Were You Creative During Pandemic? Maplewood Ideas Festival To Return Next Week

MAPLEWOOD, NJ — The Maplewood Ideas Festival will return for 2022 with speakers including a food editor, a doctor, authors, and Broadway actors. Many are Maplewood residents.

The annual series of events, hosted by the library, runs for two weeks.

Scheduled events for the first week include:

Ideas Festival 2022: Theater Panel: Managing Creatively During the Pandemic

• Monday, April 18, 2022
• 7-8:30 p.m.
• The Woodland (map)

Actors and Maplewood residents Sandy Rustin, Becky Gulsvig and Sara Farrington will talk about what kept their creativity and enthusiasm for their craft alive during the pandemic.

Sandy Rustin is an actress and award-winning playwright. She lives in Maplewood and is the Founding Co-Artistic Director of Midtown Direct Rep. Her adaptation of the cult-hit film, Clue, recently finished a successful run at The Papermill Playhouse.
Becky Gulsvig is a singer, actor and dancer. She lives in Maplewood and has performed on and Off-Broadway, on TV and in commercials. Her most recent role was as Beverly in the national tour of Come From Away.
Sara Farrington is a playwright and co-founder of the Foxy Films theater company. She and Foxy Films have been critically acclaimed in the New York Times, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, The Village Voice and many more. Recent work includes Mendacity and Brando Capote. Sara lives in Maplewood with her husband Reid and sons Jack and Levi.

Ideas Festival 2022: Emma Laperruque of Food 52 (virtual)

• Tuesday, April 19, 2022
• 7-8 p.m.

Emma Laperruque is the food editor at Food52 and an award-winning columnist for Big Little Recipes. Emma’s debut cookbook, Food 52’s Big Little Recipes, inspired by her column, is a clever cookbook featuring 60 new recipes using five or fewer ingredients.

Previously, she worked as a line cook, middle-of-the-night baker, and journalist. She lives in Maplewood with her husband and their cat, Butter.

Food52 is a leading innovator in the food, cooking, and home space. The brand was founded to be the best, most comprehensive resource for people who see food as the center of a well-lived life.
This is a virtual program. Register here.

Emma will be in conversation with Hank Zona, wine educator and Events Professional. Hank, who lives in Maplewood hosts events and produces wine-related content. He has written about wine and spirits for Travel+Leisure, The Wall Street Journal, Food52, Edible Jersey and Jersey's Best. You can find him on social media at The Grapes Unwrapped.

Ideas Festival 2022: Dr. Joshua Sharfstein

• Wednesday, April 20, 2022
• 7-8 p.m.
• The Woodland (map)

Dr. Joshua M. Sharfstein is a Professor of the Practice in Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where he also serves as Vice Dean for Public Health Practice and Community Engagement. He is the Director of the Bloomberg American Health Initiative.

He works to develop and promote public health strategies, healthcare payment approaches, and regulatory policies that advance health and equity.

A pediatrician by training, he is a former health commissioner of Baltimore, Principal Deputy Commissioner of the U.S. FDA.

Ideas Festival 2022: Ibi Zoboi, Maplewood Literary Award

• Friday, April 22, 2022
• 7-8 p.m.
• The Woodland (map)

Ibi Zoboi is an award-winning author of books for children and young adults. Her writing has been published in The New York Times Book Review, Horn Book Magazine, and The Rumpus, among others. She will be presented with the Maplewood Literary Award.

Ibi holds an MFA in Writing for Children & Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts. As an educator, she is the recipient of several grants from the Brooklyn Arts Council for her community-based programs for teen girls in both Brooklyn and Haiti.

She’s worked for arts organizations such as Teachers & Writers Collaborative and Community Word Project as a writer-in-residence and teaching artist in New York City public schools.

She is also the co-author of the Walter Award-winning Punching the Air, with prison reform activist, Dr. Yusef Salaam of the Exonerated Five, and editor of Black Enough: Stories of Being Young and Black in America. Her debut picture book, The People Remember, received a Coretta Scott King Book Honor Award.

Her most recent books are Star Child: a Biographical Constellation of Octavia Estelle Butler, and Okoye to the People: a Black Panther Novel, for Marvel.

Ibi Zoboi was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and currently lives in Maplewood with her husband and three children.

Copies of her books will be available for sale and signing.

Other Scheduled Events

To see events scheduled for the following week and find out more, click here: Maplewood Ideas Festival

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