In honor of Stuart Plumer, the Morrill Memorial Library presents the Stuart Plumer Author Series. Join us for an in-person author talk with award-winning children's and middle-grade author Rajani LaRocca on Sunday October 22, 2023 at 3 pm in the Simoni Room of the Library.

Rajani will start the event with a presentation, followed by Q & A with the audience.

About the author: Rajani LaRocca is a physician and award-winning author of books for young people. She was born in Bangalore, India, immigrated to the U.S. as a baby, and spent most of her childhood in Louisville, Kentucky. A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Medical School, she trained in Internal Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, where she’s been working as a primary care internal medicine physician since 2001. She lives in eastern Massachusetts with her family and impossibly cute dog.

Rajani has always been an omnivorous reader of novels, nonfiction, comic books, and cereal boxes. She is now an omnivorous writer of award-winning books for young readers: novels and picture books, fiction and nonfiction, in prose and poetry. Her middle grade novel in verse, Red, White, and Whole, won a 2022 Newbery Honor, the 2022 Walter Dean Myers Award, the 2022 Golden Kite Award, and the 2021 New England Book Award, as well as other honors. She is the author of numerous other acclaimed novels and picture books, including Midsummer’s Mayhem, Seven Golden Rings, and more. She also co-hosts the STEM Women in KidLit Podcast.

The books Rajani read as a child helped shape who she is today in ways she’s still discovering. Books inspired her to pursue medicine, made her yearn to live in different worlds, and helped her consider what it’s like to walk in someone else’s shoes. A lifelong book lover, she never saw herself in a book until she was an adult—and when she did, it was world-changing and mind-blowing. She believes that everyone deserves to see themselves in the pages of a book; that writing and reading diversely promotes empathy; and empathy makes the world a better place.

Learn more about her at www.RajaniLaRocca.com and on Twitter and Instagram @rajanilarocca.

We are partnering with Aesop's Fable, an independent bookseller from Holliston to sell the author's books.  Staff from Aesop's Fable will be on hand at the event to help you. If you would like to pre-order and purchase Anita's books directly from the bookseller, please click on the bookshop link.

The Stuart Plumer Author Series is being presented in memory of avid reader, Stuart Plumer, who served on the Board of Trustees of the Morrill Memorial Library for 33 years.

We thank Norwood Community Media for recording and sharing the event with a wider audience.
This program is recommended for ages 7+. Registration is required for this in-person event; please register using the form below.