Meet Author Jim Kokoris!

Thursday, April 15,
Dessert reception at 6:30 p.m., $10, please reserve in advance
Presentation at 7:30 p.m., free

Jim Kokoris will be speaking about the writing life and reading from his latest novel at a program on Thursday, April 15, at 7:30 p.m. sponsored by the St. Charles Public Library Foundation. The program is free and open to the public.

A dessert reception at 6:30 p.m. precedes his presentation. If you plan to attend the reception, we request your reservation in advance. Tickets are $10 for the reception. Please make your check payable to the St. Charles Public Library Foundation and mail to One South Sixth Avenue, St. Charles, IL 60174, or drop off in the Business Office to Virginia Tsipas.

Kokoris writes with wit, warmth, and wisdom about some of society’s more hapless, but thoroughly lovable individuals, from a newly widowed lottery winner to a newly unemployed ad executive. His treatment of the compromised “everyman” has won him exuberant and insightful critical praise.

In its review of his 2002 debut novel, The Rich Part of Life, Publisher’s Weekly found a “subtle sense of humor as sweet as it is wicked,” and The Dallas Morning News called Sister North (2004) “a compelling story of forgiveness and spiritual awakening.” Booklist Magazine found Kokoris to be “a shrewd and compassionate observer” of the human condition in its analysis of his most recent work, The Pursuit of Other Interests (2009).

With such popular reviews, it is no wonder that Kokoris has also been the recipient of numerous awards. The Rich Part of Life received the Friends of American Writers Award for Best First Novel, and was translated into fifteen languages, while The Pursuit of Other Interests was named an “Indie Next List Notable” in December, 2009, by the Independent Booksellers of America.

Kokoris, president and general manager of Oakbrook Terrace-based JSH&S Public Relations, also has written humorous and keenly observant essays for The Chicago Tribune Sunday Magazine; USA Weekend; Chicago Sun-Times; and Reader’s Digest. A graduate of the University of Illinois, Kokoris’s early writings caught the attention of 1980s television producer Grant Tinker, who offered him a job writing sitcoms. Kokoris passed on Hollywood, choosing to settle down in Chicago’s south suburbs, where he lives with his wife and three sons.

3/2010