“Josh Wilker writes as beautifully about baseball and life as anyone ever has.”

—Rob Neyer, ESPN

“CARDBOARD GODSs awakened feelings in me that I have long suppressed. It is a growth novel, like THE CATCHER IN THE RYE. People, especially people who love baseball, will carry this book with them everywhere.”

—Bill Lee, bestselling author of THE WRONG STUFF and Red Sox legend

An Author Night Program with Josh Wilker will be presented in the South Pasadena Library Community Room on Thursday, June 10 at 7:00 p.m.  The program is presented by the Arroyo Vista Inn, the Baseball Reliquary, the Friends of the South Pasadena Public Library, and the Library. Wilker is the writer of the just-released CARDBOARD GODS: AN ALL-AMERICAN TALE TOLD THROUGH BASEBALL CARDS.  This event is supported by Poets & Writers, Inc. through a grant it has received from the James Irvine Foundation. The event is also supported, in part, by a grant from the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission.

According to some, CARDBOARD GODS could be one of the biggest baseball books this summer. Others claim it’s not really a baseball book at all, and that it only uses baseball cards as jumping off points for a memoir of growing up in an unusual family in Vermont during the 70s.  But it doesn’t really matter if Wilker’s latest book is categorized as a baseball book or not.  What counts most is that CARDBOARD GODS has the powerful impact of a clutch cleanup hitter and the grace of a Hall of Fame shortstop. It’s also a beautifully crafted coming-of-age story with lots of cross-generational appeal.  CARDBOARD GODS is at once funny, moving, and deeply evocative.

Josh Wilker is a 40-something copy editor who lives in Chicago. His blog, also called ‘Cardboard Gods’ has been featured in the New York Times and praised by ESPN.com. But the CARDBOARD GODS book presents all new content as Wilker offers his meditations on his nontraditional family life growing up  --and his relationships with his father, his mother, and his mother’s longtime boyfriend. He is a winner of the Howard Frank Mosher Prize for Short Fiction and has an MFA from Vermont College.

The Community Room is located at 1115 El Centro Street. No tickets or reservations are necessary. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. and refreshments will be provided.

During June, Son of Cardboard Fetish, an exhibit in celebration of baseball cards, those ubiquitous American pop culture artifacts, will be in the display case by the front door of the South Pasadena Library at 1100 Oxley Street.