Friday, May 23, 2008

Fun with Librarians!

Yesterday the Sisters did a workshop at NH Library Association's annual conference in Concord. Six of us were on hand to talk about the women we profiled in our newly released book, Women of Granite: 25 New Hampshire Women You Should Know. Our seventh sister, Mur, jumped ship and went to Europe for a little vacation. Imagine that--passing up an opportunity to speak to a roomful of librarians!

Our audience was appreciative despite some hiccups on our part--like me forgetting a few facts! Many of the librarians turned out to be closet writers. I hope we were able to inspire of few of them to pursue their dreams.

Kathy and Andy both came for the entire day and went with me (the librarian) to a few of the other workshops including one on designing promotional materials. It was meant to teach librarians how to make eye-catching posters, flyers, and bookmarks, but the tips presented are usable by anyone. (What writer wouldn't want to create awesome bookmarks?) The workshop was excellent and showed us, albeit too quickly, how we could create professional looking materials using free open source software like OpenOffice and GIMP. We were told it would require a little time and effort to learn, but, from the results we saw, it looks to be worth it.

The Sisters are heading to the Kensington Public Library next Thursday, 5/29, to talk to a general audience about our book. By "general" I mean the audience could be any age; that's one of the delights of library programs, you never know who will turn up. I've done library visits where there were 3 year olds and 85 year olds sitting in the same audience. Wish us luck!

--Diane

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