The Friends of the Brunswick - Glynn County Library would like to invite you to the 22nd annual Tables of Content Benefit Dinner to be held at the King and Prince Golf and Beach Resort on February 18, 2009. The reception begins at 6:00 pm and the dinner at 7:00 pm. Cost is $85.00. This year's guest speaker is author, television and stage actor, and playwright Ron McLarty. To make reservations please contact Cary Knapp at 912-267-1212 or Bonnie Thompson at 912-634-6148. A native of East Providence, Rhode Island, McLarty is a veteran actor, accomplished playwright, prolific audiobook narrator, and acclaimed novelist. As a television actor, Ron McLarty has over 100 appearances to his credit. He has been a series regular on Spenser For Hire, Champs & Cop Rock in addition to the recurring role of Judge Wright on Law & Order. His most recent appearances include Sex & The City, The Practice, Judging Amy and Law & Order: SVU as well as playing Fred Trump, Sr. in Donald Trump: Unauthorized. For as long as he can remember, however, he’s also been writing fiction, for five hours every morning, and in 2003 he published his first book thanks to the author Stephen King. As one of the country’s leading audio book narrators, Ron persuaded Recorded Books into produc-ing his novel, The Memory of Running, directly onto tape as an audiobook. It is believed to be the first recorded audiobook of an unpublished novel. Stephen King listened to it and wrote his entire column in Entertainment Weekly about Memory calling it “the best book you can’t read.” This lead to the publication of The Memory of Running in the USA and fourteen other countries around the world. Newsweek called it “...an exhilarating ride,” and it was nominated for Italy’s prestigious Bancarella Prize.
In January 2007 his second novel, Traveler, was published to critical and popular acclaim, with the Boston Globe saying it had “...a great voice, a great plot, great suspence, a great evocation of time and place.”
Ron’s third novel, Art in America, was published in July of 2008. It received a starred review in Booklist and has been chosen as a Pick of the Month in the August edition of bookviews.com by its editor, Alan Caruba, who says, “This is one of those novels where you find yourself laughing at the wonderful dialogue and crazy situations. McLarty has written two previous well-received novels and this one will surely be as well.” Booklist calls it a “bighearted, wildly entertaining novel from a writer who just gets better with every outing.”
Ron received from Rhode Island College in Providence an Honorary Doctorate of Humanities (2007) and the Charles B. Willard Achievement Award (2005). He lives in New York City with his wife, the actress Kate Skinner.
(And just how did the FRIENDS get Ron McLarty? He was at the top of a list of authors recommended by David Baldacci, the last TOC speaker. In the two decade history of the TOC, we’ve never had an actor turned author, so 2009’s event should be one of our best!)
Posts
