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The Big Read Northern Chautauqua was launched this month in Reed Library with a lecture on author Willa Cather and the opening of an exhibit. This year’s Big Read novel is Willa Cather’s “My Antonia.”
The Big Read is a nationwide program to promote literacy which is sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts. For the third year in a row, SUNY Fredonia's Reed Library has received a Big Read grant from the NEA, in conjunction with Arts Midwest.
The grant enables Reed Library to purchase books for distribution to public libraries and reading groups in both counties. New participants this year include readers in the Cattaraugus County Jail, the Chautauqua County Youth Incarceration Center, and the New York State Shock Incarceration Facility.
Opening events on Feb. 10 including the unveiling of a new Reed Library exhibit featuring rural farm life as depicted in the Cather novel, "My Antonia." The items on display in the library include a Willa Cather artifact photography exhibit by Betty Kort of Nebraska; New York farm equipment loaned from the Chautauqua County Fairgrounds; and antique farm tools loaned by local residents.
The library also featured a guest lecture by Cather expert Susan McGee, a member of the English Department faculty at SUNY Fredonia. She spoke Feb. 10 talk at the opening event on how Willa Cather's novels contributed to the tradition of frontier literature.
Another Big Read project at SUNY Fredonia is taking place in the academic curriculum. Under the mentorship of Dr. Emily Vandette and Dr. Jeanette McVicker of the English Department, SUNY Fredonia students are earning college credit in "service learning" projects by undertaking Big Read outreach programs to a local nursing home and developing programming ideas for rural public libraries.
For more information on The Big Read, please contact Randolph Gadikian, University Librarian, at Randolph.Gadikian@fredonia.edu.
