This week marks the beginning of the National Cherry Blossom Festival, an annual event held in Washington, D.C. to commemorate the gift of some 3,000 Yoshino cherry trees given to the city in 1912 as a symbol of friendship between Japan and the United States. The grounds of the Library of Congress Thomas Jefferson Building are home …
James Madison is known as the Father of the Constitution because of his pivotal role in the document’s drafting as well as its ratification. Madison also drafted the first 10 amendments — the Bill of Rights. When the federal Constitution was approved by the states and went into effect in 1789, the absence of a …
On Wednesday, poet Allison Hedge Coke was honored as the 2016 Witter Bynner Fellow. She was selected and introduced by Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry at the Library of Congress, Juan Felipe Herrera. In his selection, Herrera said he sought to honor Hedge Coke “for her precision of Earth, of suffering in and out of …
“You’re never too old, too wacky, too wild, to pick up a book and read with a child.” ~ Dr. Seuss On Wednesday, children gathered at the Library’s Young Readers Center for “Read Across America” day, which also coincides with the birthday of Dr. Seuss. The National Education Association’s signature program is now in its …
Louis W. Sullivan, former secretary of Health and Human Services, discussed his new book, ”Breaking Ground: My Life in Medicine” (University of Georgia Press, 2014), on Wednesday during an author talk presented by the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress. A video of the presentation will be available in the coming weeks. Sullivan spent …
The Library of Congress on Wednesday honored the recipients of the Library of Congress Literacy Awards – three groups working to alleviate the scourge of illiteracy in this country and around the world. Recipients were First Book ($150,000 David M. Rubenstein Prize), United Through Reading ($50,000 American Prize) and Beanstalk ($50,000 International Prize).The Literacy Awards, first announced in January 2013, help …
The human voice is music’s only pure instrument, jazz singer Nina Simone once wrote – it has notes no other instrument possesses. “It’s like being between the keys of a piano,” Simone wrote in a draft of an unpublished autobiography recently discovered in a Library of Congress collection. “The notes are there, you can sing …
Thirteen Pulitzer Prize winners visited the Library last week while in Washington for festivities celebrating the esteemed award. Steve Benson, who won the prize for editorial cartooning in 1993; former U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove (poetry, 1987); Jennifer Egan (fiction, 2011); Paul Giblin (local reporting, 2009); Joan Hedrick (biography, 1995); David Levering Lewis (biography, 1994 and 2001); Jeffrey Marx (investigative reporting, 1986); Philip Schultz …
Make sure to tune in to PBS tonight for the star-studded concert tribute to Willie Nelson, the 2015 recipient of the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. The concert airs on PBS stations nationwide at 9 p.m. ET on (check local listings). The program also will be broadcast at a later date via the American …
