NEWS RELEASE: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE               DATE: 2/26/08 CONTACT: LESLIE SCHALER, COMMUNICATION ASST., (413) 545-0162 FRIENDS OF THE UMASS AMHERST LIBRARIES HOST SIXTH ANNUAL RECEPTION AND DINNER “Dinner with Friends” is April 5, 2008   Amherst, Mass. – On Saturday, April 5, 2008, at 6:30 p.m., the Friends of the UMass Amherst Libraries will host the sixth annual “Dinner with Friends” in the Learning Commons at the W.E.B. Du Bois Library on the UMass Amherst campus. The event features talks by three notable speakers— author Carole O’Malley Gaunt, filmmaker Edward Klekowski, and author Jane Yolen (speakers’ bios follow), a champagne and hors d’oeuvre reception with the Kurian/Nix duo, and a gourmet dinner.  Tickets are $125 per person or $225 for two (of which $90 is tax-deductible, $155 for two).  Complimentary passes for the parking garage will be provided.  Handicap parking is available next to the Library.  Last year, attendees and sponsors raised over $20,000 for the Library.  Corporate sponsors of the 2008 “Dinner with Friends” to date include Accounting and Tax Associates, Inc.; Ben Barnhart Photography; Bonbons de Bourguignon®; Brattle Book Shop; Andrea Burns Photography; EBSCO; Elsevier; Ex Libris; Gale, a part of Cengage Learning; Jeffery Amherst Bookshop; MicroTek, Inc.; OFI Contract Interiors, Prime Time Plus, Inc.; Print Associates; ProQuest; Shatz, Schwartz and Fentin, P.C; Taylor Rental; UMass Amherst Alumni Association; UMass Catering; UMass Press; University Mail Services; University Printing; and WGBY.  The evening is a key fundraising event for the UMass Amherst Library, the largest public research library in the region.  All proceeds will benefit the 21st Century Library Technology Fund for technological initiatives. The UMass Amherst Library is open to all residents of Massachusetts, offering a rich array of resources and services.  For more information and to make reservations, contact Emily Silverman at the UMass Amherst Library at (413) 545-0995, email friends@library.umass.edu, or visit the Dinner with Friends web site: http://www.library.umass.edu/dinner. Dinner with Friends, April 5, 2008 – Speakers’ bios: Carole O’Malley Gaunt is the author of Hungry Hill a memoir of growing up in an Irish-Catholic working-class neighborhood in Springfield, Massachusetts.  A UMass Amherst alumna and an award-winning playwright, Gaunt lives with her husband in New York City and Sag Harbor, N.Y.  “Hungry Hill covers the years 1959 to 1963, when Gaunt graduated from high school.  Her memoir viscerally connects to readers with the hopes and losses she lived with then,” says Chuck Leddy of the Boston Globe. “What readers will take away from it, besides Gaunt’s skillful wielding of language and narrative structure, is a sense of this Irish-Catholic teenager as a survivor who pushes back against the terrible tide of loss to seek her footing in the wider world.” Ed Klekowski joined the UMass Amherst faculty as an assistant professor of biology in 1968 and retired in 2005.  He is currently an adjunct professor of history.  Klekowski has published more than 80 scientific papers in the area of evolutionary genetics and has been a visiting scholar at the University of Freiburg in Germany, and Cambridge University and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in England.  His documentary films include: Under Quabbin: The Search for the Lost Towns; The Great Flood of 1936: The Connecticut River Story; and Dynamite, Whiskey and Wood—The Connecticut River Log Drives 1870-1915.  His current documentary projects have moved from the Connecticut River to the First World War battlefields of France, but they still focus on New England history.    Jane Yolen is an author of children's books, fantasy, and science fiction, including Owl Moon, Devil's Arithmetic, and How do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight? She is also a poet, a teacher of writing and literature, and a reviewer of children's literature.  In her mastery of many genres she has been compared to Hans Christian Andersen; in her skill and resourcefulness in drawing from myth and folklore she has been likened to Aesop.  Both comparisons are apt, but neither does justice to her ability to write for readers of all ages, to her boundless innovativeness, and to the consistent strain of social conscience that runs through her work.  Dozens of honors have been bestowed upon Yolen’s books and stories, including the Caldecott Medal, two Nebula Awards, two Christopher Medals, the World Fantasy Award, and three Mythopoeic Fantasy Awards.  So universal is her appeal that her work has been translated into Japanese, French, Spanish, Chinese, German, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Afrikaans, !Xhosa, Portuguese, and Braille.