University Libraries Participate in First Annual Ray Bradbury Read-A-Thon
By Marketing and Communications | 08-11-2020
On Saturday, August 22, 2020 at 4:30 pm EST, readers from across the nation will gather to watch a virtual reading of Bradbury’s classic novel Fahrenheit 451 streamed over YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. Participating partners for this extraordinary event celebrating the centennial of Bradbury’s birth will include Jeremy Brett, Science Fiction and Fantasy Curator at Cushing Memorial Library and Archives.
The Read-A-Thon’s on-camera readers will pre-record a short segment of Fahrenheit 451 that will be edited into one continuous reading of the entire book. The readings can be viewed on the below channels.
Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/bradbury.451/),
YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZfddnMsyxERc0NSODTI2lw), and
Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/Ray-Bradbury-Read-A-Thon-102937074856191/).
and a Facebook event has been created: https://www.facebook.com/events/217495333007350/
After the initial broadcast, the Read-A-Thon will be available until September 5, 2020.
Ray Bradbury’s contribution to the literary landscape and our collective imagination made him one of the best-known writers of our time. His books now sit on library shelves alongside the works of authors he read in his youth at the Carnegie Library in Waukegan, Illinois. After his family moved to Los Angeles during the Great Depression, he discovered the stacks of the Venice library and many others: no matter where he lived, the library was his school. As Bradbury would later say:
“I’m completely library educated. Libraries are absolutely at the center of my life. Since I couldn’t afford to go to college, I attended the library three or four days a week from the age of eighteen on, and graduated from the library when I was twenty-eight.”
Fahrenheit 451, a cautionary dystopian tale about the cost of apathy and the power of curiosity, is one of the most checked-out books at libraries throughout the United States. Viewers of the Read-A-Thon will discover—or rediscover—this redemptive story that is as powerful today as it was when it was first written. www.raybradbury.com
The Participating Partners: Library of Congress, Los Angeles Public Library, and Alliance for Young Artists & Writers and the Contributing Libraries and Institutions are: Anchorage Public Library (Alaska), Athens Regional Library System (Georgia), Boston Public Library (Massachusetts), Broward County Library (Florida), Center for Black Literature at Medgar Evers College, CUNY (New York), Center for Ray Bradbury Studies (Indiana), Central Arkansas Library System (Arkansas), Charlotte Mecklenburg Library (North Carolina), Columbus Metropolitan Library (Ohio), Cushing Memorial Library & Archives, Texas A&M University (Texas), Des Moines Public Library and Library Foundation (Ohio), Indian Valley Public Library (Pennsylvania), Pima County Public Library (Arizona), San Francisco Public Library (California), South Pasadena Library (California), The Friends of the Venice Library (California), The Seattle Public Library (Washington), University of Alaska Anchorage Consortium Library (Alaska), University of Iowa Library Special Collections (Iowa), University of Kansas Libraries (Kansas), University of Pittsburgh Library System (Pennsylvania), and the Waukegan Parks District and Library (Illinois)
RAY BRADBURY • www.raybradbury.com
In a career that spanned more than seventy years, Ray Bradbury inspired generations of readers in a wide variety of genres to dream, think, and create. A prolific author of more than four hundred published short stories and close to fifty books, as well as numerous essays, plays, operas, teleplays, and screenplays, Bradbury is one of the most widely translated authors in the world and one of the most celebrated writers of our time. His enduring novels and short story collections include The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, The Golden Apples of the Sun, Fahrenheit 451, The October Country, Dandelion Wine, A Medicine for Melancholy, and Something Wicked This Way Comes. RayBradbury.com
Media Contact: Patrick Zinn, Director of Marketing, Texas A&M University Libraries
979-845-4265 or pzinn@library.tamu.edu