with Kate Lentz, Liz Newton and Tim O’Connell
Wednesday, August 23, 2023

6 pm

$10 General Admission $8 for JAC Members, Seniors and Students

Join us for an engaging and thought-provoking panel discussion, featuring esteemed panelists Kate Lentz, Director of RI Center for the Book, Liz Newton, owner of Curiosity & Co. and Tim O’Connell, VP/Editorial Director at Simon & Schuster.

ABOUT THE PANELISTS:

Kate Lentz is the Director of the Rhode Island Center for the Book, a statewide non-profit organization that lives and breathes the mission of providing books and learning opportunities for schools, libraries, and other amazing organizations throughout Rhode Island. The Center promotes an equitable and just world through reading and education, actively supporting our local communities by partnering with Rhode Island independent bookstores.  Founded in 2003, the Rhode Island Center for the Book is the state affiliate of the Center for the Book at the Library of Congress. Kate was a 2018 Carter Fellow for Entrepreneurial Innovation and holds a Masters in Children's Literature. Prior to joining the Center for the Book in 2012, Kate was a school librarian and a second grade teacher. 

Liz Newton is the Co-Owner and Director of Curiosity & Co. Store, curating literary & culinary experiences through community.  She champions this venture after 25-years dedicated to community-based learning: from AmeriCorps to Co-Founding the first Secondary Charter School in Rhode Island to utilizing museums and cities as learning laboratories.  Liz has been a Practicum Teacher in conjunction with Brown University’s Masters in Teaching program, guest faculty at University of Colorado at Denver, the Education Director for the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, and head of community programming of Dialog:City for the 2008 Democratic National Convention.  She launched the Non-Profit Academy in conjunction with Roger Williams University as a Career and Technical Education Program at Blackstone Academy through the RI Department of Education. She is a graduate of Moses Brown, Hobart William Smith, and Brown University.  Liz is currently a Trustee of Lincoln School and on the Board of Blackstone Academy.

Tim O’Connell, Vice President and Editorial Director

Tim O’Connell joined Simon & Schuster in 2021 as Editorial Director for fiction. Prior to joining S&S, Tim worked in the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group for over fifteen years. Publishing across genres and formats, he has sought to champion unique voices from a wide spectrum of authors.

In 2020, his author of twelve years, Charles Yu, won the National Book Award for Fiction for the novel Interior Chinatown. That same year Vanessa Veselka’s novel The Great Offshore Grounds was long-listed for the same award. This year Omar El Akkad’s What Strange Paradise won the Scotiabank Giller Award, while Pajtim Statovci’s Bolla was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize in Fiction, as was Kristen Radtke’s Seek You for Nonfiction.

He has edited with numerous bestselling and award-winning authors including Ted Chiang, Nathan Hill, Lauren Hough, Karin Tidbeck, Jonah Mixon-Webster, Amitava Kumar, Clémence Michallon, and Sergio de La Pava.

‍Originally from Hamden, Connecticut, Tim O’Connell has been a Frankfurt Fellow, a Beijing Publishing Fellow, a Norwegian Literature Abroad Fellow, and Finish Literature Exchange Fellow, and worked with the PEN America Writing for Justice Fellowship.

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION:

Book As Muse: Language & Image, showcases a remarkable collection of artworks inspired by literature and books as material objects. Through the fusion of language and visual imagery, artists express their interpretations of literary works or explore the significance of books as unique art forms themselves.