On April 10, the UMass Dartmouth Claire T. Carney Library Associates Authors Brunch hit its big ten.

The annual event featured authors Anita Diamant, Peggy W. Fellouris, Evelyn Gifun and Alex Kershaw. Due to a family crisis, Joyce Maynard, who was originally scheduled to appear, could not attend the event.

After a brief lunch of scones and finger sandwiches at the Woodland Commons, the event commenced with an introduction from host Mel Yoken, who commended the authors for their unbridled creativity, and remarks from Claire T. Carney Library Dean Terrance Burton and Claire T. Carney Library Associates President Maureen Lewis.

Diamant, a fiction and non-fiction writer, was commended for her latest novel, The Boston Girl. The book is based on the Rockport Lodge, a vacation house for working women of low and moderate income.

Located in Rockport, Massachusetts, the house was purchased in 1906 by the Massachusetts Association of Women Workers and opened the following year. The Lodge provided a variety of activities for its guests, including tennis, hiking, workshops and concerts. The Lodge continued providing these services to women until its closure in 2002 due to financial difficulties, though Diamant had been paying attention to the Lodge since its decline in the ‘90s.

Diamant became so immersed in her research that she managed to write 300 pages without ever setting foot in the Lodge. Though most of her research was left on the cutting room floor, Diamant said “I’ve never been so smitten with my research.”

The Boston Girl featured a cast of girls from different ethnic backgrounds that came together in friendship in the Rockport Lodge. Though Diamant worried the coming of age aspects may seem mundane, the novel wound up being rife with loss and “test[s] of resilience.”

Next to speak was Felouris, a former family therapist and divorce mediator who charmed the crowd as though she was Betty White with red hair. Fellouris authored Three Boys and a Boat which was a departure from her previous writings. In the past, she’d been interested in writing what she knew and about things that colored her everyday life such as family drama and tales of infidelity gleaned from her days as a therapist.

Felouris discussed her process from free writing to getting the book onto the shelves of Barnes and Noble, no easy feat according to her.

Gifun spoke next, discussing her trilogy, Three Strangers: A Trilogy in Black and White. As a young woman, Gifun, who was raised in a fairly sheltered community in Florida, didn't meet a black person until she was recruited to work for the FBI when she was 18. The story revolved around three figures inspired by an encounter she had living during segregation involving herself, a young black man, and a white middle-aged woman. The novels revolved around “specific black and white cultures” rather than race relations, Gifun said.

Especially important to Gifun was maintaining authenticity. She consulted with a black Floridian woman about what dialect James, the young black man, might speak in.

Last was Alex Kershaw, the author of The Bedford Boys and The Longest Winter. His latest endeavor was Avenue of Spies: A True Story of Terror, Espionage, and One American Family's Heroic Resistance in Nazi-Occupied Paris, which follows an American doctor in Paris during World War II and his heroic espionage efforts. A World War II historian, Kershaw provided the background behind his extensive research for the true-life hero, Sumner Jackson.

After the talk, attendees were able to share a word with the authors and purchase copies of their books to be signed.