This Week in LitChat March 4, 2012

LitChat’s World Read Aloud Day 2012 photo-trailer is up. Watch it on YouTube.

This Wednesday is World Read Aloud Day. LitChat is among the hundreds of individuals and organizations participating with public events that feature the written word spoken aloud. Read about LitChat’s WRAD event here. Championing the World Read Aloud Day is author Pam Allyn, founder and executive director of LitWorld. (The similarity in names between LitChat and LitWorld is a happy coincidence. We are two separate organizations with similar missions.)

Allyn joins us as guest host of #litchat on Monday, March 5, to discuss the importance of reading and the efforts of LitWorld to foster literacy around the world. Allyn is the author of the acclaimed and award-winning What To Read When: The Books and Stories To Read With Your Child-And All The Best Times To Read Them (Penguin Avery). Her most recent books are Pam Allyn’s Best Books for Boys: How To Engage Boys in Reading in Ways That Will Change Their Lives (Scholastic) and Your Child’s Writing Life (Penguin Avery). Her work has been featured on Good Morning America, The Today Show, Oprah Radio, The Huffington Post and in The New York Times. Allyn is also the executive director and founder of LitLife, a national organization dedicated to school improvement.

LitChat is hosting a live World Read Aloud Day event at the Depot in Hillsborough, NC on March 7, from 5:30-7:30, with readings by John Claude Bemis, Bill Floyd, A.J. Mayhew, Aaron Belz, Barbara Younger, Linda Hanley Finigan, and Clay Carmichael. The event is free and open to the public. More info here.

If you donate $10 or more to LitWorld between now and March 7th, specifying LitChat as a reference, we will send you a free book. If you do this, please email a copy of your donation receipt to twitchat>a<gmail>.<com, along with your mailing address so we can send your free book. LitWorld is a 501c3 registered non-profit.

On Wednesday, March 7, we’ll discuss ways to enrich people’s lives through reading aloud. The popularity of audio books proves that listing to the written word is not just for children.

Friday Guest Host: Cristina Alger

Then on Friday, March 9, Cristina Alger joins us as guest host to discuss her debut novel, The Darlings. A fully realized cast of characters bring Manhattan and the financial district to life in this novel that eerily echoes the Bernie Madoff debacle and the crush that followed. When the manager of a super-producing hedge fund is suspected of suicide, all eyes look to Delphic, an investment partner with the dead financial master. Founder and CEO of Delphic, Carter Darling, resurrected his family name and fortune from the ruin of his father and will now do anything to save his family from the fall-out. A study of scandal, greed, and pride, The Darlings, examines the dilemma of family loyalty without melodrama or preaching.

With keen insight and insider expertise, Alger, herself an attorney and a Manhattanite of the upper crust, takes readers into the lives of the super-rich and powerful of Manhattan for a sophisticated weekend read.

Alger graduated from Harvard College in 2002 and from New York University School of Law in 2007. She has worked as an analyst at Goldman, Sachs, & Co. and as an attorney at Wilmer, Cutler, Pickering, Hale, & Dorr.  She lives in New York City, where she was born and raised.The Darlings is her first novel and she is currently working on her next book.

Follow Cristina Alger on Twitter: @cristinaalger.