Santa Monica Public Library Announces 2017 Santa Monica Reads Selection: Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel

January 18, 2017 2:59 PM

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Date:  January 18, 2017

Contact:  Robert Graves, Public Services Librarian

Phone: (310) 458-8635

E-mail:  robert.graves@smgov.net

 

 

Santa Monica Public Library Announces 2017 Santa Monica Reads Selection
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel

 

            Santa Monica, California – 2017 marks the fifteenth anniversary of Santa Monica Public Library’s annual community reading program Santa Monica Reads.  Tremendously popular with local residents and visitors, the program invites everyone to read and talk about the same book and its themes in book discussions and special events held throughout the city.  The Library is pleased to announce Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel as the 2017 selection.  This year’s program runs from February 25 through March 30, 2017.

                Every year, the Santa Monica Reads selection committee goes through the list of book titles suggested by community members to choose the next year’s book, and one thing committee members seem to enjoy is selecting something “new,” something that we haven’t done before. In the past that newness factor has usually meant a novel’s topics or themes, but this year we’re really emphasizing the “new.”  Not only are we reading nonfiction for the first time, but we’re reading a format that will be new to many – the graphic memoir.  A subset of the imperfectly named genre known as “graphic novels,” the graphic memoir is a work of biography that employs not only words, but also pictures to tell its story.

                The titular setting of Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home is the Bechdel Funeral Home in Beech Creek, Pennsylvania, where the artist and author grew up with her parents and two brothers.  The comics format memoir is a finely-honed exploration of self, as the author circles her youthful story and her complicated relationship with her enigmatic father, carefully drilling down to find the core truth of her personal identity.  A pioneering work, the book broke ground across many of the genres it straddled – personal memoir, comic arts, coming-of-age tale, coming-out story, narrative nonfiction, and family drama.  Released in 2006, Fun Home became a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and was nominated for several other awards, including three Eisner Awards, one of which it won. In 2015, Fun Home was adapted into a Tony award-winning stage musical.  Coincidentally, the Ahmanson Theatre’s production of Fun Home: The Musical runs concurrently with the Santa Monica Reads program.

Free copies of Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, as well as a resource guide that provides more information on the book, its author and upcoming Santa Monica Reads events, will be available at all Santa Monica Public Library locations beginning Wednesday, January 25, and until supplies last.  Santa Monica Reads is sponsored by the Santa Monica Public Library and the Friends of the Santa Monica Public Library, with additional support from other community, educational and business partners.

Please join us for one or more of the following free special events and book discussions:


Santa Monica Reads book discussions are hosted by trained discussion facilitators and are free and open to the public. Discussion participants are encouraged to share their thoughts about this year’s book selection and its themes, or are welcome to simply listen and learn more about the book.   

 

 

The Santa Monica Public Library and all City of Santa Monica facilities are wheelchair accessible. For special disabled services, call Library Administration at (310) 458-8606 at least one week prior to the event.  For more information, call the Santa Monica Public Library at (310) 458-8600 or visit smpl.org.

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Media Contact

Robert Graves
Librarian III Branch Manager
Robert.Graves@SMGOV.NET

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