Charlotte Mecklenburg Library Foundation

An Evening with Tommy Tomlinson
2019-02-07 19:00 - 20:00 (America/New_York) | ImaginOn: The Joe & Joan Martin Center, 300 E 7th St,, Charlotte, NC, 28202, United States
Charlotte Mecklenburg Library Foundation and WFAE are pleased to celebrate the release of Tommy Tomlinson’s inspirational memoir The Elephant in the Room: One Fat Man’s Quest to Get Smaller in a Growing America. Tommy will speak and take questions about his experience and his writing.
Park Road Books will be onsite with books for sale before and after the program. This event is free, but seating is limited so an RSVP is required.

About the book:
In the tradition of Roxane Gay’s Hunger, a searing, honest, and candid exploration of what it’s like to live as a fat man, from acclaimed journalist Tommy Tomlinson, who decided he had to change his life as he neared the age of fifty weighing in at 460 pounds.
When he was almost fifty years old, Tommy Tomlinson weighed an astonishing—and dangerous—460 pounds, at risk for heart disease, diabetes, and stroke, unable to climb a flight of stairs without having to catch his breath, or travel on an airplane without buying two seats. Raised in a family that loved food, he had been aware of the problem for years, seeing doctors and trying diets from the time he was a preteen. But nothing worked, and every time he tried to make a change, it didn’t go the way he planned—in fact, he wasn’t sure that he really wanted to change.
He was only one of millions of Americans struggling with weight, body image, and a relationship with food that puts them at major risk. Intimate and insightful, The Elephant in the Room is Tomlinson’s chronicle of meeting those people, taking the first steps towards health, and trying to understand how, as a nation, we got to this point. From buying a FitBit and setting an exercise goal to contemplating the Heart Attack Grill, America’s “capital of food porn,” and modifying his own diet, Tomlinson brings us along on an unforgettable journey of self-discovery that is a candid and sometimes brutal look at the everyday experience of being constantly aware of your size. Over the course of the book, he confronts these issues head on and chronicles the practical steps he has to take—big and small—to lose weight by the end.

An Evening with Kathy Izard
2018-08-29 18:30 - 20:00 | Morrison Regional Library, 7015 Morrison Blvd., Charlotte, NC, 28211, United States
Moderated by Sonja Gantt
Join us to celebrate the release of a new edition of Kathy Izard’s inspirational memoir about building a home for Charlotte’s homeless. The Hundred Story Home reminds us that not only can we help change the world, but in doing so we change ourselves.
Registration Required

About the Book:
Believing in the whisper was crazy. Denying she had heard it was impossible.
Do Good. Love Well. Kathy Izard grew up believing in this family wisdom. And although she had abandoned her faith years ago, she was proud to serve regularly in her community’s soup kitchen. Then an unexpected encounter with the formerly homeless and bestselling coauthor, Denver Moore, made her realize that though she thought she was doing good, serving soup was not enough.
Following an insistent whisper, Kathy quit her job as a graphic designer and began to do what seemed unimaginable: build a home for Charlotte’s homeless. Kathy was a mother of four, in the second half of life, and the task didn’t make any sense, yet it proved to be her first step in finding her own way home.
In The Hundred Story Home, Kathy invites us to live out our own stories more fully. “Do you ever have the feeling that what you are doing isn’t what you are supposed to be doing? I wrote The Hundred Story Homenot to convince you to solve the homelessness in your community but to help solve the homelessness in you.”
About Kathy Izard:
Kathy Izard was an award-winning graphic designer for twenty years in Charlotte before launching the pilot program Homeless to Homes for the interfaith Urban Ministry Center in 2007. She led the city-wide effort to build Moore Place, Charlotte’s first permanent supportive housing for chronically homeless men and women. After Moore Place opened in 2012, Kathy worked on numerous civic projects most recently leading the development campaign for HopeWay, Charlotte’s first nonprofit residential mental health treatment center which opened in 2016. She wrote about her efforts in the originally self-published memoir The Hundred Story Home which received the 2017 Christopher Award. In 2017, the book and movie rights to her story were purchased by Thomas Nelson, a division of Harper Collins, and a new edition released June 2018. www.kathyizard.com

About Sonja Gantt, Moderator

Sonja Gantt currently serves as the Executive Director of the CMS Foundation. By harnessing the power of private investments in education the CMS Foundation seeds innovative ideas and works to expand programs that accelerate system-wide transformation in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. Sonja often shares that her work is all about developing a culture of “schoolanthropy”- a spirit of support for our public schools.
Prior to joining the Foundation in 2016, Sonja spent 28 years in television news most recently serving as an anchor/reporter at NBC Charlotte. Her journalism career started in Florence, SC at WBTW and included stints at WBTV (Charlotte) and WGN (Chicago). Her reporting has been celebrated with numerous awards including a Mid-South Regional Emmy in 2011.
Sonja enjoys being involved in the Charlotte community and is currently an active member of Friendship Missionary Baptist Church, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. and the Board of Directors of the YMCA of Greater Charlotte.
She is a die-hard Tar Heels fan having earned a Bachelor of Arts in Broadcast Journalism from the University of North Carolina after graduating from East Mecklenburg High School. Sonja and her husband Mitch have two children, Gabrielle and Grant.

Charlotte's Growing Literacy Scene: At the Southern Women's Show
2018-08-24 12:00 - 13:00 | Charlotte Convention Center, 501 S. College St., Charlotte, NC, 28202, United States
Join us at the Southern Women’s Show for a panel discussion of Charlotte’s literary landscape. Jenni Gaisbauer, the Library Foundation’s executive director, will moderate a conversation featuring four longtime friends of the Library: Kimmery Martin, author of Queen of Hearts, Kathy Izard, author of The Hundred Story Home, Helen Kimbrough, author and publisher of multiple children’s books, and Kathie Collins, poet and co-founder of Charlotte Lit.
This panel is included with admission to the Southern Women’s Show.
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