On a Monday night in April, Arlington Central Library had a full house to hear author Susan Orlean discuss her latest book, The Library Book. It was the latest event in the popular Arlington Reads visiting-author program, which library director Diane Kresh spearheaded in 2006, bringing high-profile authors like Zadie Smith, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Anthony Doerr, Viet Thanh Nguyen and Judy Blume.
Like performing arts groups, Kresh often finds her program competing for space, particularly when accommodating big-name authors like Blume, whose visit was held in the Washington-Lee High School auditorium and drew about 500 attendees.
Libraries, Kresh adds, have also evolved to offer more than books. She points to Arlington Central Library’s new MakerSpace—a workshop equipped with everything from 3D printers and vinyl cutters to embroidery and milling machines—as yet another outlet for creative expression. (And one that will perhaps make up for the loss of TechShop, a for-profit creative workshop in Crystal City that closed in 2018.)
County funding has supported artists like Sushmita Mazumdar, who won Arlington artist grants in 2015 and 2018. As the founder of Studio Pause in Ballston, Mazumdar engages local residents, including kids, in creating visual storybooks based on their own life experiences and cultural heritage. “I am very happy to be able to do this work in the community where I live,” she says.
Storytelling through poetry is a passion and a vocation for Katherine Young, who became Arlington’s first poet laureate in 2016. In that role, Young gave numerous readings at public events and in county schools, bringing a bit of what she calls “literary magic” to everyday life. When county board member Libby Garvey was sworn in for a second term in December 2016, Young composed and read an original poem for the occasion.
And when the county’s proposed budget called for the elimination of the poet laureate position—not to mention the Moving Words (ART Bus poetry) program and the Pick a Poet project that serves 2,000 Arlington Public Schools students annually—Young and other writers picked up their pens. In a letter to Garvey, Young wrote, “We know you have difficult budget choices to make…[and] we’ve had to make some ourselves. The arts are not a luxury item—they are absolutely essential in fostering the richness and diversity of our life here in Arlington.”