Is it officially unfortunate that author Daniel Handler, aka Lemony Snicket of “A Series of Unfortunate Events” fame, won’t be the keynote speaker at the Fort Vancouver Regional Library Foundation fundraising dinner in November, as promised earlier this year?
Not when the replacement speaker is author Craig Johnson, whose “Longmire” detective novels have been translated into a popular and long-running crime drama series on A&E and Netflix. The books and the TV series follow the adventures of a classic Western lawman who seems plucked from the cowboy era and dropped into modern times: Sheriff Walt Longmire, a loner by nature who investigates gambling, organized crime and worse in a fictitious county in Wyoming. Six seasons of the TV series have been released; meanwhile, Johnson’s 12th “Longmire” novel was published in fall 2017 and the next one, “Depth of Winter,” is expected in September.
Johnson lives in Ucross, Wyo. — population 25, according to a release from the Fort Vancouver Regional Library. His books have won mountains of awards, including the Wyoming Historical Association’s Book of the Year, the Western Writers of America’s Spur Award, the Mountains and Plains Book of the Year Award, Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year, Library Journal’s Best Mystery of the Year and the Will Rogers Award for Fiction.
The 2018 Authors & Illustrators Dinner & Silent Auction is set for 5:30 to 9 p.m., Nov. 7, at the Hilton Vancouver Washington. Tickets are $90 each, and a limited number of tickets to a private reception with Johnson are $25 each, and can be purchased through www.fvrlfoundation.org.
Proceeds from the event help underwrite library programs in Southwest Washington. Previous keynote speakers have included former First Lady Laura Bush, John Lithgow, Nicholas Sparks, Diana Gabaldon, Brad Meltzer and Rebecca Skloot.
