Overlook Thriller Writers at The Mercantile Library Center for Fiction

Thanks to everyone who attended last night's "thrilling" evening with Overlook authors Peter Quinn, Laura Joh Rowland, and R.J. Ellory. And a very special thanks to Kristin, Jordan, Esther, and all the staff at The Center for Fiction for their gracious welcome.

The Mercantile Library Center for Fiction was founded in 1820 by merchants and their clerks before the advent of public libraries. By the mid-nineteenth century, it was thriving as one of the foremost cultural institutions in the United States, with an extraordinary collection of books in the humanities, and a popular lecture program that featured such renowned speakers as William Makepeace Thackeray, Frederick Douglass, and Mark Twain. The Library offered classes on many subjects and was considered a meeting place for social and educational pursuits. The Library currently focuses on collecting and lending fiction, both literary and popular, presenting literary programs for the general public, and renting low-cost space to writers and other literary organizations. It has developed one of the best collections of fiction in the United States and had benefited from six National Endowment for the Humanities grants for literary programming in the past ten years.

Join Overlook Press Authors R.J. Ellory, Peter Quinn, and Laura Joh Rowland in NYC on October 20

Tuesday, October 20, 7pm, at The Center for Fiction, 17 East 47th Street, New York. For more information, 212-755-6710 / www.centerforfiction.org.

Rachel DeWoskin, Author of REPEAT AFTER ME, at The Center for Fiction in NYC on September 30

Meet Rachel DeWoskin, author of Repeat After Me, a novel about a young American ESL teacher, a troubled Chinese radical, and their unexpected New York romance, at the Center for Fiction, Mercantile Library of New York on Wednesday, September 30th at 7pm. Rachel will appear on a program with fellow writers Katie Kitamura and Nancy Mauro.

Rachel DeWoskin was educated at Columbia and Boston University. In 1994, she moved to Beijing, where she worked in public relations before taking a starring role in a hugely successful Chinese soap opera. Her acclaimed first book, Foreign Babes in Beijing, has been published in five languages and is currently being developed as a feature film by Paramount Pictures. In addition to her two books, Rachel's essays and poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Seneca Review, Nerve Magazine, Boston Globe, Boston Magazine, and Teachers & Writers Magazine. The recipient of an American Academy of Poets Award in 2000 and a Grolier Poetry Prize in 2002.