The New York Public Library unveiled its 2018 class of Literary Lions, honored "for outstanding achievements in their respective fields of arts, culture, letters and scholarship." This year's recipients are biographer Ron Chernow, poet Claudia Rankine and author Elizabeth Strout, as well as filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola and opera singer Jessye Norman. They will be celebrated November 5 during the Library Lions ceremony.
"These five icons have shaped our culture in immeasurable ways," said NYPL president Anthony Marx. "We live in a world in which freedom of expression, creativity, independent thinking, and scholarship are not only important, but critical. Whether through song, prose, poetry, or film, this year's class of Lions has embodied the spirit of Library Lions by inspiring others to learn, grow, and explore."
"My writing career started in the New York Public Library," Chernow recalled. "During the summer after my freshman year at Yale, I sat in the main reading room of the 42nd Street Library and wrote a godawful novel that was never published. As a result, the library must accept all the credit or blame for my subsequent career. I am therefore thrilled to be numbered among this year's Library Lions."
Rankine observed: "In our current moment, it is crucial our cultural institutions be given the utmost support to do their work of fostering independence of thought alongside historical perspectives. The New York Public Library is the center of this kind of service, and inspires me as a teacher, artist, writer and lover of books."
Strout agreed: "In these times it is wise for us to recall that from the first days of the NYPL, it was a haven for recently arrived immigrants who found a safe place there to read about the culture of a world they had left, and of the world they were now in. It is essential to the fabric of a community to have a library that reflects the needs of their people, and who opens the door to a broadening of their lives; NYPL does all this splendidly. I am really so deeply honored to be a Library Lion from this library who reaches out to everyone, no matter who they are or where they came from."