By CYNTHIA L. CATES
Executive Director, Kosciusko Literacy Services

As a part of The Big Read, Ray Bradbury biographer Sam Weller will be lecturing at the Warsaw Public Library at 4 p.m. Wednesday, April 15, and at the North Webster Public Library at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, April 16. Weller will explore the life and literary works of Ray Bradbury. Bradbury loved books, libraries, and the creative process. Presented by Kosciusko Literacy Services, the lectures are free and open to the public.

Sam Weller is an authorized biographer of Ray Bradbury. Weller’s book “The Bradbury Chronicles: The Life of Ray Bradbury” was a Los Angeles Times bestseller, winner of the 2005 Society of Midland Authors Award for Best Biography, and a Bram Stoker Award finalist. Weller wrote the companion book, “Listen to the Echoes: The Ray Bradbury Interviews,” which was published in 2010. Weller co-edited the anthology “Shadow Show: All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury,” which won the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in Anthology.

Learning of Ray Bradbury’s life will inspire writers and readers. As a child, Bradbury was a fan of magicians and an insatiable reader of adventure and fantasy fiction. Bradbury especially enjoyed the writings of L. Frank Baum, Jules Verne, and Edgar Rice Burroughs. Bradbury claimed to have graduated from the library, “Libraries raised me. I believe in libraries because most students don’t have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression, and we had no money. I couldn’t go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.”

Bradbury’s best-known work, “Fahrenheit 451” was published during the era of McCarthyism, and was destined to become a classic due to the trajectories of censorship, conformity, and intellectualism versus entertainment. Bradbury projected the trends of the 1950’s into a futuristic society and presented a culture where these movements led to dire consequences. Bradbury understood, “You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”

Kosciusko Literacy Services invites the community to read The Big Read’s “Fahrenheit 451” and join book discussions and special events. Free copies of the book are available at the six public libraries and at other locations. Additional activities, such as contests, movie screenings at local libraries, and book discussions, are scheduled.

Details are available at www.kcread.org. The Big Read is a program of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest. Additional sponsors are the TCU Foundation and Indiana Humanities.