The Tolland Public Library Foundation will mark National Library Week April 4 to 10 with some posts celebrating the Tolland Public Library, Library Director Barbara Pettijohn and her hard-working staff that helps Tolland residents and library patrons all year long.

In particular, we’ll be introducing the new staff members all week. Thank you to Frank James of Tolland for the photos.

Lori Ferguson
Library Technical Coordinator
How Long at the Tolland Public Library: Seven months
Favorite Book: “The Secret Life of Bees” by Sue Monk Kidd
Fun Fact: “I’ve flown in helicopters several times.

Library Technical Coordinator

Thanks to a grant from the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, the Tolland Public Library Foundation will launch a townwide oral history project on April 28 at the Tolland Public Library.

The special community project, known as the Tolland Oral History Performance Project, centers around collecting oral histories of longtime Tolland residents and will culminate in a public performance developed from the stories collected through this effort.

Participants will use oral histories and historic records to create a community performance to highlight the lives of the people of Tolland, past and present.

The project cultivates intergenerational relationships while participants learn local history. They’ll also develop storytelling techniques, and the project will engage residents in civic public dialogue.

Kristen Morgan, a professor of Theatre and New Media Studies at Eastern Connecticut State University and a member of the board of directors of the library foundation, will direct the project. She has decades of experience in developing public performances based on oral histories and historic archives.

Her recent projects including “Thread City,’’ based on stories of immigrants who worked at the American Thread Mill Co. in Willimantic, and “Cultivating Dignity,” a production filmed during the COVID-19 pandemic on the experiences of a young Martin Luther King Jr. as he worked in the fields of the Cullman Bros. Tobacco Farm in Simsbury.

Morgan will lead a kick-off workshop on April 28 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the library at 21 Tolland Green to introduce the project and educate participants in how to conduct oral history interviews. The library foundation has donated funds to make recording kits available to be checked out from the library, and Morgan will explain how to use the kits.

Residents of all ages are welcome but are encouraged to register ahead of time by visiting tolland.org/library, clicking on the online events calendar and scrolling to April 28. For more information, email Morgan at [email protected]

Author Karen Guzman of Durham will discuss her second novel, “Arborview,” on Thursday, Feb. 10 at 7 p.m. on Zoom as part of the Tolland Public Library Foundation’s Eaton-Dimock-King Authors Series.
In “Arborview,” Guzman, a former journalist who is now a writer at the Yale School of Management, recounts the tale of two women who face hidden betrayals by the people they love most while trying to start new lives.
After a bruising divorce that has drained her bank account, along with her spirit, Ellen Cahill is staking her financial future on the success of her new pastry shop. Haunted by the past, she questions whether she can pull off a new beginning.
College student Rosa Escamilla has her own culinary dreams – and a difficult mother who is dead set against them. Undeterred, she scrapes up the money to enroll at a prestigious culinary school.
New York Times bestselling author Michelle Richmond praised “Arborview.”
“Told with Karen Guzman’s trademark compassion, “Arborview” is the book we need right now: poignant, hopeful, and full of heart,” Richmond said. “A beautiful story about the relationships that shape us and the dreams that save us.
Guzman is a fiction writer and essayist who worked as a journalist at the Hartford Courant and the News & Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Her debut novel, “Homing Instincts,’’ was published in 2014. Her short fiction has appeared in a number of literary magazines, and her story collection, “Pilgrims,” was a finalist for the St. Lawrence Book Award. She is a regular contributor to the Collegeville Institute’s “Bearings Online” magazine and is a writing fellow at the institute.
The author visit is free, but registration is required. To register, visit tolland.org/library, scroll down to the Online Events calendar, click on it and navigate to Feb. 10 for the Karen Guzman event. Those who have registered ahead of time will receive the Zoom link by email before the talk.
The Tolland Public Library Foundation was established in 1996 to receive donations to benefit the Tolland Public Library and to enhance library services beyond what the town budget provides.
Since 2010, the EDK series has brought well-known authors to Tolland, including Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists Dan Barry, Steven G. Smith and Susan Campbell; Lucy Anne Hurston, Chris Knopf, Caragh O’Brien, Dawn Metcalf, Denis Horgan, Jeff Goldberg and Cindy Rodriguez.

Novelist Karen Guzman