Laura S. Trombley @ The Public Library

Since 1993, the good people of the Library Foundation have been putting together an award-winning series, ALOUD, at the Central Library downtown.  Lectures, readings, performances and conversations featuring key figures in the arts and humanities, business, politics, and science abound! Most of programming is free and some is even podcasted! And yes, they encourage you to talk amongst yourselves...with them. Hooray for interactive play!

Tonight, Drugs, a Daughter, and Death: Mark Twain's Final Years, featuring Laura Skandera Trombley.

Trombley, the preeminent Twain scholar at work today (and the president of Pitzer College), cracks open the enduring mystery of Mark Twain’s final decade to reveal the true story of Isabel Lyon, the “forgotten woman” who haunts the official Twain narrative.

Laura Trombley is an internationally renowned Mark Twain scholar, authoring several books and dozens of scholarly articles on Twain. She appeared in Ken Burns's Mark Twain documentary and, as a graduate student, discovered the largest known cache of Mark Twain letters.

In addition to her most recent book, Mark Twain's Other Woman, Laura's other works on Twain include Mark Twain in the Company of Women and Constructing Mark Twain: New Directions in Scholarship.