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Come learn the importance of talking, singing, and playing with baby during a FREE 8 week parenting class. Babies are encouraged to attend with parent/caregiver. -- https://sjcpl.libnet.info/event/16107902

Interact with your baby while developing early reading skills through books, rhymes, songs and play. Recommended for children ages 0 – 2. -- https://sjcpl.libnet.info/event/15418564

Enjoy books, rhymes, and songs which build on practices that prepare children to learn to read. Recommended for ages 3 - 5. Families are welcome. -- https://sjcpl.libnet.info/event/15418652

Help your child develop skills to learn to read through free and guided play using our collection of toys and early literacy materials. Recommended for ages 0-5. -- https://sjcpl.libnet.info/event/15418802

Graduate Student Lounge, Duncan Student Center, 2nd Floor South Come pick up a free succulent to add a lovely green spark to your home or office! (While supplies last.) Sponsor: Graduate Student Government

Hesburgh Library, 13th floor Come see the world through Fr. Ted’s eyes, and catch a glimpse of the best view of the Dome anywhere on campus! What do these three things have in common: the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Olympic Torch, and a ring given by Pope Paul VI? All are on display in the 13th Floor Office of the late Fr. Ted Hesburgh, CSC, 15th President of the University of Notre Dame, and pioneering leader in the world of Catholic Higher Education. Partner: Office of the President

Graduate Student Lounge, Duncan Student Center, 2nd Floor South Join the Office of Grants and Fellowship for a reception celebrating grant winners! Light refreshments will be served. Sponsor: Office of Grants and Fellowships

Join us to celebrate the Franciscan Jubilee Year with a Votive Mass of Saint Francis. Gather together at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart to honor caring for creation and the 800th anniversary of the passing of Saint Francis of Assisi. Fr. Greg Haake, C.S.C., will preside.

Photograph of Yiyun Li by Denise J. ApplewhiteAdditional details and the location will be announced by the fall semester! Acclaimed Chinese-born American author Yiyun Li will discuss her career and read from her work for the Asian American Distinguished Speaker Series at the University of Notre Dame on October 6 at 5:30 p.m. The event is free and open to the public. Li, Princeton University’s Robert F. Goheen Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Creative Writing, is a former MacArthur Fellow and a recipient of the 2022 PEN/Faulkner Award for The Book of Goose. She won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction and the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for memoir for her 2025 book Things in Nature Merely Grow. Li’s visit will coincide with the launch of her novel Music Against the Night (Macmillan Publishers), which follows two musicians as they chase their ambitions from Dublin and French India across Europe at the end of the eighteenth century. Author Azareen Van der Vliet Oolomi, the Dorothy G. Griffin College Professor of English and a Liu Institute faculty fellow, will moderate the event. Her novel Call Me Zebra won the 2019 PEN/Faulkner Award. She is the recipient of a Radcliffe Fellowship, a Whiting Writers Award, and a National Book Foundation "5 Under 35" award. Her short fiction has appeared twice in The Best American Short Stories. The Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies organizes the Asian American Distinguished Speaker Series, which honors innovative, creative, and effective Asian American leaders and celebrates their contributions. Li’s visit is generously supported by the Nanovic Institute for European Studies, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Department of English, Department of American Studies, Gender Studies Program, University Writing Center,  Initiative on Race and Resilience, and the Institute for Social Concerns.About the Book Figures of the past find new life in Yiyun Li’s thrillingly imagined saga following two musicians as they mature, study, travel, love, grieve, and, above all, chase their ambitions. In Dublin, as the eighteenth century nears its end, a young musical virtuoso comes of age. John Field, an awkward and sensitive child, is preternaturally gifted, and his family has visions of him becoming the next Mozart. His talent takes him far—to England, France, and then Russia, where he becomes a famous pianist and composes dreamy, languorous melodies that enchant the night air. John calls them nocturnes, but the prodigy who immortalizes them is Chopin. Oceans away in Pondicherry, in French India, Adelaide Percheron has a startling rise of her own. Orphaned at a young age, she is raised by her imperious, enterprising grandmother. Her cousins give her the name Percherette, an impish reminder that despite their shared relations, Adelaide is not one of the crowd, owing to her parents’ differing ancestry. Without a connection to aristocracy or the luxury of riches, only marriage seems to offer prosperity—until she sets her sights on a pianoforte. Driven by her secret love of music and a desire to see the world, Percherette engineers her exodus, escaping to Paris and later to Moscow, as Napoleon’s army sets out to conquer the continent.Peopled by rival prodigies, irate tutors, begrudging guardians, and the true-to-life masters of the trade, Yiyun Li’s magisterial, polyphonic novel depicts two aspiring musicians—destined to be husband and wife—in pursuit of success. Their struggles unfold amid political and artistic upheaval and pit them against the forces of their time. As John and Adelaide each try to chart a path between talent and genius, success and legacy, profit and passion, they must decide what, and even who, is worth sacrificing along the way. Drawing inspiration from the past but finding entirely new forms, Music Against the Night comes to life with the sweep and dimension of the Romantic era and a deep understanding of the demands of living and of art. Cover art and text from MacMillan Publishers. About the Speaker Yiyun Li is the author of twelve books, including Things in Nature Merely Grow; Wednesday's Child; The Book of Goose; Where Reasons End; Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life; and Tolstoy Together, 85 Days of War and Peace with Yiyun Li. Her work has been translated into more than twenty languages. Li’s honors and awards include a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Windham Campbell Prize, the John Guare Writers Fund Rome Prize Fellowship, a 2026 Andrew Carnegie Medal, a 2023 International Writer Award from the Royal Society of Literature, the 2021 Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Benjamin H. Dank Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award, the PEN/Jean Stein Award, the PEN/Malamud Award, the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Guardian First Book Award, the Asian American Literary Award for fiction, and others. In 2026, Li was named to the TIME 100 List of Most Influential People. She is a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, an independent film directed by Wayne Wang and adapted by Li from her short story, was the winner of Golden Shell for best film, 55th San Sebastian International Film Festival. She currently serves as the Robert F. Goheen Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Creative Writing at Princeton University.For the Chinese-born American writer Yiyun Li, fiction can be a way to retrieve memory, to escape circumstance, or to reclaim one’s consciousness from the influence of others. Her books, which include five acclaimed novels, two short story collections, and two books of nonfiction, are richly observed, and deeply felt. Li’s memoir Things in Nature Merely Grow explores the loss of her sons Vincent and James. Harper’s Magazine calls it “Poignant ... Halting, haunted.” Things in Nature Merely Grow was a New York Times Notable Book of the year, a Washington Post 2025 Notable Work of Nonfiction, was #2 on Time’s list of The 10 Best Books of 2025, was winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, a finalist for the National Book Award for Nonfiction, and the National Book Critics Circle selected it for their 2025 Longlist for Autobiography. Her collection of short stories Wednesday’s Child, was named a Best Book of 2023 by the Los Angeles Times, Vulture, Esquire, NPR, and Kirkus which called it “Quiet, beautiful accounts of journeys through hell.” Her novel, The Book of Goose, won the 2023 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. It tells of two girls raised in the French countryside following WWII. In its starred reviewThe New York Ti

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