• Friday, January 14th at 5:00 P.M. (Book launch party)

Join Mira Bartók in celebrating the publication of her new book, The Memory Palace: A Memoir.   Bartók, who lives in New Salem, has received awards from the Fulbright-Hays Foundation, the American Scandinavian Foundation, Associated Writing Programs, the Illinois Arts Council, Pen-America, & the Carnegie Fund for Writers.   Her writing has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize & has been noted in The Best American Essays 1999 & other anthologies.  Her work has taken her around the globe from a colony of reindeer herders above the Arctic Circle to a classroom of high school students on the Israeli-Lebanon border.   Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveler’s Wife, wrote "The Memory Palace: A Memoir is almost a fairy tale: two little girls grow up under the spell of their mother’s madness.   —But it really did happen, once upon a time, & Mira Bartók uses her considerable powers of recollection & compassion to understand her family & to present them to readers as complete, loved human beings.   This is an extraordinary book."