2008 ALA Annual Conference

Click here for a schedule of all FOLUSA programs.

The Laugh's on Us!
Sunday, June 29
5:00-7:00 p.m.
Anaheim Convention Center
Room 201 A/B

Comedian Paula Poundstone will help you end the day with laughter when she joins a panel of humorists for this fall-off-your-seat evening. Those who attended this event in Washington, D.C. are still talking! Don't miss this stellar event. Wine and cheese will be served and a book signing will follow with all speakers. Some books will be given away free and others will be sold at a generous discount.

This program is presented with support from Brodart, Baker & Taylor, Demco, ProQuest, and the Rosen Publishing Group.

Tickets may be purchased online or by phone at (800) 936-5872, at the FOLUSA booth in the Exhibit Hall or at the door while supplies last. Tickets purchased after June 25 will be $45.

Paula Poundstone, author of There's Nothing in This Book That I Meant to Say.
Paula Poundstone has been a stand-up comic for twenty-seven years. Her long list of successes includes HBO specials, an Emmy Award, two Cable ACE Awards, and an American Comedy Award for Best Female Stand-Up. She now appears regularly on National Public Radio’s Wait Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me!. Recently named as FOLUSA's national spokesperson, Paula helps spread the word about libraries and Friends. Paula lives in Santa Monica, California, with her three children, Toshia, Allison, and Thomas E. Poundstone.

June Casagrande, author of Mortal Syntax.
June Casagrande is the author of the humorous grammar column A Word, Please, which appears in community newspapers in Southern California, Texas and Florida. She has written over 900 articles for various newspapers and magazines and has four years of improvisational comedy training. Her articles have appeared in The Los Angeles Times and other publications. Her first book was Grammar Snobs are Great Big Meanies. She lives in Pasadena, California.

Dan Kennedy, author of Rock On: An Office Power Ballad
Dan Kennedy is author of the books "Rock On" and "Loser Goes First", and a longstanding contributor at McSweeney's dot net. His essays appear in GQ, and his work has been anthologized in "Created in Darkness by Troubled Americans: The Best of McSweeney's Humor Category", "Mountain Man Dance Moves: The McSweeney's Book of Lists", and other publications. He lives in New York City and performs spoken word gigs and readings in downtown clubs, and on stages across the country.

Beth Lisick, author of Helping Me Help Myself: One Skeptic, Ten Self-Help Gurus, and a Year on the Brink of the Comfort Zone
Beth Lisick, author of the New York Times bestselling book Everybody into the Pool, is also a performer and odd-jobs enthusiast. Her writing has appeared in numerous publications and anthologies including Best American Poetry, the Christian Science Monitor, and Word Warriors: 35 Women Leaders in the Spoken Word Movement. She has contributed to public radio's This American Life and is the cofounder of the monthly Porchlight storytelling series in San Francisco.

Robert Schimmel, author of Cancer on $5 a Day* *(chemo not included): How Humor Got Me Through the Toughest Journey of My Life
In the spring of 2000, Robert Schimmel was riding high. He'd won the Stand-Up of the Year Award, his HBO special was a huge hit, and his sitcom had been picked up. And then it all came crashing down. Diagnosed with Stage III non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, he was told he would have to undergo chemotherapy immediately. The sitcom was dumped and the fire of his white-hot career started to go out. But Schimmel never lost his sense of humor, his knife-like edge, and most of all, his passion to entertain. Indeed, it was his basic need to laugh-even if the only people around him were suffering from cancer and the room he was playing was the Mayo Clinic infusion center-that carried him through his ordeal. From his colorful banter with nurses and other patients during chemo, to his hilarious conversation with a wig salesman, going for the laugh was Robert Schimmel's survival mechanism. Alternately laugh-out-loud funny and profound, Cancer on Five Dollars a Day is an honest account of how one man's face-off with a deadly disease helped him better understand himself.

Tickets may be purchased online or by phone at (800) 936-5872, at the FOLUSA booth in the Exhibit Hall or at the door while supplies last. Tickets purchased after June 25 will be $45.