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Banned Books Author Talk

An Evening with Mark Oppenheimer and Stefan Fatsis

A discussion about Judy Blume and the Merriam-Webster dictionary.

Join the Library and Loyalty Bookstores for a Banned Books Week double feature. Mark Oppenheimer and Stefan Fatsis will discuss their recent books exploring two icons of American letters: Judy Blume and the Merriam-Webster Dictionary! This will be a fascinating discussion of the world of dictionaries, children's literature, and the importance of free expression.

Books will be available for sale and signing following the event. 

About the books

Unabridged: The Thrill of and Threat to the Modern Dictionary: Words are the currency of culture—and never more than today. From selfie to doomscrolling to rizz, our hyper-connected digital world coins and spreads new words with lightning speed and locks them into mainstream consciousness with unprecedented influence. Journalist and bestselling author Stefan Fatsis embedded as a lexicographer-in-training at America’s most famous dictionary publisher, Merriam-Webster, to learn how words get into the dictionary, where they come from, who decides what they mean, and how we write and think about them. As he recounts in Unabridged, he discovered the history and fascinating subculture of the dictionary and of those who curate and revere “one of the most basic features of our collective humanity.” Fatsis reveals the little-known story of how the brothers George and Charles Merriam acquired Noah Webster’s original American dictionary and reshaped the business of language forever. Merriam-Webster became America’s most successful and enduring compendium of words, withstanding intense competition and cultural controversies—only to be threatened by the power of Google and artificial intelligence today.

Judy Blume: To know the name Judy Blume is to know and love literature. Her influential novels turned classics—including Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret; Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing; Deenie; and Summer Sisters—touched the lives of tens of millions of readers. For more than fifty-five years her work has done something revolutionary: it rewired the world’s expectations of what literature for young people can be—frank, candid, earthy, and unafraid to show the messier sides of humanity. But little is known about the real woman behind the iconic persona, and the unlikely journey of her literary ascension, until now. In Judy Blume, journalist, historian, and longtime Blume aficionado Mark Oppenheimer pens a beautiful, multidimensional portrait of the acclaimed author through extensive interviews with Blume herself, invaluable access to her papers and correspondence, and thoughtful analysis of Blume’s beloved novels, including early, unpublished works that shed light on the pathbreaking writer she would become. Oppenheimer goes deep, exploring Blume’s middle-class 1950s upbringing, complicated childhood, varied relationships and marriages, unabashed sexual experiences, bouts of heartache and loss, and enduring legacy as a champion of free speech and contemporary literature. Oppenheimer peels back the curtain to reveal the woman behind the literary empire in all her complex, multifaceted glory—a true gift for anyone who grew up reading and loving these extraordinary books.

About the authors

Stefan Fatsis is the author of the New York Times bestseller Word Freak, about the world of competitive Scrabble; A Few Seconds of Panic, about life in the National Football League; and Wild and Outside, about minor league baseball. His latest book, Unabridged: The Thrill of (and Threat to) the Modern Dictionary will be published in October by Grove Atlantic. In four decades as a journalist, Fatsis has written and talked for Slate, the Wall Street Journal, NPR, the New York Times, Sports Illustrated, and many other outlets. He lives in Washington, D.C.

Mark Oppenheimer has been covering American religion for 25 years. He holds a Ph.D. in religious studies from Yale, and has taught at Stanford, Wesleyan, Wellesley, NYU, Boston College, and Yale, where he was the founding director of the Yale Journalism Initiative. From 2010 to 2016, he wrote the “Beliefs” column, about religion, for The New York Times, and he has also written for publications including The New Yorker, The Nation, GQ, Slate, and many more. He created Unorthodox, the world’s most popular podcast about Jewish life and culture, with over 7 million downloads to date. More recently, he hosted an eight-part podcast called Gatecrashers, about the history of Jews and antisemitism at Ivy League schools. He is the author of five books, including The Newish Jewish Encyclopedia and, most recently, Squirrel Hill: The Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting and the Soul of a Neighborhood. He lives in Connecticut with his wife, four daughters, one son, and two dogs.
 
 
 

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