Eileen

I’m a librarian who grew up without books. In fact, the only books in my childhood home included a Children’s Illustrated Bible, my dad’s set of Popular Mechanics, and my mom’s worn copy of Valley of the Dolls.

Education transformed my life. I am indebted to teachers who introduced me to authors like Blume, Tolstoy, Thoreau, Flaubert, and Rilke. They cleared a space for books to change my “wild and precious life.” (Thank you, Mary Oliver.) To this day, I experience the world through their lenses and weave them into my thoughts and actions. I plant hollyhocks in every garden because Orleanna Price did so in Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible. I can raise my right eyebrow like Margaret did in Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. And when on the shores of Lake Michigan, or on a winding trail through the deep woods, Thornton Wilder’s Our Town words resonate within me: “Oh earth, you’re too wonderful for anyone to realize you.”

I’m a nonfiction-in-the-morning, fiction-in-the-evening kinda girl. In between, I get to work at the greatest place in the world. The library is a convergence of the two things I love the most: people and ideas. And it is the one place in a community where everyone is truly welcome. Aren’t we the luckiest?