National Book Foundation To Present The 2016 Medalist For Distinguished Contribution To American Letters To Robert A. Caro

Robert Caro Accepting the 2016 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters

Dr. William P. Kelly, The New York Public Library’s Andrew W. Mellon Director of the Research Libraries, introduces Robert Caro.

PRESENTER: DR. WILLIAM P. KELLY

Dr. William P. Kelly is The New York Public Library’s Andrew W. Mellon Director of the Research Libraries. He is charged with preserving and expanding the use of the most democratically accessible of research collections, which includes approximately 45 million items and is growing by about 150,000 books per year.

Kelly’s scholarship includes Plotting America’s Past: Fenimore Cooper and the Leatherstocking Tales and (under contract) Astoria: John Jacob Astor, the West, and the World. He has written numerous articles for a variety of journals, newspapers, and magazines.

LA Times announces the 2016 5 Under 35 Honorees

In an exclusive with the Los Angeles Times, Michael Schaub revealed our 2017 5 Under 35 Honorees, and shared the stories of how they’d learned they were selected.

When Brit Bennett got the phone call that could change her career, she was sitting in a Coffee Bean in Encino, the neighborhood where the 26-year-old novelist now makes her home.

“I got a phone call from an unknown New York number,” Bennett recalled. Minutes later, she learned that she’d been selected as one of the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 honorees for her not-yet-published debut novel, “The Mothers” (it will hit shelves Oct. 11).