Author Luncheon with Sheldon Russell
The library will be hosting award-winning Oklahoma author Sheldon Russell this September. You are invited to this free author event, which includes lunch. Russell’s latest book is the winner of the 2024 Oklahoma Book Award for Fiction. Join us for a reading, book signing, and the opportunity to ask the author questions.
Tuesday, September 17 at 12:00 PM at the Woodward Conference Center located at 3401 Centennial Ln.
Please RSVP. Catering provided by Just Beyond the Door. Contact the library at 580-254-8544 to reserve your seat.
About the Author: Sheldon Russell is a retired professor emeritus from the University of Central Oklahoma and a former public school English teacher. He has authored numerous books, including Listen, winner of the 2024 Oklahoma Book Award for Fiction. Russell has also received the Arrell Gibson Lifetime Achievement Award. He resides in Waynoka, Oklahoma.
Listen by Sheldon Russell
Stripped of opportunity by the Great Depression, educated and ambitious Liam takes a low-paying job with the Federal Writers’ Project, assigned to collect stories of rural life for the Library of Congress in a hot, povertystricken Dust Bowl town in Oklahoma. He’ll take his government check, write the stories, and wait for better times. Then Liam meets a woman who upends all his plans.
Eden Sawyer may be poor, but she’s hardworking and determined. She has dreams; more than that, she has talent. As Liam interviews her, he discovers that Eden longs to be an artist, and has the skill to do it, if only she can break the cycle of poverty that traps her.
Eden leads Liam to an unexpected, unimagined love. But as he interviews more townspeople, Liam’s probing questions steer him into danger, threatening to reveal untold secrets, unsolved mysteries, and unfulfilled passions. Will one man’s simmering jealousy and thwarted ambition bring Liam and Eden’s story to an abrupt and deadly end? (Cynren Press)