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Meet your Bloggers!
Welcome to Aurora Public Library’s Blog. A place where our library staff share their thoughts, insider knowledge and overall love of all things book and community.
At Aurora Public Library we strive to meet the needs of the citizens of Aurora with books, information and other resources in a positive and proactive manner. Our e-content and public programming are made possible through the generosity of our Friends of the Aurora Public Library.
A library is so much more than books. While we may still house those beloved volumes of Dostoyevsky and Orville, we also house and curate young minds via our STEAM programs, or via our weekly storytimes. We are a place to gather, to join community, to make new friends, to learn a new skill or trade, to finish high school, or learn a new language-and in this vain, our blog strives to continue this ideology. We hope that when you are in search of something new, something old or even something exciting for you or your family to enjoy, Aurora Public Library comes to mind. Our blog explores books you may want to read, authors you may want to know more about, and even fun crafts for your family to enjoy.
Feel free to comment on posts, re-blog and enjoy. To ensure a civil and focused discussion, comments will be held for a brief period before being published.
To find out more about our library staff who contribute to the blog, read below.
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Elizabeth B.
Elizabeth Bernhardt is a Library Assistant at the Iliff Square Branch of Aurora Public Library, conveniently located near the Friends of the Aurora Library bookstore to enable all of your reading cravings. She loves all aspects of library work, from dancing badly at Toddler Storytime to teaching computer lessons and making adorable lopsided crafts. When not at work, Elizabeth likes playing video games and board games, reading five books at once, and curling up under fuzzy blankets with giant mugs of tea.
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Justine C.
Justine graduated magna cum laude from Colorado College in 2015 and has been working at the Central Branch of Aurora Public Library for nearly two years. In her natural habitat she can be found reading, playing video games, writing, and binging TV shows or movies with her grandfather. She is also fond of the outdoors and possibly too fond of cats, especially her cat daughter, Sassy.
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Brittni E.
Brittni Ehrhart is the Programming and Outreach Librarian for Aurora Public Library. She enjoys cuddling with her cat Rue, going on extended roundtrips with her boyfriend Wes, hiking our beautiful state, photography, and drinking lattes.
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Brandon F.
Brandon is a Library Assistant with the Central Branch of Aurora Public Library. You will usually find him hiking in the beautiful Rockies or enjoying one of my many nerdy hobbies. My reading interests are horror, sci-fi and fantasy.
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Chris G.
You may recognize Chris as the director of a series of 2011 YouTube videos starring his cat Clancy, as founder of the Houston-based bookmobile The Billy Pilgrim Traveling Library, or, more recently, as that guy who works at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Branch of Aurora Public Library. His passions are literature, music, TV, food, beer, and making lists about literature, music, TV, food, and beer. He lives in Northwest Denver with his wife Kelly, the aforementioned Clancy, and another, less picturesque cat, Nora.
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Steven K.
Steven K. is a Library Assistant II at the Central Branch of the Aurora Public Library. He has earned degrees in political science, anthropology, and English literature and has the caffeine addiction to prove it. Someday he aspires to procrastinate writing fantasy novels, but for now he’ll stick to reading them.
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Laura R.
Laura is a Youth Services Library Assistant at the Central Branch of Aurora Public Library. You can usually find her reading, writing poems, riding bikes, or eating ice cream.
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Kristin S.
Kristin has worked at Aurora Public Library since 2013 and specializes in teen programs, adult programs and computer tutoring. Her hobbies include video games, digital painting, and designing Excel spreadsheets for fun.
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Zach S.
Zach is a Programming & Outreach Library Assistant for Aurora Public Library. His passions are mountains, skiing, pretending to be crafty or handy, exploring the world with his wife, long adventures with their fluffy dog, and adding cappuccinos or wine to all of those activities.
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Julie S.
Julie is a Library Assistant at the Tallyn's Reach Branch of Aurora Public Library who loves to spend her days dancing with toddlers and chasing teenagers with Nerf guns. She enjoys watching Harry Potter, Doctor Who and Star Trek with her family. Julie's favorite book is Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell.
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Sara V.H.
Sara is a Programming & Outreach Library Assistant II for Aurora Public Library. An (almost) lifelong resident of Aurora, Sara is proud to call Aurora home and serve her fellow Aurorans at the library! She loves to travel and explore new places with her husband Joe (especially if a beach is involved). She is a lover of all things Disney, football and cats – especially her Russian Blue Charlie – and usually has an Elton John or Taylor Swift song stuck in her head. Sara loves to read all kinds of books, but Young Adult is one of her favorite genres.
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Tessy W.
Tessy is a Reference Library Assistant at the Central Branch of Aurora Public Library. Focusing on computer literacy and unearthing the right book for that last minute research paper, she also presents classes at the library ranging from crafty do-it-yourself to financial literacy presentations.
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Assetou Xango
Dominique Sample goes by her artistic name Assetou Xango. She was introduced to performance poetry at age 15 by several world renowned poets who visited her school and was “instantly obsessed.” Xango memorized their poems and began writing constantly, anxiously awaiting the day she was old enough that her mother allowed her to attend the various poetry venues.
A year later, Xango made her first competitive poetry team: a youth team called Minor Disturbance. They traveled to Los Angeles and competed internationally, achieving fourth place in the overall competition, and were featured on HBO. By the end of that season, she was 20 years old and had “aged out” of the youth program, so she joined their staff and taught poetry workshops to youth in summer camp programs to halfway houses, where she continues this work today with Minor Disturbance, Youth on Record, and Creative Strategies for Change, a local nonprofit organization that teaches a variety of art courses in K-12 schools. Here, she is its school program coordinator in charge of art classes in the Metro Area.
As a community leader, she continues her poetry work, forming and hosting three poetry venues throughout the nation, as well as community gatherings and forums. At the beginning of 2016, she was published in the Santa Fe University of Art and Design’s Annual "Glyph" poetry book. She was also a performer in a recent TED Mile High Women event held in the Buell Theatre for a sold-out crowd of 2,700 people.
Assetou Xango reports she is excited and eager to find a new way to spread the passion and joy of poetry, helping people realize they have 'a voice' and to find it. “I have seen poetry enhance so many lives and change so many minds. I have spent my life in Aurora and have a tremendous sense of pride. It would be a true honor to continue to serve this growing community as a Poet Laureate.”
Her tenure as Aurora’s Poet Laureate runs from February 2017 through January 2019. If interested in booking her for an Aurora event, click here to contact us.
We hope you enjoy!