Freedom to Read

HEATHER BOOTH is the Audiobooks Editor for Booklist and a reader’s advisory librarian at the Helen Plum Library in Lombard, IL. She is also serving her third term as a trustee at the Westmont Public Library. Booth, the mother of two teens, has focused on teen services, and has been involved in facing book challenges and preserving our freedom to read.

ANNA CLAUSSEN is the Policy and Outreach Coordinator – Libraries for the Illinois Secretary of State.

A Chicago-based author, SARA PARETSKY is one of only four living writers to have received both the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America and the Cartier Diamond Dagger from the Crime Writers Association of Great Britain. Her latest V. I. Warshawski novel is Pay Dirt. Paretsky is an ardent freedom of speech advocate.

DONNA SEAMAN is the Adult Books Editor for Booklist. A recipient of the Louis Shores Award for excellence in book reviewing and the Studs Terkel Humanities Service Award, Seaman is a member of the Content Leadership Team for the American Writers Museum and an adjunct professor for Northwestern University’s MA in Writing and MFA in Prose and Poetry Programs. Seaman’s author interviews are collected in Writers on the Air and she is the author of Identity Unknown: Rediscovering Seven American Women Artists. River of Books: A Life in Reading, will be out fall 2024.

Books by these writers:
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Identity Unknown: Rediscovering Seven American Women Artists by Donna Seaman

An award-winning writer rescues seven first-rate 20th-century women artists from oblivion—their lives fascinating, their artwork a revelation.

Pay Dirt by Sara Paretsky

Legendary detective V.I. Warshawski uncovers a mystery with roots dating back to the Civil War in this edge-of-your-seat thriller.