Banned Books Author Talk - An Evening with Mark Oppenheimer and Stefan Fatsis

About this event

Join the Library and Loyalty Bookstores for a Banned Books Week double feature. Mark Oppenheimer and Stefan Fatsis will discuss their recent books exploring two icons of American letters: Judy Blume and the Merriam-Webster Dictionary! This will be a fascinating discussion of the world of dictionaries, children's literature, and the importance of free expression. Books will be available for sale and signing following the event. About the books Unabridged: The Thrill of and Threat to the Modern Dictionary: Words are the currency of culture—and never more than today. From selfie to doomscrolling to rizz, our hyper-connected digital world coins and spreads new words with lightning speed and locks them into mainstream consciousness with unprecedented influence. Journalist and bestselling author Stefan Fatsis embedded as a lexicographer-in-training at America’s most famous dictionary publisher, Merriam-Webster, to learn how words get into the dictionary, where they come from, who decides what they mean, and how we write and think about them. As he recounts in Unabridged, he discovered the history and fascinating subculture of the dictionary and of those who curate and revere “one of the most basic features of our collective humanity.” Fatsis reveals the little-known story of how the brothers George and Charles Merriam acquired Noah Webster’s original American dictionary and reshaped the business of language forever. Merriam-Webster became America’s most successful and enduring compendium of words, withstanding intense competition and cultural controversies—only to be threatened by the power of Google and artificial intelligence today. Judy Blume: To know the name Judy Blume is to know and love literature. Her influential novels turned classics—including Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret; Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing; Deenie; and Summer Sisters—touched the lives of tens of millions of readers. For more than fifty-five years her work has done something…

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