The New York Public Library Honors Three Distinguished Staff Members at Annual Library Lions Gala, Monday, November 2, 2009
“Brokeback Mountain”author Annie Proulx, Eloise illustrator Hilary Knight honored alongside librarians David Smith and Julia Chang; Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg bestows honor on career specialist Janice Moore-SmithThe New York Public Library’s 2009 Library Lions gala pays tribute to its own homegrown “lions” this year, the true treasures of the Library. Three members of the accomplished staff, whose dedication and expertise have made an impact on innumerable lives, will be honored on Monday, November 2, 2009.
This year’s gala recognizes David Smith, reference librarian at the Library for 31 years, honored alongside renowned writer Annie Proulx, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Shipping News and “Brokeback Mountain”; Julia Chang, Supervising Librarian for Children’s Programs, honored with writer and illustrator Hilary Knight, best known for illustrating the Eloise series; and career specialist Janice Moore-Smith, honored by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.
http://www.nypl.org/press/releases/?article_id=339Library Lions is The New York Public Library’s most important annual event and one of the most anticipated dinners on New York City’s social calendar. Each year Library Lions honors several distinguished individuals for outstanding achievements in their respective fields of arts, letters, and scholarship.
Honorees have included such eminent figures as Renée Fleming, John Hope Franklin, Orhan Pamuk, David Remnick, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Martin Scorsese, Tom Stoppard, Elie Wiesel, and Oprah Winfrey.
This year’s gala will depart from tradition and salute those who work on the front lines of the Library—three outstanding librarians who have distinguished themselves in research librarianship, children’s services, and career counseling. Each staff member will be honored alongside a luminary in their field: Annie Proulx, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Shipping News and “Brokeback Mountain,” will be paired with a senior research librarian; Hilary Knight, illustrator of the Eloise children’s books, will be honored alongside a children’s librarian; and Mayor Michael Bloomberg will help honor a job-search specialist.
This brilliant, black tie gala attracts a high-profile crowd of more than 600 writers, celebrities, and government and corporate leaders, generating a great deal of press coverage in periodicals such as Vogue, Vanity Fair, The New York Times, The New York Sun, New York Magazine, and the International Herald Tribune.
http://www.nypl.org/librarylions/Annie Proulx, who was born in Norwich, Connecticut, has led a peripatetic life and traveled extensively. She learned to read when she was four years old, and soon after was taken to the local library, one built with funding from philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, where she discovered that the fabulous riches of books were available to everyone. Ms. Proux planned to read all the books in that first library. Wherever she lived, she knew how to get to the library and every week dragged home, sometimes literally, a box of books. One of the high points of her childhood in rural Vermont was the visit of the bookmobile, a library on wheels, from which one could borrow books and keep them until the bookmobile’s return.
Ms. Proulx began writing when she was in her 50s and has won many literary awards, including the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Close Range: Wyoming Stories, the 1993 National Book Award for Fiction and the 1993 Irish Times International Fiction Prize, both for The Shipping News, and the 1993 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for Postcards. She currently divides her life and work between Wyoming and New Mexico; her interests include history, archaeology, geology, and literature. Her story “Brokeback Mountain,” which originally appeared in The New Yorker, was made into an Academy Award–winning film. Ms. Proulx is working on a memoir about conservation efforts at Bird Cloud, the Wyoming home she shares with her four children.
“Libraries have been entwined throughout my life….For me, libraries supplied a lifetime of learning and pleasure and taught me how to write.” http://www.nypl.org/librarylions/proulx.html