN is the author of the memoirs Catastrophic Happiness and Waiting for Birdy, the middle-grade novel One Mixed-Up Night, the kids’ craft book Stitch Camp, the best-selling how-to books for kids How to Be a Person and What Can I Say?, and the novels We All Want Impossible Things and Sandwich. She writes the Substack newsletter Crone Sandwich and has been a regular contributor to the New York Times, Real Simple, O: The Oprah Magazine, Cup of Jo, and many other publications. She lives in Amherst, Massachusetts where she is the academic department coordinator/secretary of the Creative Writing Center at Amherst College.

ANNA KATSAVOS, PhD, is an experienced book group facilitator. A SUNY Professor Emerita of English Literature and Women’s Studies, she has received numerous awards for teaching, and her scholarship has been published in a variety of literary journals. She has interviewed many best-selling authors and has presented interactive programs focusing on a wide range of women’s issues. Additionally, she conducts writing, editing and publishing workshops.

Scarsdale Adult School | 914-723-2325 | P.O. Box 205, Scarsdale, NY 10583 | www.ScarsdaleAdultSchool.org

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