Opening Keynote Speaker
Wednesday, April 25, 2018 – 8:00 am
Helen Thorpe will discuss her new book,
The Newcomers: Finding Refuge, Friendship, and Hope in an American Classroom (November 2017).
www.helenthorpe.com
From an award-winning, “meticulously observant” (The New Yorker) writer comes a powerful and moving account of how refugee teenagers at a Denver public high school learn English and become Americans.
The Newcomers follows the lives of twenty-two immigrant teenagers throughout the course of the 2015-2016 school year as they land at South High School in Denver, Colorado, in an English Language Acquisition class created specifically for them. Speaking no English, unfamiliar with American culture, their stories are poignant and remarkable as they face the enormous challenge of adapting. These newcomers, from fourteen to nineteen years old, come from nations convulsed by drought or famine or war. Many come directly from refugee camps, after experiencing dire forms of cataclysm. Some arrive alone, having left or lost every other member of their original family.
At the center of The Newcomers is Mr. Williams, the dedicated and endlessly resourceful teacher of South’s very beginner English Language Acquisition class. If Mr. Williams does his job right, the newcomers will leave his class at the end of the school year with basic English skills and new confidence, their foundation for becoming Americans and finding a place in their new home.
With the US at a political crossroads around questions of immigration, multiculturalism, and America’s role on the global stage, Helen Thorpe presents a fresh and nuanced perspective. The Newcomers is a transformative take on these timely, important issues.
Other books by Ms. Thorpe:
Soldier Girls: The Battles of Three Women at Home and at War (August, 2014),
Just Like Us: The True Story of Four Mexican Girls Coming of Age in America (Sept. 2009)
Closing Bridge Session – Keynote Speaker
Thursday, April 26, 2018 – 4:15 pm
Leonard Mlodinow was born in Chicago, Illinois, received his PhD in theoretical physics from the University of California at Berkeley, and is the author of five best-sellers. His book
The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules our Lives was a New York Times Bestseller, Editor's Choice, and Notable Book of the Year, and was short-listed for the Royal Society book award. His book
Subliminal won the PEN/Wilson award for literary science writing. His other books include two co-authored with physicist Stephen Hawking –
A Briefer History of Time, and
The Grand Design. In addition to his books and research articles, he has taught at Caltech, written for the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and Forbes magazine, among other publications, and for television series such as McGyver and Star Trek: the Next Generation.
www.leonardmlodinow.com
Tattered Cover, one of our local independent bookstores, will be at both of these programs to sell books by these outstanding speakers. Autographs will be available. You may want their current title our some of their earlier works.
www.tatteredcover.com