Associates dinner to be held May 30

The Desmond-Fish Library will honor bestselling author and filmmaker Eric Schlosser, environmental conservation advocate and author Fred Rich, and journalist and wild-bird rehabilitator Suzie Gilbert at their annual Associates Awards Dinner on May 30. The dinner will be held at The Roundhouse in Beacon. Each year at this gala fundraiser, the library presents awards to individuals whose distinguished accomplishments have enriched lives. Betty Green is the honorary dinner committee chair. Anita Hall, Susan Landstreet, Jennifer Marrinan and Carol O’Reilly are dinner co-chairs.

Schlosser is the author of The New York Times bestsellers Fast Food Nation and Reefer Madness. His work has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and The Nation. His most recent book, Command and Control (2013), examines the efforts of the military, since the atomic era began during World War II, to prevent nuclear weapons from being stolen, sabotaged, or detonated by accident. Before writing non-fiction, he was a playwright and independent filmmaker. In recent years he’s returned to those fields. Two of Schlosser’s plays have been produced in London: Americans (2003) at the Arcola Theatre and We the People (2007) at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. He was a co-producer and co-narrator of the award-winning documentary, Food, Inc. (2008).

Rich has spent his entire career as a partner of Sullivan & Cromwell, traveling the world as an international lawyer, and — since 1989 — coming home to the Hudson Highlands. During the last quarter century, he served on the boards of many local organizations, including Audubon Constitution Marsh (as founding chair), Boscobel, Hudson Highlands Land Trust, Hudson River Foundation, Palisades Conservancy, Scenic Hudson (as chair and long-time chair of Scenic Hudson Land Trust) and the Wallace Fund for the Hudson Highlands.

Outside the Highlands, his service to the causes of environment and conservation currently includes chairing the Foundation for Landscape Studies, serving as vice chair of the Battery Conservancy in Manhattan, and recently joining the board of the national Land Trust Alliance. He believes strongly in the power of art, music and literature to change hearts and minds, and composed The Hudson Oratorio as a call to stewardship of the river, and wrote his recent novel Christian Nation (Norton, 2013) to call attention to politically ambitious Christian fundamentalism. He is currently completing a non-fiction book, Getting to Green, about environmental politics.

Gilbert is an author, newspaper columnist, editorial, screenplay, and lyric writer, and blogger. She is the founder/president of Flyaway, Inc., a nonprofit dedicated to the rescue and rehabilitation of injured and orphaned wild birds. Her memoir, Flyaway: How a Wild Bird Rehabber Sought Adventure and Found Her Wings, was published by HarperCollins, her children’s book, Hawk Hill, by Chronicle Books, and her award-winning environmental column “Bird’s Eye View” ran in Taconic News Media newspapers for two years. She now writes about hydraulic fracturing for the Pennsylvania-based Calkins Media, blogs for 10,000 Birds, and has almost completed her first novel. She lives in Garrison with her two children, Mac and Skye.

To meet the challenge of providing the highest possible standard of service, the Desmond-Fish Library created the Associates Program to assist with program development and the continuing need to maintain and upgrade the library and grounds that surround it.

For more information or to purchase tickets, call 845-424-3020 or visit desmondfishlibrary.org/dinner.

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