Need A Great Speaker For Your Book Club?

Historical novelist and ‘Hester’ author Laurie Lico Albanese does a sparkling presentation on Zoom

Book clubs across America face a daunting challenge in looking for speakers.

Authors who breeze into town on whistle-stop bookstore visits typically lack the time to meet with smaller groups. And they may not otherwise find their way to you if you live in a town as quiet as mine, which just installed “Walk” and “Don’t Walk” signals, 75 years after they arrived elsewhere in the United States.

But Zoom can be a godsend for book clubs that have a member who subscribes to the app. Many authors now do presentations via Zoom to groups almost anywhere in the U.S.

A stellar example is Laurie Lico Albanese, author of the historical novel, Hester, just out in paperback. Hester reimagines the life of the heroine of The Scarlet Letter, and Audible named its audio edition one “Best Listens” of 2022.

Laurie recently gave a sparkling presentation to a classic-short-stories group I co-lead on Zoom for journalists and authors from around the U.S., which our members loved. She spoke about several of Hawthorne’s stories and showed us a captivating PowerPoint presentation about their author and The Scarlet Letter (about 15 minutes that she can expand to 30).

Everyone in our group has written books or worked for a large newspaper or national magazine, and three of us are professional critics. So it’s safe to say that if Laurie can please us, she can please anyone. Her talk included a brief clip of the audio for the Audible edition for Hester — a welcome extra, given that the narration can make or break an audiobook.

Please check out her work if you’re looking for a speaker for your book club. You can read a review of Hester here and reach Laurie through the contact page on her website.

You might like my story about another American classic: