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2010 Literary Picnic Season
Thurber House is pleased to offer another fantastic summer lineup of outdoor picnics and readings with authors who have an Ohio connection. So please join us on the Thurber House lawn for five evenings of good friends, good food, and great books.
- Tickets are $25 in advance for the dinner and reading. Dinner reservations must be made by 4:00 p.m. the Monday prior to each Picnic.
- Reading only tickets are$15 for adults and $5 for children 12 and under.
- A full series of all 5 picnics is $100. This includes the dinner and reading.
- You can also order a mini-series that includes one ticket to any three picnics of your choice for $65 for the dinner and reading.
Please help Thurber House support the Mid-Ohio Food Bank this picnic season!
For the 2010 Literary Picnic Season, Thurber House will once again be collecting canned and boxed goods at each event to support the Mid-Ohio Food Bank.
Please consider bringing any canned and boxed goods you can spare when you
attend any of our picnics this summer.
Click here for ticket information or to purchase tickets online.
A Thurber Treat
©Will Shively
Wednesday, June 16, 6:15 p.m. Picnic; 7:00 p.m. Reading
Rainsite: State Auto, 518 E. Broad Street.
The 2010 season will kick off with the Thurber Treat, our annual contest that invites writers to try their hand at a Thurber related theme. This year writers were asked to choose one Thurber cartoon from a predetermined selection and come up with a new caption and then elaborate on the caption with an amusing story. Cheri Mitchell, Executive Director of BalletMet, will be the host for the evening. The top three contest winners of the Thurber Treat will read their entries.
MENU: Smoked turkey with Muenster cheese, roasted red peppers and honey mustard wraps; penne pasta salad with broccoli, Swiss cheese, mushroom, green onion and Italian vinaigrette; turtle brownies.
Vegetarian option available.
Click here to order tickets.
Top Carrie Bebris
 
©Becky McAnulty
Wednesday, June 30, 6:15 p.m. Picnic; 7:00 p.m. Reading
Rainsite: State Auto, 518 E. Broad Street.
Winner of numerous mystery awards, including the Daphne du Maurier Award, Carrie Bebris is known for her beloved Mr. & Mrs. Darcy mysteries which are acclaimed for how they capture Jane Austen’s Regency England while reminding readers of the adventures of Nick and Nora Charles. Her fifth and latest in the series is The Intrigue at Highbury (or Emma’s Match), and it finds the Darcys investigating the connection between a robbery and a murder by poison in a family that may have something sinister to hide. Bebris is also the author of two fantasy novels and is a lifetime member of the Jane Austen Society of North America.
MENU: Chicken salad with cranberries and toasted pecans on a croissant; fresh fruit salad with pineapple, grapes, strawberries and melons; key lime bars.
Vegetarian option available.
Click here to order tickets.
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New Voices
Wednesday, July 14, 6:15 p.m. Picnic; 7:00 p.m. Reading
Rainsite: Thurber Center, 91 Jefferson Avenue
Back by popular demand, Thurber House presents a Summer Picnic highlighting emerging authors of fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction. All three authors have been published, and all three are Ohio connected. Each author will read from her works individually.
Carla Buckley – Fiction
 
©J. Brian Killian
Carla Buckley has worked in a variety of jobs, including a stint as an assistant press secretary to a U.S. senator and as an analyst with the Smithsonian
Institute. She will read from her debut novel, The Things that Keep Us Here. With the city of Columbus as a backdrop, this is a chilling look at what could happen when a virulent pandemic makes a terrible leap across the ocean to America’s heartland, and how one family struggles to survive in the face of mounting uncertainty.
Sarah Gridley – Poetry
 
©Sarah Gridley
Sarah Gridley is the author of two books of poetry: Weather Eye Open and Green is the Orator. Her poems have appeared in various print and online journals, including Crazyhorse, Denver Quarterly,Gulf Coast, jubilat, Kenyon Review Online, New American Poetry and Slope. She is a recipient of an Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council and a Creative Workforce Fellowship from the Community Partnership for Arts and and Culture. She is an assistant professor of English at Case Western Reserve University.
Paula McLain – Non Fiction
 
©Stephen Cutri
Paula McLain received her MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan, and has since been a resident at Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, and has received fellowships from both the Ohio Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts. In addition to two books of poetry and a novel, McLain is the author of the memoir, Like Family: Growing
Up in Other People’s Houses, a searing
portrait of three young sisters who are abandoned by their parents and raised as wards of the Fresno County, California court. She teaches at John Carroll University.
MENU: Cappicola ham, pepperoni and salami with provolone cheese and pesto on petite rolls; ranch pasta salad with broccoli, red onion, grape tomatoes, green pepper, carrots, celery and parmesan cheese; gourmet cookie assortment.
Vegetarian option available.
Click here to order tickets.
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Craig McDonald
 
©Shani McDonald
Wednesday, July 28, 6:15 p.m. Picnic; 7:00 p.m. Reading
Rainsite: State Auto, 518 E. Broad Street.
Award-winning journalist and crime writer, Craig McDonald is the author of the Edgar nominated Hector Lassiter series that includes Head Games and Toros & Torsos. He will read from the latest in the series, Print the Legend, a literary thriller about Ernest Hemingway’s death and the patina that perceived suicide lends the author’s legend. Hemingway’s old friend, crime novelist Hector Lassiter, digs into the mystery of some lost writings and uncovers an audacious conspiracy linked to J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI. McDonald is also the author of two books, Art in the Blood and Rogue Males, which are compilations of his interviews with other crime novelists including Elmore Leonard, Lee Child and Michael Connelly.
MENU: Teriyaki chicken breasts with provolone cheese on fresh sesame roll; Asian broccoli salad with sunflower seeds, green onions, almonds and ramen noodles; raspberry almond bars.
Vegetarian option available.
Click here to order tickets.
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Sharon Davies
©Tyler Michaels
Wednesday, August 11, 6:15 p.m. Picnic; 7:00 p.m. Reading
Rainsite: State Auto, 518 E. Broad Street.
In her harrowing book, Rising Road: A True Tale of Love, Race, and Religion in America, Sharon Davies sheds new light on the all but forgotten murder of Father Coyle in 1912 Birmingham, Alabama, and the subsequent trial of the man who shot him, Reverend Edwin Stephenson, where one of the defense lawyers was future Supreme Court Justice, Hugo Black. Placing this story in full social and historical context, Davies brings to life a heinous crime and its aftermath in an in-depth examination of the consequences of prejudice in the Jim Crow era. Davies is the John C. Elam/Vorys Sater Designated Professor of Law at OSU’s Moritz College of Law and a specialist in criminal law and procedure.
MENU: Mild Buffalo chicken wraps with bleu cheese and celery; tri-colored orzo salad with arugula, feta cheese, toasted pine nuts and dried cherries; triple-chocolate brownies.
Vegetarian option available.
Click here to order tickets.
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Special thanks to American Electric Power for its ongoing support of this series.
Thanks also to our media sponsor, WOSU Public Media, to The Westin Columbus, and Party Panache catering.
Our thanks to the Greater Columbus Arts Council, the Ohio Arts Council, and to the Barbara J. Haddox and the Frederic W. and Elizabeth E. Heimberger funds of the Columbus Foundation for their ongoing support.
  
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