Love Medicine on Page and Stage in Knox County

GAMBIER, Ohio (October 19, 2009)

The Louise Erdrich novel Love Medicine comes to life on the stage in Mount Vernon with Lipsha's Journey on Friday, Oct. 23, at 7 p.m.

The free production of the Readers' Theater script, with musical accompaniment, takes place at ThePlace@TheWoodward, 111 S. Main St., Mount Vernon, and is part of the Kenyon Review Literary Festival, which this year celebrates Erdrich. The author will receive the Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement in New York City on Nov. 5 and will deliver the keynote address at the literary festival at Kenyon College in Gambier on Nov. 7.

The theatrical version of the novel will also be presented for free on Saturday, Nov. 7, at 4 p.m. at Kenyon's Finn House, 102 W. Wiggin St., in Gambier.

The play is directed by Mark S. Jordan and the cast includes Dayne Baughman, Dorothy Michalski, Alison Mills, Chris Petee, and Mike Petee.

A $10,000 Big Read grant from the National Endowment for the Arts has provided for the free distribution of hundreds of copies of the book Love Medicine, an account of the lives of Native Americans on a fictional North Dakota reservation. A series of public events and discussions about the novel are continuing and will culminate in the Kenyon Review Literary Festival in Gambier on Nov. 4-7.

Coordinated by the Kenyon Review staff, the literary festival initiated Knox Reads, a community-wide reading and discussion program in 2007. The Big Read grant has helped expand the Knox Reads program into Knox County schools. Other Big Read events include:

• Book discussion. Fredericktown Public Library, Fredericktown. Tuesday, Oct. 27, 6:30 p.m.
• Book discussion. Centerburg Public Library, Centerburg. Wednesday, Oct. 28, 7:30 p.m.
• Book discussion. Thorne Library, Mount Vernon Nazarene University. Monday, Nov. 2, 7 p.m.
• Brown Bag Chat with Judy Smith, Kenyon professor of English. Public Library of Mount Vernon and Knox County, Mount Vernon. Wednesday, Nov. 4, noon.
• Book discussion. Olin Library, Kenyon College. Thursday, Nov. 5, 4:30 p.m.

Visit www.kenyonreview.org for more information on the literary festival.

The NEA launched the Big Read initiative in 2006 to restore reading to its role at the center of American culture. About 400 communities have engaged in Big Read projects, tapping into an NEA library of thirty selected works, including Love Medicine. The Big Read is an initiative of the NEA developed in partnership with the Institute of Museum and Library Services and in cooperation with Arts Midwest.

The Kenyon Review, founded in 1939 at Kenyon, is an independent, international literary journal in print and online. Kenyon College, founded in 1824, is a highly selective liberal arts college with about 1,600 undergraduate students.