Community Corner
Pima County August 22, 2020 Marks The First Annual Ray Bradbury Read-A-Thon
After the initial broadcast, the Read-A-Thon will be available until September 5, 2020.
August 14, 2020
Pima County Public Librarian, Vicki Lazaro, to participate in the national reading of Fahrenheit 451 on August 22, 2020, marking the 100th anniversary of Ray Bradbury's birth.
(Tucson, AZ) At 4:30 PM, Eastern Time, on Saturday, August 22, 2020, readers young and old from across the nation will gather by their TV sets, computers, tablets, and phones to watch a historic reading of Ray Bradbury’s classic novel Fahrenheit 451 streamed over YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram.
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- View the entire reading on RayBradburyReadAThon.com.
- After the initial broadcast, the Read-A-Thon will be available until September 5, 2020.
The Library of Congress, the Los Angeles Public Library, and the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, along with other public and university libraries nationwide have joined together to bring Bradbury’s classic novel to today’s audiences. Carla Hayden, the Librarian of Congress, will introduce each of the three parts of Bradbury’s book, while John Szabo (Los Angeles Public Library), Rachel Bloom (actress), Charles F. Bolden Jr. (12th NASA Administrator), and Ann Druyan (writer/producer/director) will offer additional introductions. Readers from across the United States will join William Shatner (actor), Neil Gaiman (author), Marlon James (author), Marjorie Liu (author), P. Djèlí Clark (author), Dr. Brenda Greene (author), Alley Mills Bean (actress), James Reynolds (actor), Tananarive Due (author), and Steven Barnes (author) to bring this relevant work to social media. Susan Orlean (author) provides an afterword.
The event is being produced and directed by Emmy Award winner Lawrence Schiller for the Ray Bradbury Foundation and the Ray Bradbury Literary Works, LLC.
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Ray Bradbury’s (raybradbury.com) contribution to the literary landscape and our collective imagination made him one of the best-known writers of our time. His books now sit on library shelves alongside the works of authors he read in his youth at the Carnegie Library in Waukegan, Illinois. After his family moved to Los Angeles during the Great Depression, he discovered the stacks of the Venice library and many others: no matter where he lived, the library was his school. As Bradbury would later say: “I’m completely library educated. Libraries are absolutely at the center of my life. Since I couldn’t afford to go to college, I attended the library three or four days a week from the age of eighteen on, and graduated from the library when I was twenty-eight.”
In a career that spanned more than seventy years, Ray Bradbury inspired generations of readers in a wide variety of genres to dream, think, and create. A prolific author of more than four hundred published short stories and close to fifty books, as well as numerous essays, plays, operas, teleplays, and screenplays, Bradbury is one of the most widely translated authors in the world and one of the most celebrated writers of our time. His enduring novels and short story collections include The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, The Golden Apples of the Sun, Fahrenheit 451, The October Country, Dandelion Wine, A Medicine for Melancholy, and Something Wicked This Way Comes.
The Read-A-Thon’s on-camera readers will be as diverse as America itself. Some 40 people, selected by participating libraries and institutions, will pre-record a short segment of Fahrenheit 451. Those segments, and a few from celebrity guests, will be edited into one continuous reading of the entire book, creating four hours of thought-provoking entertainment. Some readers will record from their homes, others from their hometown libraries—or from the places where Bradbury himself lived, worked, and explored. Locations will include the historic rooms of the Los Angeles Public Library, the Library of Congress, and the former Carnegie Library building in Waukegan where Bradbury spent much of his childhood lost in books.
Fahrenheit 451, a cautionary dystopian tale about the cost of apathy and the power of curiosity, is one of the most checked-out books at libraries throughout the United States. Viewers of the Read-A-Thon will discover—or rediscover—this redemptive story that is as powerful today as it was when it was first written.
The Participating Partners: Library of Congress, Los Angeles Public Library, and Alliance for Young Artists & Writers and the Contributing Libraries and Institutions are: Anchorage Public Library (Alaska), Athens Regional Library System (Georgia), Boston Public Library (Massachusetts), Broward County Library (Florida), Center for Black Literature at Medgar Evers College, CUNY (New York), Center for Ray Bradbury Studies (Indiana), Charlotte Mecklenburg Library (North Carolina), Columbus Metropolitan Library (Ohio), Cushing Memorial Library & Archives, Texas A&M University Libraries (Texas), Des Moines Public Library and Library Foundation (Iowa), Indian Valley Public Library (Pennsylvania), Pima County Public Library (Arizona), South Pasadena Library (California), The Friends of the Venice Library (California), The Seattle Public Library (Washington), University of Alaska Anchorage Consortium Library (Alaska), University of Iowa Library Special Collections (Iowa), University of Kansas Libraries (Kansas), University of Pittsburgh Library System (Pennsylvania), and the Waukegan Park District and Library (Illinois)
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS: The Library of Congress is the world’s largest library, offering access to the creative record of the United States — and extensive materials from around the world—both on-site and online. It is the main research arm of the U.S. Congress and the home of the U.S. Copyright Office. Explore collections, reference services and other programs at loc.gov; access the official site for U.S. federal legislative information at congress.gov; and register creative works of authorship at copyright.gov.
LOS ANGELES PUBLIC LIBRARY: A recipient of the nation’s highest honor for library service—the National Medal from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Los Angeles Public Library serves the largest and most diverse urban population of any library in the nation. Its Central Library, 72 branch libraries, collection of more than 6 million books and state-of the-art technology accessible at www.lapl.org.
THE ALLIANCE FOR YOUNG ARTISTS AND WRITERS: The Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, presenter of the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, identifies teenagers with exceptional artistic and literary talent and brings their remarkable work to a national audience. Established in 1923 by Maurice R. Robinson, the founder of Scholastic Inc., the Awards are the longest-running, most prestigious recognition program for creative teenagers across America and one of the largest sources of scholarships for young artists and writers. The Awards have an impressive roster of notable Alumni, including Tshabalala Self, Stephen King, Kay Walking Stick, Charles White, Joyce Carol Oates, and Andy Warhol. This past year, the Alliance received 320,000 submissions from 112,000 students, grades 7-12 (ages 13 and up) from across the nation. The Alliance is proud to partner with the Ray Bradbury Foundation to launch the Ray Bradbury Award for Science Fiction and Fantasy as part of its 2021 Awards offerings. artandwriting.org
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This press release was produced by the Pima County Public Library. The views expressed here are the author’s own.