Thanks to everyone who joined us this month for Warm Reads For Cold Nights: Minnesota Authors Recommend. It was a jam-packed hour with quality suggestions to match every reader profile. Our featured guests, Shannon Blackmer (Milkweed Editions) and Matt Smiley (University of Minnesota), shared hot-off-the-presses recommendations that ran a truly wide gamut: from Godzilla, to ethnobotany, to time-tested smokehouse techniques.

Icelanders indulge in a beloved winter tradition called Jólabókaflóð, which translates literally to "Christmas book flood." In the run-up to Yule, family and friends gift each other new books to fill the country's cold and notoriously long winter nights. As the next holiday season approaches, MALF wants to bring a little Jólabókaflóð spirit right here to Minnesota. Please join us on Thursday, November 16 (1:00-2:30 p.m. Central) for Warm Reads for Cold Nights: Minnesota Authors Recommend [Year 2].

Congratulations to Friends of the Babbitt Public Library, winners of the 2023 Evy Nordley Award for Best Project by Friends. Babbitt (pop. 1,380) is one of the smallest communities to ever earn MALF’s highest prize –– which goes to show that exemplary, innovative Friends work happens within groups and towns of all sizes!

A real-life legal case with a supernatural bent inspired lawyer-turned-novelist Allen Esken’s latest thriller, Saving Emma. Eskens told MALF all about this backstory, and much more, on September 30 when he joined Friends for our fourth annual Saturday Splash event.

Nestled at the eastern edge of the Iron Range, the small town of Babbitt usually doesn’t qualify as a mecca for commerce or the arts. The exception is a special weekend each June, when the Friends of Babbitt Public Library hosts its annual Up North Craft & Vendor Extravaganza. On Saturday, June 3, nearly two dozen handicraft vendors accepted an invite extended by The Friends to sell their wares in the Babbitt Municipal Gym!