 Oswego YMCA presents
the 10th Annual Harborfest Kids Fun Run
sponsored by the river's end bookstore
Registration forms will be available at the bookstore and Oswego YMCA. You must pre-register ($5 fee). The first 150 entrants will receive a T-shirt!
GET FIT AND LITERATE!
Michael Perry, author of Coop: A Family, a Farm, and the Pursuit of One Good Egg (Harper)
Reservations needed in advance for this special event
Contact the river's end for details.
 In over his head with two pigs, a dozen chickens, and a baby due any minute, the acclaimed author of Truck: A Love Story gives us a humorous, heartfelt memoir of a new life in the country. Coop is filled with the humor his readers have come to expect. But Perry also writes from the quieter corners of his heart, chronicling experiences as joyful as the birth of his child and as devastating as the death of a dear friend.
 Michael Perry is a contributing editor to Men's Health, and his work has appeared in numerous publications, including Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, Salon, and the Utne Reader. He lives in northern Wisconsin with his family. Visit Perry's web site at www.sneezingcow.com
the river’s end bookstore’s 12th Anniversary!
Stop in to help us celebrate our 12th anniversary. Enjoy refreshments and special offers throughout the day. And be sure to enter the drawing for a $100 gift card (one entry per customer). Thank you for supporting independent businesses in Oswego!
Barry Lyga, author of Goth Girl Rising (Houghton)
Discussion & booksigning
 In Goth Girl Rising, Kyra is back! After six months in the Maryland Mental Health Unit, Kyra Sellers, a.k.a. Goth Girl, is going home. Unfortunately, she's about to find out that while she was away, she lost track of more than time. Kyra is back in black, feeling good, and ready to make up with the only person who's ever appreciated her for who she really is. But then she sees him. Fanboy. Transcended from everything he was into someone she barely recognizes. And the anger and memories come rushing back.
 Making a return visit to Oswego, Barry Lyga is a recovering comic book geek and the author of The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl, Boy Toy, and Hero-Type, all set at South Brook High School. Visit Lyga online at www.barrylyga.com, friend him on Facebook, and follow him on twitter at http://twitter.com/barrylyga.
Gerald Smith, author of Birding the Great Lakes Seaway Trail
Discussion & booksigning
 Come meet ornithologist Gerald Smith, whose field guide shows the resting and nesting locations of birds along the freshwater shoreline of New York and Pennsylvania. Listed migration patterns show the best times of the year to spot certain notable species. Book designed and illustrated by artist Robert McNamara.
A river’s end reading featuring contributors to the Uphook Press poetry anthology, you say. say.– Thomas Fucaloro, Christian Georgescu, Mary McLaughlin Slechta
 you say. say. is the first of an annual anthology taken from open submission involving twenty-nine poets—from all across the United States—who write the gamut from Starbucks to whale walkers, chalk outlines to honeymooning, cranky operettas to the ping of a microwave signaling the end.
Thomas Fucaloro’s first poetry collection, Inheriting Craziness, is published by Three Rooms Press in spring 2010. He lives in New York City.
Christian Georgescu was born in Bucharest, Romania, grew up in New York City, and is a writer, performer and visual artist. Developing an alternative style of poetry for performance, Christian has featured at venues in New York, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles.
Mary McLaughlin Slechta is the author of the poetry collection, Wreckage on a Watery Moon (Foothills), and two chapbooks. She has published poetry and stories in many journals and anthologies and was included in Rattle's recent Tribute to African American Poets. An associate editor with The Comstock Review, Mary lives in Syracuse.
Thomas, Christian, and Mary will be joined by Uphook Press editors Ice and Jane Ormerod. Uphook Press is a New York City-based publisher specializing in work by poets and spoken word artists who love both the ink and the mike. For additional information, visit www.uphookpress.com
Patricia Polacco, author of January's Sparrow
Reading & booksigning
 In the middle of the night, The Crosswhites, including young Sadie, must flee the Kentucky plantation they work on. Dear January has been beaten and killed by the plantation master, and they fear who may be next. But Sadie must leave behind her most valuable possession, the wooden sparrow carved for her by January.
 Patricia Polacco doesn’t create a book unless she loves the story. Her own passion for a story drives the narrative of her books, and this is clear in her dramatic and touching art. Polacco is a Philomel treasure, having created over forty outstanding books for the imprint alone. She is known throughout the country for her school visits that ask children to think of themselves as heroes, and to be courageous in life. Some of her titles include: Pink and Say, Mr. Lincoln’s Way, The Butterfly, Thank You, Mr. Falker, Chicken Sunday and In Our Mother’s House. For more information on the author, visit: www.patriciapolacco.com
A river’s end reading with special guests Nate Pritts, Jennifer Pashley and Emma Kinna
 Nate Pritts is the author of three full-length collections of poetry - Sensational Spectacular (BlazeVOX, 2007), Honorary Astronaut (Ghost Road Press, 2008) & The Wonderfull Yeare (Cooper Dillon Books, 2010). His poetry, reviews & criticism have appeared in a wide variety of publications, both in print & online, including Gulf Coast, Southern Review, DIAGRAM, Rain Taxi Review of Books & Greensboro Review. The founder & principal editor of H_NGM_N, Nate teaches poetry for the Downtown Writer's Center/YMCA in Syracuse, NY. Find him online at www.natepritts.com
 Jennifer Pashley is the author of States, which has been called both “seriously out-of-whack” and “an inviting and well-carved debut.” Her stories have appeared in Swink, Salt Hill, Stone Canoe, and Mississippi Review, where she was the winner of the 2009 Prize for Fiction. She's a very friendly girl. This sometimes interferes with her progress.
 Emma Kinna, author of A House Afire, lives in New York State and is currently studying for undergraduate degrees in film and anthropology at SUNY Oswego. She loves the beach, yoga and Batman. This is her first novel.
11:00am:
John Laundré & Lucina Hernandez, local contributing authors to Cougar: Ecology & Conservation (ed. by Maurice Hornocker & Sharon Negri/U of Chicago Press)
Discussion & booksigning
 Written by a variety of cougar researchers, this book is the definitive compilation of our current knowledge regarding this majestic species. Laundré and Hernandez will introduce their chapter on Latin American Pumas and will talk about their studies of predator-prey relationships. Both authors are professors at SUNY Oswego’s Dept. of Biological Sciences. Hernandez is also director of Rice Creek Field Station and Laundré is Vice President of the Eastern Cougar Foundation.
2:00 pm:
Dr. Bob Rock, author of 11,762 Words for Fly Fishers and Fly Tyers (SRISFM)
Discussion & booksigning
 Rock’s book is full of practical advice for the seasoned and novice fly fisher. He has instructed fly tying and fly fishing classes for several regional organizations, including the Wounded Warriors program at Fort Drum, and has authored articles for numerous angling and skiing publications. He is the founding president of the Salmon River Chapter of Trout Unlimited, a life member of the National Ski Patrol System, a 50-year member of the Adirondack Mountain Club, and is retired Vice President for Student Affairs and physical education at SUNY Oswego.
An Afternoon for (Book) Lovers
Poignant, ironic, silly, and sometimes hilarious!
Bibliophiles - people who love books - will have cause to celebrate this Valentine’s Day as they listen to their friends and neighbors read stories and poems about love.
This event is free and open to the public.
Refreshments will be served.
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Canastota, New York, is home to the International Boxing Hall of Fame and has produced some of boxing's most prominent pugilists. From early legends like Carmen Basilio and Billy Backus to modern greats such as Mike Tyson, the sport's most famous figures fought in and around this Upstate New York town. Title fights and epic ring rivalries were battled here. In Title Town, Baker tells the story of these "thunder gods of the ring" and the fights that made them famous, finally settling the score: Canastota is "Title Town, USA."
Returning to the river’s end, Editors Ice and Jane Ormerod with be joined by contributors to their latest anthology. Uphook Press is a New York City-based publisher specializing in work by poets and spoken words artists who love both the ink and the mic. hell strung and crooked is their second anthology, taken from open submission, with the aim to promote a nationwide community of performing poets. Featuring forty-one poets—from San Francisco, Atlanta, Nashville, Boston, Seattle, elsewhere, and New York—hell strung and crooked also includes interviews with National Book Award winner Mark Doty and the Danish writer-performer Claus Ankersen. For additional information, visit 
Talk Thai (U. of Missouri Press, 978-0-8262-1889-6) is a richly told account that takes us into an immigrant's world. Here is a story imbued with Thai spices and the sensibilities of an American upbringing, a story in which Ira practices English by reciting lines from TV sitcoms and struggles with the feeling of not belonging in either of his two worlds. For readers who delight in the writings of Amy Tan, Gish Jen, and other Asian-Americans, Talk Thai provides generous portions of a still-mysterious culture while telling the story of an American boyhood with humor, playfulness, and uncompromising honesty.
Syracuse native and U.S. Army Captain Benjamin Tupper spent a year in Afghanistan in an Embedded Training Team, tasked with training, leading in combat, and mentoring the Afghan Army to victory against the brutal Taliban. Writing and recording from a remote outpost, Tupper's dispatches were posted on the blog “The Sandbox” and broadcast on NPR, bringing vivid snapshots of America's longest ongoing war to a wide audience back home. In Greetings from Afghanistan ($24.95, Nal Caliber Pub., 978-0-4512-3143-7), he takes us inside the intricacies of the war, opening up a unique and multifaceted view of both Afghan culture and the daily life of an American soldier. From the rush of gunfire to surreal, euphoric moments of cross-cultural understanding, this emotional and thought- provoking narrative is rich with humor, eloquence and contradiction.
Exley ($24.95, Algonquin, 978-1-5651-2608-4) is a seriously playful novel about the interweaving of literature and life. For nine-year-old Miller, who lives with his mother in Watertown, New York, life has become a struggle to make sense of his father's disappearance, for which he blames himself. Then, when he becomes convinced that he has found his father lying comatose in the local VA hospital, a victim of the war in Iraq, Miller begins a search for the one person he believes can save him, the famously reclusive - and, unfortunately, dead - Frederick Exley.. The story of Miller's search, told by both Miller himself and his somewhat flaky therapist, ultimately becomes an exploration of the difference between what we believe to be real and what is in fact real, and how challenging it can be to reconcile the two.
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