Booklist Editors in Conversation with Authors Katherine Boo and Christian Kiefer, ALA Virtual Conference

CHICAGO — Back by popular demand as part of the annual ALA Virtual Conference (July 18 and 19, 2012), Booklist editors Brad Hooper and Donna Seaman will host 30-minute author lunches, interviewing popular and thought-provoking authors Katherine Boo and Christian Kiefer.

Katherine Boo is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author known primarily for writing about America’s poor and disadvantaged. A staff writer at The New Yorker, her most recent book is the acclaimed “Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity.” The book is described as “a landmark work of narrative nonfiction that tells the dramatic and sometimes heartbreaking story of families striving toward a better life in one of the twenty-first century’s great, unequal cities… . Based on three years of uncompromising reporting, a bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human.” Boo’s self-deprecating, insightful approach to her work will make for an unmissable conversation with Hooper on Wednesday, July 18.

An active poet, songwriter and recording artist, Christian Kiefer has just published his first novel, “The Infinite Tides,” described in a Publisher’s Weekly review as an “astute, impressive, and ambitious debut." Kiefer will speak about the novel and other topics with Seaman on Thursday, July 19. “The Infinite Tides” is a portrait of a man clearly on the autism spectrum, but not a stereotypically dysfunctional savant. Lyrical and intensely believable, the book is thought-provoking and honest and includes some beautiful descriptions of space exploration and mathematics. Kiefer is on the English faculty of American River College in Sacramento, Calif.

These authors complement well the Virtual Conference theme “Mapping Transformation.” The conference offers two days of interactive Web sessions, conversations and insights from experts, highlighting how new services are transforming both libraries and communities. Sessions offer starting points for discussion as well as practical ideas for experimenting, moving forward and trying something new.