SUNDAY CONCERTS AT THE LIBRARY

THE BARGAIN

SUN | JUNE 7 | 2 PM

FREE & ALL WELCOME | NO REGISTRATION REQUIRED

COLLAGE CLUB

Saturday | May 30th | 11am-1pm

Free. All supplies included. All welcome. No experience necessary.
Hosted by Dorothy. For more information, call the library 203-488-8702 or email dlevine@wwml.org.

STONY CREEK FORUM | A Lecture & Ideas Series

Why Is Everybody Talking About AI (and what is it anyway)?

A PRESENTATION BY JEFFREY DAVITZ

TECHNOLOGIST, SCIENTIST, ENTREPRENEUR

THU | MAY 28 | 7 PM

Stony Creek Forum presents its inaugural event.

Why is Everybody Talking about AI (and what is it anyway)?

Artificial General Intelligence, or AI, is here. Everywhere. Some of us, many of us, are engaging with. Others, not so much. We don’t trust it, don’t know it, or don’t know how or why. What can it do for us, to us? To give us a sense of what we have here in our lives and in our world, we have invited Jeffrey Davitz to tell us more and answer some of our, your, questions. This is the first talk on the subject. Most likely, not the last one.

ABOUT THE TALK

The goal of this non-technical talk is to give the audience a feel for what this new (not so new actually) technology is all about.  What is it?  How does it work?  We’ll be really clear about how far we’ve gotten.   We’ll then switch over to the good and the bad.  How might AI impact us?  What might it help with?  How might it be bad?   Unfortunately, a lot of what is talked about is extreme in both directions, and very unhelpful. The truth is that we don’t know the vast majority of the answers.  We are learning as we go and it’s important that all of us participate in how we develop and apply it.   We are all going to be impacted, and so we all deserve and need to know about this strange new force in our world. 

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

JEFFREY DAVITZ is an experienced technologist, scientist and entrepreneur. He has managed large and small scale advanced technology and development projects in research (Stanford Research Institute and DARPA) and industry. He’s been a principal in all aspects of start-ups, from developing core technology, raising venture capital and managing business and technical teams. He has founded is own ventures and consulted with start-ups and large companies. He did his PhD in Applied Statistics at Columbia University and during graduate school did research at the Complex Systems Group at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Jeffrey lives in Stony Creek.

Willoughby Book & Movie Talk

HAMNET by MAGGIE O’FARRELL

Fri | May 22

Film screening: 5 pm

Talk (& refreshments): 7 pm

Call to register | 203-488-8702

ABOUT THE BOOK

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER

Maggie O’Farrell has written a deeply moving novel about the death of Shakespeare’s eleven-year-old son, Hamnet, and the years leading up to the production of his great play Hamlet.

“Miraculous. . . . Brilliant. . . . A novel told with the urgency of a whispered prayer—or curse. . . . A richly drawn and intimate portrait of 16th-century English life set against the arrival of one devastating death.” —Ron Charles, The Washington Post

England, 1580: The Black Death creeps across the land, an ever-present threat, infecting the healthy, the sick, the old and the young alike. The end of days is near, but life always goes on.

A young Latin tutor—penniless and bullied by a violent father—falls in love with an extraordinary, eccentric young woman. Agnes is a wild creature who walks her family’s land with a falcon on her glove and is known throughout the countryside for her unusual gifts as a healer, understanding plants and potions better than she does people. Once she settles with her husband on Henley Street in Stratford-upon-Avon, she becomes a fiercely protective mother and a steadfast, centrifugal force in the life of her young husband, whose career on the London stage is just taking off when his beloved young son succumbs to sudden fever.

Hamnet is mesmerizing, seductive, impossible to put down–a magnificent leap forward from one of our most gifted novelists.

Reviews

“O’Farrell has a melodic relationship to language. There is a poetic cadence to her writing and a lushness in her descriptions of the natural world. . . . We can smell the tang of the various new leathers in the glover’s workshop, the fragrance of the apples racked a finger-width apart in the winter storage shed. . . . As the book unfolds, it brings its story to a tender and ultimately hopeful conclusion: that even the greatest grief, the most damaged marriage, and most shattered heart might find some solace, some healing.”
—Geraldine Brooks, the New York Times Book Review

“All too timely . . . inspired. . . . [An] exceptional historical novel ”
—The New Yorker

“Magnificent and searing. . . . A family saga so bursting with life, touched by magic, and anchored in affection. . . . Of all the stories that argue and speculate about Shakespeare’s life, about whether he even wrote his own plays, here is a novel that matches him with a woman overwhelmingly more than worthy.”
—The Boston Globe

The Film

Hamnet, 2025, 2h 5m

Director, Chloe Zao

Starring: Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, Zac Wishart

Academy& Bafta award for best actress in a leading role, Jessie Buckley.

Golden Globe award for best film

Wednesday | May 13th | 4-5pm

Make your own bird feeder with a pine cone, sunflower butter, seeds and an wooden ornament decoration!

This is a free, drop-in event held in the library’s outdoor space. No registration necessary

DIY PAPER MAKING

SUNDAY, MAY 10TH AT 2PM

Join visiting artist Bella Bartner for a paper making workshop! Free and open to all ages.

Call to register: 203-488-8702

Artist Talk with Janet Warner

Where the Light Gets In

THU | MAY 7 | 7 PM

In the Keyes Gallery

YOUR THIRD ACT

Life After Retirement

A Series of Four Workshops | 4 Wednesdays in May

5/6, 5/13, 5/20, 5/27

2.00 - 3.30 pm

SHERILYN SCULLY

Please register for the complete series. Call 203-488-8702

Session One | Transition & Curiosity

Wed | May 6 | 2-3.30 pm

ABOUT THE SERIES

Please join us for a discussion-based series where participants engage in group conversations on the topic of transitioning into the “Third Act” or post-retirement phase of life.

Through readings, videos, writing prompts and dialog, participants will emerge from the series with increased clarity of what gives meaning and purpose while navigating the Third Act of life. Even if you are not yet retired and are experiencing another type of crossroads professionally or personally, this series through will give you space for personal reflection as you navigate future.

The course will meet weekly for four consecutive weeks and explore themes of transition, purpose, connection and resources.

Each session is themed by a unique topic:

• SESSION ONE | TRANSITION & CURIOSITY | MAY 6

• SESSION TWO | CLARITY OF PURPOSE | MAY 13

• SESSION THREE | CONNECTING | MAY 20

• SESSION FOUR | EXPERIMENTATION & STORYTELLING | MAY 27

ABOUT THE FACILITATOR

SHERILYN SCULLY served as the long-term Dean of Students and Assistant Dean of Academic Affairs and Student Life of the Yale School of Management.  Her portfolio included lead oversight of student programs and resources including, academic services, academic advising, academic support, and the Professional Communications Center.

Sherilyn has served on the Leadership Conference Advisory Group to the Graduate Management Admissions Council and on the Executive Board of the Student Services Section of the American Association of Law Schools.

She also served as a facilitator for the discussion sections of Yale SOM’s program, the Experienced Leader’s Initiative.

She is a Fellow of Benjamin Franklin College at Yale University.

Prior to her career at Yale, Sherilyn was a practicing attorney in Boston. She also served as the Dean of Students and as an adjunct professor at the Quinnipiac University School of Law. She is a native of Connecticut and resides in the shoreline area of Connecticut with her husband.     

SUNDAY CONCERTS AT THE LIBRARY

THE MATTHEW MCLEAN JAZZ QUARTET

SUN | MAY 3 | 2 PM

FREE & ALL WELCOME | NO REGISTRATION REQUIRED

Willoughby Book Talk

HOW DEMOCRACIES DIE

What History Reveals About Our Future

by

Steven Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt

THU | APR 30 | 7 PM

Call to register 203.488.8702

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The urgent and influential guide to the forces that have undermined democracies across the globe — hailed as “a touchstone” (The New Yorker) that “comes at exactly the right moment” (The Washington Post)WINNER OF THE GOLDSMITH BOOK PRIZE • SHORTLISTED FOR THE LIONEL GELBER PRIZE • A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, Time, Foreign Affairs, WBUR, Paste

“Comprehensive, enlightening, and terrifyingly timely.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)

“[Levitsky and Ziblatt] expand the conversation…to other countries and to the deep structure of American democracy and politics.”—Ezra Klein

The current era has raised a question that many of us never thought we’d be asking: Is our democracy in danger? Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have spent more than twenty years studying the breakdown of democracies in Europe and Latin America, and they believe the answer is yes. Democracy no longer ends with a bang—in a revolution or military coup—but with a whimper: the slow, steady weakening of critical institutions, such as the judiciary and the press, and the gradual erosion of long-standing political norms. The good news is that there are several exit ramps on the road to authoritarianism. The bad news is that, by electing Trump, we have already passed the first one.

Drawing on decades of research and a wide range of historical and global examples, from 1930s Europe to contemporary Hungary, Turkey, and Venezuela, to the American South during Jim Crow, Levitsky and Ziblatt show how democracies die. Now the question is, can our democracy be saved?

REVIEWS

“The most important book of the Trump era was not Bob Woodward’s Fear or Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury or any of the other bestselling exposes of the White House circus. Arguably it was a wonkish tome by two Harvard political scientists, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, published a year into Donald Trump’s presidency and entitled How Democracies Die.”—The Economist

“If you want to understand what’s happening to our country, the book you really need to read is How Democracies Die.”—Paul Krugman

“Scholarly and readable, alarming and level-headed . . . the greatest of the many merits of Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt’s contribution to what will doubtless be the ballooning discipline of democracy death studies is their rejection of western exceptionalism.”—The Guardian

“[An] important new book.”—Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times

“The political-science text in vogue this winter is How Democracies Die.”—The New Yorker

“The great strength of Levitsky and Ziblatt’s How Democracies Die is that it rejects the exceptionalist account of US democracy. Their lens is comparative. The authors say America is not immune to the trends that have led to democracy’s collapse in other parts of the world.”—Financial Times

“A powerful wake-up call.”—Foreign Affairs

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Steven Levitsky

David Rockefeller Professor of Latin American Studies

Steven Levitsky is David Rockefeller Professor of Latin American Studies and Professor of Government and Director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard. He is Senior Fellow at the Kettering Foundation and a Senior Democracy Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. His research focuses on democratization and authoritarianism, political parties, and weak and informal institutions, with a focus on Latin America. He is co-author (with Daniel Ziblatt) of How Democracies Die, which was a New York Times Best-Seller and was published in 30 languages, and Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point. He has written or edited 11 other books, including Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America: Argentine Peronism in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge University Press 2003), Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War (with Lucan Way) (Cambridge University Press, 2010), and Revolution and Dictatorship: The Violent Origins of Durable Authoritarianism (with Lucan Way) (Princeton University Press, 2022).   He and Lucan Way are currently working on a book on democratic resilience across the world.

Professor Levitsky has written for New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, and The New Republic, and he has been a columnist for La Republica (Peru) and Folha de São Paulo (Brazil).

Daniel Ziblatt

Eaton Professor of the Science of Government

Daniel Ziblatt is the Eaton Professor of Government at Harvard University and Director of Harvard University’s Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies. He also leads a research group on democracy and democratic erosion at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center in Germany.

He is the author of four books, including How Democracies Die (Crown, 2018), co-authored with Steve Levitsky, a New York Times best-seller and described by The Economist magazine as “the most important book of the Trump era.” The book has been translated into thirty languages. In 2017, he authored Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2017), an account of the history of democracy in Europe, which won the American Political Science Association’s 2018 Woodrow Wilson Prize for the best book in government and international relations and American Sociological Association’s 2018 Barrington Moore Prize. His first book was an analysis of 19th century state building, Structuring the State: The Formation of Italy and Germany and the Puzzle of Federalism (Princeton, 2006). In Fall 2023, his newest book entitled Tyranny of the Minority (co-authored with Steve Levitsky) puts America’s contemporary transition into a multiracial democracy in comparative and historical perspective, and shows the distinctive vulnerabilities of the U.S. constitutional order.

Ziblatt maintains an active research program that is published in journals such as the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, and World Politics. In 2023, he was elected member of the American Academy for Arts and Sciences.

Everything is the same except the time!

Starting Monday, March 2, our Monday Storytime moves to 4 pm. All are welcome; come every Monday or when you can! No registration required.

Friday’s Stay & Play remains unchanged at 10:30 AM.

SUNDAY CONCERTS AT THE LIBRARY

STILL RIVERS

SUN | APRIL 26 | 2 PM

FREE & ALL WELCOME | NO REGISTRATION REQUIRED

Still Rivers makes music that sounds and feels like a cozy and loving home. Their music explores everyday life and the joys and griefs that come along with it, delving into the human condition, family values, and hopefulness. With Mike’s unique rhythmic guitar style and Chandra’s warm harmonies, they present a familiar yet original bent on the singer songwriter, Americana genre. Still Rivers is Mike and Chandra Rivers. Their new record “Our Little Life” honors family, love, loss, life, and community.

COLLAGE CLUB

Saturday | April 25th | 1pm-3pm*

Free. All supplies included. All welcome. No experience necessary.
Hosted by Dorothy. For more information, call the library 203-488-8702 or email dlevine@wwml.org.

*Please note the time change!

Join us in welcoming back award-winning local author Sara Levine for a book launch of her latest children’s book, A Visit with the Birds: A Hands-on Nature Book.

Reading, activities and discussion. Open to all ages. Call to register: 203-488-8702

AN EVENING WITH FATHER TIME

What does it look like when a sculptor listens to the wood?

Join local artist Alan Horwitz and Three Sisters Sanctuary creator Richard Richardson for a presentation on the creation and installation of Father Time — a large-scale wood sculpture now standing watch at Three Sisters Sanctuary in Goshen, Mass.

THU | APR 23 | 7 PM

Alan will share the story behind the piece — how found wood, natural materials, and artistic vision came together to create a figure that feels less made than discovered. Richard will speak to the sanctuary’s mission and what it meant to welcome Father Time into that sacred landscape.

This is a rare opportunity to hear two artistic collaborators reflect on art, nature, and the partnership that brought an extraordinary work to life in Stony Creek.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Richard M. Richardson is an environmental artist whose work engages nature as both medium and collaborator, incorporating stone, plants, water, and the land itself. He has lived in the Land of Goshen, Massachusetts for over 43 years, where he began building what would become Three Sisters Sanctuary twenty-five years ago—never anticipating the scale it would ultimately reach.

Over time, the Sanctuary has grown into a rich landscape in which art and nature merge, including a healing garden created in response to personal loss and as a source of inspiration. Richardson has found deep fulfillment in witnessing its evolution into a place of striking beauty and reflection. His work is rooted in the hope that visitors will experience serenity, inner peace, and a sense of spiritual connection within the space.

Sharing Three Sisters Sanctuary with others remains central to his artistic practice, as he values the personal meaning and emotional responses it inspires in those who visit.

Alan Horwitz is a natural found-objects artist and sculptor based in Stony Creek whose work is rooted in a deep reverence for the natural world. Drawing inspiration from objects discovered in nature — weathered stone, driftwood shaped by the sea, feathers and fossils — he seeks to honor the inherent beauty of these materials and pass that sense of wonder on to his viewers.

Join us in celebrating Earth day with a drop-in make your own bird feeder workshop.

Open to all ages and no registration required.

NO NUT PRODUCTS WILL BE USED

Everything is the same except the time!

Starting Monday, March 2, our Monday Storytime moves to 4 pm. All are welcome; come every Monday or when you can! No registration required.

Friday’s Stay & Play remains unchanged at 10:30 AM.

Wednesday, April 15th at 2PM—During Branford Public Schools’ Spring Break!

Local raptor rehabilitation organization Blue Moon Raptors returns to lead an educational workshop with four bird ambassadors. Open to all ages. Call to register: 203-488-8702

Everything is the same except the time!

Starting Monday, March 2, our Monday Storytime moves to 4 pm. All are welcome; come every Monday or when you can! No registration required.

Friday’s Stay & Play remains unchanged at 10:30 AM.

Tildẽ Café

A café with an accent on science & the world

WHO OWNS THE MOON & WHO DECIDES ITS FUTURE?

Salman Hameed, Ph.D. 

Charles Taylor Chair and Professor of Integrated Science and Humanities 

Hampshire College

Amherst, MA 

Join Professor Salman Hameed for a timely conversation marking Artemis II’s trip to the moon. Trained in astronomy and deeply engaged in science communication, he brings both expertise and accessibility to this fascinating topic.

SAT | APR 11 | 3 PM

Visit the Tildé Café here for details.

While you wait for April 11, you can catch up with Professor Hameed—also known as “Mr. Universe”—through his shows on New England Public Media. Or you could read the Apollo journals; or about the music that kept Apollo 10 astronauts entertained on their flight; or you could read about the mascot. Whatever you read or listen to, we look forward to seeing you on April 11!

THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION TODAY

Why Did the U.S. Constitution Break So Easily? And Can it be Reassembled?

AN ONLINE CONVERSATION WITH MICHAEL C. DORF

the Robert S. Stevens Professor of Law at Cornell Law School

Thursday, April 9, 7 pm

via Zoom

Call to register | 203.488.8702

Join Professor Michael C. Dorf of Cornell Law School for a timely online conversation about how the current era has tested America’s constitutional system. From executive power to the role of the Supreme Court and the resilience of democratic norms, this discussion will examine what has changed, what has endured, and what the moment reveals about the Constitution’s capacity to withstand political strain.

About the Topic

What happens when long-standing constitutional norms confront intense political polarization and expansive claims of executive power? In this online program, Professor Michael C. Dorf of Cornell Law School examines the impact of the current era on the U.S. Constitution.

The discussion will explore the scope of presidential authority, the separation of powers, the role of the Supreme Court, and the durability of democratic guardrails. Beyond specific controversies, the program asks deeper questions: Has this period revealed structural weaknesses in the constitutional design? Or has it demonstrated the system’s capacity for resilience under stress? Also, how are recent constitutional developments situated in a broader historical context? Professor Dorf’s talk on these issues should provide us with a sharper understanding of how constitutional democracy functions in moments of strain—and what lessons the present moment may hold for the future of American self-government.

About the Speaker

Michael C. Dorf is the Robert S. Stevens Professor of Law at Cornell Law School, where he teaches constitutional law, federal courts, and related subjects. A nationally recognized constitutional scholar, he writes and lectures widely on presidential power, the Supreme Court, and the structure of American government. He is the author of numerous books and scholarly articles and is a frequent commentator on constitutional issues in major media outlets. He earned his A.B. from Harvard University and his J.D. from Harvard Law School, and previously served as a law clerk to Justice Anthony M. Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court. Before joining the Cornell faculty in 2008, Professor Dorf taught at Rutgers-Camden Law School for three years and at Columbia Law School for thirteen years.

Professor Dorf has authored or co-authored well over one hundred scholarly articles and essays for law reviews, books, and peer-reviewed science and social science journals. He is the co-author (with Laurence H. Tribe) of On Reading the Constitution (Harvard University Press, 1991), the co-author (with Trevor Morrison) of The Oxford Introductions to U.S. Law: Constitutional Law (Oxford University Press, 2010), the editor of Constitutional Law Stories (Foundation Press 2004, second edition 2009), the author of No Litmus Test: Law Versus Politics in the 21st Century (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), the co-author (with Sherry F. Colb) of Beating Hearts: Abortion and Animal Rights (Columbia University Press, 2016), and a co-editor of the 12th, 13th, and 14th editions of the Choper et al Constitutional Law casebook (West, 2015, 2019, 2023), the annual Supplement thereto, and the annual compact version of the casebook, Leading Cases.

Professor Dorf writes a bi-weekly column for Justia's web magazine Verdict and posts several times per week on his own blog, Dorf on Law.

He maintains an active pro bono practice that chiefly consists of writing amicus briefs in Supreme Court cases. He teaches constitutional law, federal courts, and various seminars, and is a recipient of the 2026 Provost Award for Teaching Excellence in Graduate and Professional Degree Programs.

Source

Everything is the same except the time!

Starting Monday, March 2, our Monday Storytime moves to 4 pm. All are welcome; come every Monday or when you can! No registration required.

Friday’s Stay & Play remains unchanged at 10:30 AM.

WILLOUGHBY WRITERS GROUP

A gathering of local writers working in fiction and nonfiction.

First and third Thursdays of the month.

Membership is limited. Please call for details.

CONTACT: Rabia.

rali@wwml.org / 203.488.8702

Everything is the same except the time!

Starting Monday, March 2, our Monday Storytime moves to 4 pm. All are welcome; come every Monday or when you can! No registration required.

Friday’s Stay & Play remains unchanged at 10:30 AM.

SUNDAY CONCERTS AT THE LIBRARY

INNER GROOVE

SUN | MARCH 29 | 2 PM

“An eclectic, but popular mix of rock and classic rock, pop and country” inner groove’s repertoire includes top hits, oldies and original songs!

Free. Join us. All welcome!

COLLAGE CLUB

Saturday | March 28th | 11am-1pm

Free. All supplies included. All welcome. No experience necessary.

Hosted by Dorothy. For more information, call the library 203-488-8702 or email dlevine@wwml.org.

WILLOUGHBY BOOK + FILM CLUB

Small Things Like These

by Claire Keegan

FRIDAY | 27 MARCH

Movie Screening: 5.30 pm

Book & Film Talk: 7 pm

Read the book, watch the movie. Let’s Talk.

Call to register: 203-488-8702

Pick up a copy of the book at the library.

Also available on Hoopla & Libby with your library membership.

For home viewing, the movie is also streaming on several channels including Apple TV, Amazon Prime, YouTube.

HOW IT WORKS

• Read the book.

• Watch the film at home at your leisure or come to the screening at the library.

• Screening time is 5.30. If you’ve already watched film, come at 7 for the discussion.

  Tea & cookies will be served. Maybe popcorn!

What this is

• You may have read the book or watched the movie or done both.

• Was the movie as good as the book?

• Better than the book?

• Ruin the book?

• Or makeyou go back to re-read the book?

• Or, maybe, you didn't even know there was a movie -- or a book!

We meet every alternate month for a fun, serious, engaging discussion about all of it, and more. Over tea & cookies. (Maybe, popcorn!)

Open to all. No fixed membership.

Call to register ahead of the event date.

How it works:

• You read the book. You watch the movie. You come to the library on the appointed date ready to share or to listen.

• Copies of the book will be available at the library.

• The movie will be screened on the day, just before our book-to-movie talk for those who have not watched it online. (Streaming on several channels.)

• Come for the movie, stay for the conversation.

Have a wonderful evening.

THE BOOK

Claire Keegan’s multi-award-winning, bestselling novel Small Things Like These.

The Irish Times #1 Best Book of the 21st Century

Shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize

One of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century

It is 1985, in an Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal and timber merchant, faces into his busiest season. As he does the rounds, he feels the past rising up to meet him — and encounters the complicit silences of a people controlled by the Church.

“This exquisite miniature of a novel somehow defies the gravitational pull of its grim subject to hover in a quotidian, luminous present. Details materialize with preternatural clarity. The milky light of a winter afternoon, mist on a river, a woman opening an oven door, a child taking her father’s hand: We see these things and feel their lingering presence as we are drawn into the life of an unassuming man in an unremarkable place.”—Wall Street Journal

“I haven’t stopped thinking about [this] book, both because of Keegan’s luminous prose and because of the crisis of conscience that unspools within its pages.”—The New Yorker, “The Year in Reading” Selection.

THE AUTHOR

Claire Keegan’s works of fiction are internationally acclaimed and have been translated into thirty languages. Antarctica won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. Walk the Blue Fields won the Edge Hill Prize for the finest collection of stories published in the British Isles. Foster won the Davy Byrnes Award—then the world’s richest prize for a short story. Small Things Like These, a New York Times Best Book of the 21st Century, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Rathbones Folio Prize and won the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction and The Kerry Prize for Irish Novel of the Year. So Late in the Day was longlisted for the Story Prize. She was awarded Woman of the Year for Literature in Ireland (2022), Author of the Year (2023), the Seamus Heaney Award for Arts and Letters, and the Siegfried Lenz Award (2024).

THE FILM

The film adaptation of the book directed by Tim Meilants, starring Cillian Murphy, Emily Watson, Michelle Fairley.

2024 Nominee Golden Berlin Bear Best Film, Berlin International Film Festival

2025 Best Lead Actor, Cillian Murphy, Irish Film and Television Awards.

2025 Best Film, Irish Film and Television Awards.

“Small Things Like These casts a powerful spell.

Fresh from his best actor Oscar win for Oppenheimer, Cillian Murphy produces and stars as melancholic Bill Furlong, who can’t seem to look anyone in the eye. Bill was born out of wedlock, born into shame, but now has a home and a family and a job hauling truckloads of coal around town. His life is fine, or at least an improvement on what went before. Then one winter morning he discovers a young woman in the shed outside the local Magdalene laundry. The past is not dead; it is still whispering in his ear.” — The Guardian

“…a marvel of a performance, extremely expressive and yet deeply inward-looking…”

“…haunting, meditative, and quietly devastating…”

“…I was so rapt, so caught up in this film, that I wasn’t aware that it was going to be the ending until the screen faded to black…”

Everything is the same except the time!

Starting Monday, March 2, our Monday Storytime moves to 4 pm. All are welcome; come every Monday or when you can! No registration required.

Friday’s Stay & Play remains unchanged at 10:30 AM.