Newtown writer Kate Katcher read excerpts and held a Q&A for her debut novel, 36, on August 12 at C.H. Booth Library (CHB). Already celebrated as an actor and award-winning playwright, Katcher’s first novel was released in early July.

The event was part of a series the library hosts called Author Talks. The Wednesday evening event was the second consecutive public event for Katcher. The guest of honor had spent the previous evening in Norwalk, where Music Theatre of Connecticut hosted a staged reading of 36 before an author signing.

A small group of people joined Katcher in the Gathering Room of her hometown library to listen to her presentation. Ahead of her reading, guests were encouraged to help themselves to an assortment of desserts alongside a charcuterie board.

Friends of Katcher filed in early to chat and take photos with her and her novel in celebration.

As the event began, CHB Strategic Project Manager Jordana Bloom introduced Katcher.

"I am very honored to be able to introduce my friend, Kate Katcher,” said Bloom. “She is amazing. I've known her for at least ten, maybe 11 years.”

Turning toward the evening’s guest, Bloom said, “I'm just so proud of you, you are such an accomplished woman and you’re so talented.”

Resuming her introduction, Bloom mentioned Katcher is “a playwright, an author, an actress, a singer, and a director.”

Katcher began by explaining how her novel came to be. She said an excerpt from The Last of the Just, a book her mother gifted her as a teenager, stayed with her and inspired aspects of the story.

“The beginning of the book, which I'd like to share with you, is the reason I wrote this,” she said before reading from The Last of the Just: “The world reposes upon 36 just men, the lamed vavnik. Indistinguishable from simple mortals, they are unaware of their station, but if just one of them were lacking, the sufferings of mankind would poison even the souls of the newborn, and humanity would suffocate with a single cry. For the lamed vavnik are the hearts of the world multiplied and into them, as into one receptacle, pour all our griefs.”

Katcher described how the traits of the lamed vavnik relate to the themes of codependency in the novel.

“There are people who thrive on being needed, and there's a new modern psychological term for that. It's called codependence. It's the need to be needed,” she said.

Katcher then set up the plot and provided character introductions for her novel.

“It's the summer of 1984, Ronald Reagan is in the White House, the cell phone has yet to be invented, and the Weiss family is operating like a well-oiled three ring circus,” she read. “In the middle of the circus is Maxine Weiss, she's in her 50s, around 60 years old, and she operates like a juggler spinning all the plates keeping everybody moving and going.

“But the eldest daughter arrives on this particular day in 1984, to tell her mother that she is going to California, and that's the premise of the book.”

She spoke about the process of expanding the play into a novel.

“I went home and I took that play out and I sat down and I took that 95 pages and started asking myself questions ... who are they? Where do they come from? What's their background?”

She continued, “All of the little seeds that I planted in the play about past generations now became full blown characters.”

Katcher then began reading another excerpt, this time from the second chapter of her novel, before inviting her guests to ask questions. In response to being asked if the story is at all autobiographical, she said, “Yes and no ... the little anecdotes, things that I heard here and there, I extrapolated on and fictionalized.”

In response to being asked where she sees this project going next, Katcher said, “There’s a funny way about this business where until you are somebody, they don't want you to direct your own stuff ... I’ve had enough directorial disasters to want to direct my own stuff at some point.”

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Emily Braun is a journalism major at Fordham University interning with The Newtown Bee this summer. She can be contacted through editor@thebee.com.