Are you a bookie? Come to Bay Path College

Date: 4/8/2009

LONGMEADOW " On May 3, Bay Path College will host the second annual Are You A Bookie? Book Club Event from 2 to 4 p.m. The event will feature area book clubs, local authors and keynote speaker Jacqueline Blais, who helped create USA Today s legendary weekly bestseller chart, and reviewed books and interviewed authors for that paper for 15 years.

Co-sponsored by the Community Outreach Committee of the Bay Path College Advisory Council, Follet, Kiddly Winks, and Odyssey Bookshop, the event will take place in Blake Student Commons at the Longmeadow campus, 588 Longmeadow St. The event is free and open to the public. Tea and refreshments will be served, and registration is requested. Visit www.baypath.edu to register.

Led by master of ceremonies, Bay Path s Writer-in-Residence Suzanne Strempek Shea, Are You A Bookie? invites book-lovers to share their book club s story, and meet with established book clubs, those looking to start a club and local authors who will read excerpts of their books and share their inspiration. Attendees will have a chance to share their booklist and their group s favorite reads, authors and themes, while discovering the books others are reading, how they select books, and the history of their clubs.

For more information, visit www.baypath.edu or contact Briana Sitler, director of special programs at Bay Path, at 565-1066 or bsitler@baypath.

Are You a Bookie? is just one of the many literary events Bay Path College will be hosting this year. Best-selling authors Ann Hood and Allan Hunter visited the campus earlier this year to discuss their respective works and this summer, Bay Path will host its much-anticipated Kitchen Sink: A Women Writers Weekend from July 31 to Aug. 2. The weekend event for women writers will feature keynote speaker Luanne Rice, the New York Times best-selling author whose latest works include The Letters and Light of the Moon. Participants will have an opportunity to study one of five genres of writing " children s, fiction, humor, memoir or screenwriting, and learn from popular authors including Lesl a Newman, Elinor Lipman, Sarah Walker, Madeleine Blais and Diane Lake, respectively.

Visit www.baypath.edu for upcoming Bay Path College events.