CARNEGIE CIRCLE APPRECIATION EVENT
Moderated by Martha M. F. Kelly
March 23, 2026
Reception at Foundation For The Carolinas
Program at Carolina Theatre
Charlotte Mecklenburg Library Foundation creates an extraordinary annual evening featuring renowned authors for their Carnegie Circle members to recognize their commitment to improving lives and building a stronger community through their Library support.
This year’s the Foundation is bringing New York Times bestselling author Amor Towles to Charlotte. Carnegie Circle members will enjoy a pre-event reception with the author, a signed copy of one of his novels, and two tickets to the moderated program. Tickets to the event for the public will go on sale at a later date.
GENEROUSLY SPONSORED BY
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born and raised in the Boston area, Amor Towles graduated from Yale and received an MA in English from Stanford. Having worked as an investment professional for over twenty years, he now devotes himself full time to writing in Manhattan, where he lives with his family. His novels Rules of Civility, A Gentleman in Moscow, and The Lincoln Highway, and his collection of shorter fiction Table for Two have all been New York Times bestsellers, have collectively sold more than eight million copies, and have been translated into more than forty languages. Both Bill Gates and President Barack Obama included A Gentleman in Moscow and The Lincoln Highway on their annual book recommendation lists.
Rules of Civility (2011) was a New York Times bestseller and was named by the Wall Street Journal as one of the best books of the year. The book’s French translation received the 2012 Prix Fitzgerald.
A Gentleman in Moscow (2016) was on the New York Times bestseller list for two years and was named one of the best books of 2016 by the Chicago Tribune, the Washington Post, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the San Francisco Chronicle, and NPR. In 2024, Paramount+ released a mini series based on the novel which stars Ewan McGregor.
The Lincoln Highway (2021) debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. The book is being adapted as a feature film by Warner Brothers with Chris Storer, the creator of “The Bear”, writing and directing.
Table for Two (2024), a collection of six short stories and the novella “Eve in Hollywood”, was a New York Times bestseller.
Towles’s short stories have appeared in the Paris Review (#112), Granta (#148), British Vogue, and Audible Originals.
Towles wrote the introduction to Scribner’s 75th anniversary edition of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night , the Penguin Classics edition of Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, and the Vintage Crime edition of Dashiell Hammett’s The Dain Curse.
Towles served as the selecting editor of the 2024 O. Henry Prize, choosing the year’s twenty best short stories. His essay on short fiction is included in the collection of the twenty winners: The Best Short Stories 2024: The O. Henry Prize Winners.
“As for Clothing”, Towles’s essay on Walden, appears in the anthology Now Comes Good Sailing: Writers Reflect on Henry David Thoreau.
Access to a few of his essays can be found in the Other Writing section of this website.
ABOUT THE MODERATOR
Martha M. F. Kelly is the Vice President for Scholarly Programs at the National Humanities Center (NHC). In particular, she directs the NHC’s famed residential fellowship program, having spent a blissful and productive academic year there as a fellow in 2022-23.
Previously, Martha was Associate Professor of Russian at the University of Missouri, where she was the Founding Director of the Interdisciplinary Migration Studies Institute, as well as the co-organizer of MU’s chapter for the American Association of University Professors.
Martha holds a BA with honors from Cambridge University, where she studied Russian and French, and a PhD in Slavic Language and Literatures from Stanford University. She is the author of Unorthodox Beauty: Russian Modernism and Its New Religious Aesthetic (Northwestern UP, 2016); her book-length translation of Olga Sedakova’s Old Songs (Slant Books, 2023) was a finalist for the PEN America Award for Poetry in Translation.
A scholar of literature, culture and religion, Martha is deeply invested in public conversations about books, ideas, and other things that matter.
Make your gift of $1,000 or more to become a member of the Carnegie Circle and join us for this special event with Amor Towles on March 23, 2026.
Information about the event will be sent to members along with an RSVP link.
Ticket sales to the public will be made at a later date. To stay informed about the event along with other Library Foundation news, subscribe to our email list here.