Book drive benefits children

Half Price Books is sponsoring another book drive to benefit Children's Hospitals and Clinics in Minnesota. They've done this 10 times before, collecting more than 100,000 books. Drop off new (or new-ish) children's books at any Half Price store and they will be donated to the hospital library -- where kids can borrow the books or keep them, if they like. All types of children's books, including those written in Spanish, are needed. This year's drive continues through March.

Also...

• A reading and reception celebrating the publication of "Dust and Fire 2009: Writing and Art by Women" will be at 7 p.m. Friday at the American Indian Resource Center at Bemidji State University. The guest speaker will be Bush Fellowship winner and Minnesota Book Award winner Sheila O'Connor, who will also read from her own work that day at noon. Twin Cities writer Patricia Cumbie will be awarded the Carol Bly Award for Nonfiction for her essay, "Finishing School."

• Ray Gonzalez, who teaches in the MFA program at the University of Minnesota, has two books of poetry coming out this spring. "Cool Auditor" will be published by BOA Editions, and "Faith Run" will be published by the University of Arizona Press. Gonzalez's 2008 collection of essays, "Renaming the Earth," is a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award in creative nonfiction.

• The life and work of Bill Holm, who died Feb. 25, will be honored by the Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra. The MSO will perform "Dark Night - Glad Day" by Minnesota composer John Tartaglia. The piece features vocal text from Holm's last book, "The Windows of Brimnes: An American in Iceland." The performance will be at 4 p.m. March 29 at Trinity Lutheran Church, 115 N. 4th St., Stillwater. There is no charge.

• Graywolf Press author Salvatore Scibona will read from his novel "The End" at 7:30 p.m. March 26 at the University of Minnesota. Scibona was named a finalist for the National Book Award, and a finalist for the Young Lions Fiction Award (to be announced Monday), a prize for young writers given by the New York Public Library and carrying a cash award of $10,000. The March 26 reading will be in the McNamara Alumni Center (200 Oak St., Minneapolis). He'll be joined by authors Kalia Kao Yang and Nicole Johns. The reading will be followed by a panel on publishing, with Fiona McCrae of Graywolf and Chris Fischbach of Coffee House Press.