Beyond Words, Hartford Public Library’s annual signature fundraising event, will move “beyond downtown” to the comfort of your home.

Beyond Words 2020 will be a 30 minutes virtual experience showcasing some of our favorite authors, Library supporters, and many of the important programs offered at the Library.

The virtual event premieres Thursday, December 3, 2020, 7:00 pm on the Library’s YouTube channel.
MEET THE FEATURED AUTHORS
Honorary Chair: Wally Lamb
Connecticut native Wally Lamb is the author of six New York Times best-selling novels: I’ll Take You There, We Are Water, Wishin’ and Hopin’, The Hour I First Believed, I Know This Much is True, and She’s Come Undone and was twice selected for Oprah’s Book Club.
Julia Alvarez
Julia Alvarez has written novels (How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, In the Time of the Butterflies, ¡Yo!, In the Name of Salomé, Saving the World, Afterlife), collections of poems (Homecoming, The Other Side/ El Otro Lado, The Woman I Kept to Myself), nonfiction (Something to Declare, Once Upon A Quinceañera, and A Wedding in Haiti), and numerous books for young readers.  
Amity Gaige
West Hartford resident Amity Gaige is the author of four novels, O My Darling, The Folded World, Schroder, and Sea Wife. Amity is the winner of a Fulbright Fellowship, and fellowships at the MacDowell and Yaddo colonies. In 2016, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for Fiction.
Christina Baker Kline
A #1 New York Times bestselling author of eight novels, including The Exiles, Orphan Train, and A Piece of the World, Christina Baker Kline is published in 40 countries. Her novels have received the New England Prize for Fiction, the Maine Literary Award, and a Barnes & Noble Discover Award, among other prizes.
Jean Kwok
Jean Kwok is the award-winning, New York Times and international bestselling author of Searching for Sylvie Lee, Girl in Translation and Mambo in Chinatown. An instant New York Times bestseller, Searching for Sylvie Lee was selected for the Today Show Book Club and featured in The New York Times, Time, Newsweek, CNN, The New York Post, The Washington Post, O Magazine, People, Entertainment Weekly and more. 
“Libraries are about Freedom. Freedom to read, freedom of ideas, freedom of communication. They are about education (which is not a process that finishes the day we leave school or university), about entertainment, about making safe spaces, and about access to information."

Neil Gaiman