SHARE

Westchester Librarians Share Their Cultural Journey To Hemingway's Cuba

LARCHMONT, N.Y. -- Librarians Nancy Coradin and Diana Lennon will give a talk on their trip to Havana, Cuba, with a focus on American novelist Ernest Hemingway’s time there, Thursday, March 23, at the Larchmont Public Library.

Diana Lennon

Diana Lennon

Photo Credit: Greenburgh Public Library

The visit offered them access to current Cuban literature and provided a bridge to connect and engage with Cuban librarians to discuss libraries, their services, their history and their future, according to a release from the Larchmont Public Library.

 Coradin, Coordinator—Multi-language Collections and Services at the Westchester Library System and Lennon, Librarian II at the Greenburgh Public Library--encountered a familiar face on distant shores, a man with a larger-than-life persona and an adventurous lifestyle. He was a writer, fisherman, hunter, war correspondent, father and hero: Ernest Hemingway.

 Coradin is the Spanish language cataloger for the Westchester Library System, a consortium of 38-member libraries covering Westchester County. She assists the member libraries in building their language collections and offers innovative bilingual program ideas to the libraries.

Coradin also heads the Westchester Librarians Serving Latinos group that pools the experience, skills and creativity of library staff to improve services to Latinos in a combined effort across libraries.

She was given the opportunity to join the American Library Association on a trip to Cuba to participate in the Havana International Book Fair in February last year.

Coradin has also been invited to attend LIBER and FIL, Spanish language book fairs in Barcelona, Madrid and Guadalajara, Mexico. She earned a Master of Library Science and Information from Pratt Institute, where she received an Outstanding Achievement Award.

Through her outreach, she has enabled local organizations to partner with the libraries and offer programs in literacy, health, law, parenting, education, job readiness, and digital literary.

Additionally, Coradin is a proud member of the American Library Association, The Westchester Library Association and REFORMA.

Lennon provides services and programs to the Latino community at the Greenburgh Public Library in Elmsford, NY. In February 2016, she traveled to Cuba as part of the first American Library Association delegation.

She has attended international book fairs in Guadalajara, Mexico and Madrid, Spain. Lennon is a member of ALA, NYLA, REFORMA and the Westchester Library Association. She received her Master of Library and Information Science from Long Island University, and in 2010 was named the American Library Association’s Miriam L. Hornback Scholar.

Lennon also received a 2010 New York Library Association/Public Libraries Section Conference Scholarship. Her chapter titled “Café a las Siete/Coffee at Seven" is published in the anthology "Library Services for Multicultural Patrons: Strategies to Encourage Library Use" (2013, eds., Smallwood & Becnel).

Her children and young adult book reviews are in "Partes de Un Todo/ Parts of a Whole," published by the Fundación Germán Sánchez Ruipérez in Spain. She holds a master’s degree in Spanish literature and language from Vanderbilt University.

The talk will begin at 7 p.m. For additional information, call (914) 834-2281.

The library is at 121 Larchmont Ave., Larchmont.

to follow Daily Voice Rye and receive free news updates.

SCROLL TO NEXT ARTICLE