The Camden Conference free Community Events series continues with Cushing residents Helen Darmara and Pat Farmer leading “Reader Response: African Literature,” on Sunday, February 7, 2-4 p.m., at the Cushing Public Library. The event is free and open to all.

Members of the Cushing community will discuss a number of African novels. This will be a round table discussion with each reader presenting a different book. The audience is encouraged to engage in the discussion, which is framed by the idea that reading is a performance art in which each reader creates their own, possibly unique, text-related work. Without a reader, is there literature?

Helen Darmara moved to Cushing ten years ago from Houston, Texas, where she homeschooled her three sons through middle and high school. Earlier, while she and her family lived in Washington, DC, Helen held the position of financial manager in the Office of the Navy Comptroller, supervising a multi-billion dollar appropriation. An active member of the Cushing community, she is currently President of the Board of the Cushing Public Library, as well as Director of the Cushing Rescue Squad on which she also serves as an Advanced EMT. A passionate and inventive knitter, Helen shares her skills locally with free classes at the Cushing library, and interacts with an international community of knitters online. This global perspective is enhanced through her sons, one living in Japan, one in China, and the third in Pakistan. Although she has traveled to North Africa, she has less personal knowledge of the continent as a whole and hopes to gain more through the activity of reading and discussing current African literature.

Pat Farmer is a writer and editor, who has been a journalist, a director of public relations in radio and television, and a member of the art history department at half a dozen universities across the country She has also been actively involved with a number of museum exhibitions as a curator and as the author of several catalogues, both here and in Europe. She has lived in Cushing with her husband, David, since 2002. Although they often travel abroad, Morocco has been their only in-depth experience of the African continent, which makes the 2016 Camden Conference subject matter of special interest.

Hosted by the Cushing Public Library, this event is offered as a free community event in in anticipation of the 29th Annual Camden Conference: The New Africa, February 19-21, 2016.

The mission of the Camden Conference is to foster informed discourse on world issues. For more information, visit www.camdenconference.org, email info@camdenconference.org, or call 207-236-1034.