Twelve years ago, Deschutes Public Library launched “A Novel Idea … Read Together,” Deschutes County’s only community-wide reading project. Designed to explore the question “what happens when we all read the same book?,” the project has grown in scope and scale to become one of the most successful community reading projects in the Northwest.

In recent years Deschutes Public Library Art Committees have joined in the project by hosting art shows inspired by the selected novel. This year the Sisters, Sunriver and Downtown Bend Libraries will participate. The Libraries will accept art and applications for their Novel Idea shows that will be on display in April 2016

Sunriver applications are due by March 16 and can be picked up at the information desk. Submissions for the Sisters show will be accepted on Thursday, March 31 from 3:00 p.m. – 5:30 p.m. The Downtown Bend Library art committee will be accepting art on Monday, March 7 between 4:00 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. Artists may enter up to two works, which must be at least 16 inches by 20 inches, framed and ready to hang. For more information contact your branch Library.

The 2016 “A Novel Idea” selection, Euphoria by Lily King, winner of the 2014 Kirkus Prize and one of The New York Times Top Ten of 2014, tells a reimagined, fictionalized version of anthropologist Margaret Mead and her time in New Guinea. Set in the early 1930s along the banks of the Sepik River in what is now Papua New Guinea, King’s characters struggle with loss, passion, despair and the moral ambiguities of their profession, anthropology.

For more information about this or other library programs, please visit the library website at www.deschuteslibrary.org. People with disabilities needing accommodations (alternative formats, seating or auxiliary aides) should contact Liz at 312-1032, lizg@deschuteslibrary.org.