Winner of LARC Book of the Year for 2018 Announced

POMONA RESIDENT, MARIE LIBERACE’S LAMENT IN A MINOR KEY!

West Nyack, June 14, 2019: The Library Association of Rockland County (LARC) is pleased to announce the winner of their third annual Book of the Year Award: Lament in a Minor Key by Marie Liberace. This year’s LARC award includes a $1,000 prize courtesy of the Kurz Family Foundation of Piermont, NY.

The Book of the Year Award was created to honor and support Rockland’s writers and make their work more visible throughout the county. In addition to the $1,000 prize, Liberace will also have a copy of her book in all seventeen of the Rockland libraries. The award will be officially presented on Friday morning, June 14 at the New City Library, as a part of the LARC Annual Meeting.

Seventeen other authors living in Rockland County submitted works for consideration that were read by a committee of library staff members, board members, and our guest judge, Eleanor Kuhns, herself a local author. Kuhns is a lifelong librarian and has worked all over the Hudson Valley. She currently works at the Goshen Public Library. Her latest book, The Shaker Murders, was released February 1 of this year, continuing her Will Rees Series. The first book in the series A Simple Murder won the Minotaur Books/Mystery Writers of America First Crime Novel competition in 2011. LARC was honored to have her participate as a judge.

Two fantastic works were shortlisted along with Liberace’s winning book. The Way It Was by Malachy Donoghue was submitted posthumously by his son Mike Donoghue. The memoir follows Malachy’s life from growing up in rural Ireland in the late 1920s to a job in the goldfields of Alaska, before eventually settling in New City. Side Effects: The Art of Healing by Carole Weaver-Linser follows the author’s journey of surviving breast cancer by conjuring the power of art to heal and revitalize her while going through chemotherapy, surgeries, and dealing with painful side effects. Both works were given top ratings by everyone that read them.

In the end, Marie Keena Liberace’s Lament in a Minor Key was the winner. Liberace was also a shortlisted nominee for the 2017 award for her work Walking on Water, poems celebrating her childhood memories in Ireland. Liberace was born in Dublin and she renews her Irish sensibility each summer in Ballycastle. She is a Professor of Philosophy and Speech at SUNY Rockland Community College. Her volunteer work throughout the county includes serving on the Board of Directors for Friends of Finkelstein Library, Antrim Playhouse and Good Samaritan Hospital as well as the Bon Secours Charity Health System. She has also written “The Ethics of Organizations: A Mandate for Management” and is the editor of “The Life, Career and Educational Planning” textbook.

LARC congratulates Liberace on her win. She joins past winners Kathleen Kubik, who won for her novel The Autumn of Her Years and Greta Nettleton, who won with her nonfiction work The Quack’s Daughter: A True Story About the Private Life of a Victorian College Girl.

Rockland authors are urged to apply for the 2019 LARC Book of the Year award, which will open on June 14, 2019. Check the https://laorc.wildapricot.org/ site for details.

  Book of the Year Award, LARC, Library Association of Rockland County