Ester Village Library

Open Hours
2025-06-04 17:00 - 19:00 (America/Anchorage)

Adult Book Club
2025-06-07 15:00 - 16:30
Title to be announced!

Adult Book Club
2025-08-02 15:00 - 16:30 | Clausen Cabin, 3629 Main Street, Ester, 99725
This month’s selection: Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, by Nicholas D. Kristof
From Amazon: With Pulitzer Prize winners Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn as our guides, we undertake an odyssey through Africa and Asia to meet the extraordinary women struggling there, among them a Cambodian teenager sold into sex slavery and an Ethiopian woman who suffered devastating injuries in childbirth. Drawing on the breadth of their combined reporting experience, Kristof and WuDunn depict our world with anger, sadness, clarity, and, ultimately, hope.
They show how a little help can transform the lives of women and girls abroad. That Cambodian girl eventually escaped from her brothel and, with assistance from an aid group, built a thriving retail business that supports her family. The Ethiopian woman had her injuries repaired and in time became a surgeon. A Zimbabwean mother of five, counseled to return to school, earned her doctorate and became an expert on AIDS.
Through these stories, Kristof and WuDunn help us see that the key to economic progress lies in unleashing women’s potential. They make clear how so many people have helped to do just that, and how we can each do our part. Throughout much of the world, the greatest unexploited economic resource is the female half of the population. Countries such as China have prospered precisely because they emancipated women and brought them into the formal economy. Unleashing that process globally is not only the right thing to do; it’s also the best strategy for fighting poverty.
Deeply felt, pragmatic, and inspirational, Half the Sky is essential reading for every global citizen.

Knit Night/Open Hours
2025-08-05 16:00 - 19:00

Paint-in
2025-08-07 18:00 - 20:00 | Clausen Cabin, 3629 Main Street, Ester, 99725
Come join us for an adult paint workshop!

Monthly Board Meeting
2025-08-25 18:30 - 20:30, 2025-10-06 18:30 - 20:30 | Clausen Cabin, 3629 Main Street, Ester, 99725

Adult paint workshop
2025-09-04 18:00 - 20:00 | Clausen Cabin, 3629 Main Street, Ester, 99725
Join us for some fun times painting whatever your heart desires!

Adult Book Club
2025-09-06 15:00 - 16:00 | Clausen Cabin, 3629 Main Street, Ester, 99725
The Sisters Brothers, by Patrick deWitt
From Amazon:
Hermann Kermit Warm is going to die. The enigmatic and powerful man known only as the Commodore has ordered it, and his henchmen, Eli and Charlie Sisters, will make sure of it. Though Eli doesn’t share his brother’s appetite for whiskey and killing, he’s never known anything else. But their prey isn’t an easy mark, and on the road from Oregon City to Warm’s gold-mining claim outside Sacramento, Eli begins to question what he does for a living-and whom he does it for.
With The Sisters Brothers, Patrick deWitt pays homage to the classic Western, transforming it into an unforgettable comic tour de force. Filled with a remarkable cast of characters-losers, cheaters, and ne’er-do-wells from all stripes of life-and told by a complex and compelling narrator, it is a violent, lustful odyssey through the underworld of the 1850s frontier that beautifully captures the humor, melancholy, and grit of the Old West and two brothers bound by blood, violence, and love.

Lynda Sather, local author, presentation
2025-09-06 16:00 - 17:00
Join us to hear local author Lynda Sather talk about her latest book,” A Smack of Jellyfish: Fear, Fish and Finding Yourself in Alaska”, a coming-of-age story about a young woman experiencing Petersburg, Alaska for the first time in 1973.
This will be a 20-minute talk about her book, and the process of writing fiction versus memoir, followed by a Q & A session afterwards.
Here is more of a description of the book:
A Smack of Jellyfish

Back to School Ice Cream Social
2025-09-08 15:00 - 18:00 | Clausen Cabin, 3629 Main Street, Ester, 99725
Join us this week for ice cream!

Annual Fall Garlic Sale
2025-09-13 12:00 - 14:00 | Clausen Cabin, 3629 Main Street, Ester, 99725

Kid's art and crafts
2025-09-15 15:00 - 18:00

LiBerry Pie and Music Festival
2025-09-27 14:00 - 22:00 | Golden Eagle Saloon, 3530 Main Steet, Fairbanks, 99709, United States
Join us for our annual Fall fundraiser and pie throwdown!
Pie competition begins with entries being brought to the Clausen Cabin at 2:00PM, with pies being judged at 4:00 PM. There are 2 categories: sweet and savory, with a winner being crowned in each category and a grand prize champion.
Pies for sale ($5/slice) can be brought over to the Golden Eagle beginning at 5:00, with the pie sales and music beginning at 6:00PM. Non-winning pies will also be sold for $5/slice.
The three winning pies will be live auctioned off at 8:00PM.
Join us for a night of pie eating and fun!

Adult Book Club
2025-10-04 15:00 - 16:30 | Clausen Cabin, 3629 Main Street, Ester, 99725
This month’s selection: West With Giraffes, by Lynda Rutledge
From Amazon:
Woodrow Wilson Nickel, age 105, feels his life ebbing away. But when he learns giraffes are going extinct, he finds himself recalling the unforgettable experience he cannot take to his grave.
It’s 1938. The Great Depression lingers. Hitler is threatening Europe, and world-weary Americans long for wonder. They find it in two giraffes who miraculously survive a hurricane while crossing the Atlantic. What follows is a twelve-day road trip in a custom truck to deliver Southern California’s first giraffes to the San Diego Zoo. Behind the wheel is the young Dust Bowl rowdy Woodrow. Inspired by true events, the tale weaves real-life figures with fictional ones, including the world’s first female zoo director, a crusty old man with a past, a young female photographer with a secret, and assorted reprobates as spotty as the giraffes.
Part adventure, part historical saga, and part coming-of-age love story, West with Giraffes explores what it means to be changed by the grace of animals, the kindness of strangers, the passing of time, and a story told before it’s too late.

Annual Membership Meeting
2025-10-19 16:00 - 17:00 | Clausen Cabin, 3629 Main Street, Ester, 99725
Join us for a recap of the previous year, and a look into the future of the John Trigg Ester Library!
Additionally, we will be discussing the following topics for potential inclusion in updated Bylaws and Articles of Incorporation:

Change to the name of the Organization

Reason for change to both Bylaws and Articles of Incorporation
1) A search for “Ester Library” through Pick, Click, Give did not yield any results. If someone did not know the entire name (John Trigg Ester Library), they would not be able to donate to us. It is unknown how many other search engines do not recognize just “Ester Library”
2) The Board felt that many residents in the current village population neither remembers John Trigg and/or recognizes his name
3) The Board believes the Ester Village Library better represents who we are as well as where we are
Proposed change: Change the name of the Organization from the John Trigg Ester Library to Ester Village Library. These changes will occur in all applicable sections in both the Articles of Incorporation and the Bylaws. A commemorative ceremony and plaque honoring John Trigg will be dedicated at a time in the very near future.
2. Changes to the number of directors
Reason for change to the Bylaws

We have, on occasion, had difficulty filling board member positions
State law allows dropping the number of board members to 3:

AS 10.20.086 – The number of directors of a corporation shall be at least three. The number of directors shall be fixed by the bylaws…
AS 10.20.121 – Two or more offices may be held by the same person, except the offices of president and secretary.

The Board of Directors is proposing a new minimum of 5 board members with the following (2) text changes to the Bylaws:

Article V, Section 2. NUMBER OF DIRECTORS. The board of directors may number seven (7): four (4) officers and three (3) additional elected directors. Two or more offices may be held by the same person, except the offices of president and secretary. The minimum number of directors shall be five (5).
Article VI, Section 1. DESIGNATION OF OFFICERS. The officers of the corporation shall, at a minimum, be two: a president and a secretary. The positions of vice president and treasurer can be combined into the president and secretary positions.
3. Change from Robert’s Rules of Order to Modern Rules of Order
Reason for change to the Bylaws

The Modern Rules of Order are not as cumbersome as Robert’s Rules. For example, if all members present come to a unanimous consensus, there is no reason for a formal vote (motion to vote, etc).
Formal voting will still occur if there is no unanimous consent
The Board of Directors is proposing a change to the way Board meetings are conducted with the following (2) text changes to the Bylaws:

Article IV, Section 10: Conduct of Meeting. …. Membership meetings will be conducted based on Modern Rules of Order
Article V, Section 13: Conduct of Meeting …. Board of directors meetings will be conducted based on Modern Rules of Order.
4. Change to number of check signers
Reason for change to the Bylaws – We have had single signer checks for several years. This change to the Bylaws officially recognizes this with the following word change:
Article VIII, Section 2: CHECKS AND NOTES. Except as otherwise specifically determined by resolution of the board of directors, or as otherwise required by law, checks, drafts, promissory notes, orders for the payment of money, and other evidence of indebtedness of the corporation shall be signed by one officer of the corporation.

Writing Circle/Open hours
2025-10-26 16:00 - 18:00 | Clausen Cabin, 3629 Main Street, Ester, 99725

Adult Book Club
2025-12-06 15:00 - 16:30 | Clausen Cabin, 3629 Main Street, Ester, 99725
Join us for a discussion of “Why We Sleep”, by Matthew Walker.
This is from Amazon:
The first sleep book by a leading scientific expert – Professor Matthew Walker, director of UC Berkeley’s Sleep and Neuroimaging Lab – reveals his groundbreaking exploration of sleep, explaining how we can harness its transformative power to change our lives for the better.
Sleep is one of the most important but least understood aspects of our life, wellness, and longevity. Until very recently, science had no answer to the question of why we sleep, or what good it served, or why we suffer such devastating health consequences when we don’t sleep. Compared to the other basic drives in life – eating, drinking, and reproducing – the purpose of sleep remained elusive.
But an explosion of scientific discoveries in the last 20 years has shed new light on this fundamental aspect of our lives. Now, preeminent neuroscientist and sleep expert Matthew Walker gives us a new understanding of the vital importance of sleep and dreaming. Among so many other things, within the brain, sleep enriches our ability to learn, memorize, and make logical decisions. It recalibrates our emotions, restocks our immune system, fine-tunes our metabolism, and regulates our appetite. Dreaming mollifies painful memories and creates a virtual reality space in which the brain melds past and present knowledge to inspire creativity.
Walker answers important questions about sleep: How do caffeine and alcohol affect sleep? What really happens during REM sleep? Why do our sleep patterns change across a lifetime? How do common sleep aids affect us, and can they do long-term damage? Charting cutting-edge scientific breakthroughs and synthesizing decades of research and clinical practice, Walker explains how we can harness sleep to improve learning, mood, and energy levels; regulate hormones; prevent cancer, Alzheimer’s, and diabetes; slow the effects of aging; increase longevity; enhance the education and lifespan of our children, and boost the efficiency, success, and productivity of our businesses. Clear-eyed, fascinating, and immensely accessible, Why We Sleep is the crucial account on sleep that will forever change listeners’ minds on the subject.

Adult Book Club
2026-01-03 15:00 - 16:30 | Clausen Cabin, 3629 Main Street, Ester, 99725
Please join us for a discussion of “The Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini. This is from Amazon:
Taking us from Afghanistan in the final days of its monarchy to the present, The Kite Runner is the unforgettable and beautifully told story of the friendship between two boys growing up in Kabul. Raised in the same household and sharing the same wet nurse, Amir and Hassan grow up in different worlds: Amir is the son of a prominent and wealthy man, while Hassan, the son of Amir’s father’s servant, is a Hazara – a shunned ethnic minority. Their intertwined lives, and their fates, reflect the eventual tragedy of the world around them. When Amir and his father flee the country for a new life in California, Amir thinks that he has escaped his past. And yet he cannot leave the memory of Hassan behind him.
The Kite Runner is a novel about friendship and betrayal, and about the price of loyalty. It is about the bonds between fathers and sons, and the power of fathers over sons – their love, their sacrifices, and their lies. Written against a backdrop of history that has not been told in fiction before, The Kite Runner describes the rich culture and beauty of a land in the process of being destroyed. But through the devastation, Khaled Hosseini offers hope for redemption.

Monthly Book Club
2026-02-07 15:30 - 17:00 | Clausen Cabin, 3629 Main Street, Ester, 99725
Between Two Kingdoms, by Suleika Jaouad
From Amazon:
In the summer after graduating from college, Suleika Jaouad was preparing, as they say in commencement speeches, to enter “the real world.” She had fallen in love and moved to Paris to pursue her dream of becoming a war correspondent. The real world she found, however, would take her into a very different kind of conflict zone.
It started with an itch—first on her feet, then up her legs, like a thousand invisible mosquito bites. Next came the exhaustion, and the six-hour naps that only deepened her fatigue. Then a trip to the doctor and, a few weeks shy of her twenty-third birthday, a diagnosis: leukemia, with a 35 percent chance of survival. Just like that, the life she had imagined for herself had gone up in flames. By the time Jaouad flew home to New York, she had lost her job, her apartment, and her independence. She would spend much of the next four years in a hospital bed, fighting for her life and chronicling the saga in a column for The New York Times.
When Jaouad finally walked out of the cancer ward—after countless rounds of chemo, a clinical trial, and a bone marrow transplant—she was, according to the doctors, cured. But as she would soon learn, a cure is not where the work of healing ends; it’s where it begins. She had spent the past 1,500 days in desperate pursuit of one goal—to survive. And now that she’d done so, she realized that she had no idea how to live.
How would she reenter the world and live again? How could she reclaim what had been lost? Jaouad embarked—with her new best friend, Oscar, a scruffy terrier mutt—on a 100-day, 15,000-mile road trip across the country. She set out to meet some of the strangers who had written to her during her years in the hospital: a teenage girl in Florida also recovering from cancer; a teacher in California grieving the death of her son; a death-row inmate in Texas who’d spent his own years confined to a room. What she learned on this trip is that the divide between sick and well is porous, that the vast majority of us will travel back and forth between these realms throughout our lives. Between Two Kingdoms is a profound chronicle of survivorship and a fierce, tender, and inspiring exploration of what it means to begin again.

Seed Catalog Party
2026-02-25 17:00 - 19:00 | Clausen Cabin, 3629 Main Street, Ester, 99725
Come browse our assortment of catalogs, and band together with others to order seeds for the upcoming season!
Also featuring Ester Library’s own Kristin Haney, who will discuss her attendance at the 2025 Circumpolar Agricultural Conference in Norway, offering insights into northern agriculture and resilient gardening in a changing world.

Library Board of Director's Meeting
2026-03-02 18:30 - 20:30 | Clausen Cabin, 3629 Main Street, Ester, 99725

Monthly Book Club
2026-03-07 15:30 - 17:00 | Clausen Cabin, 3629 Main Street, Ester, 99725
West with Giraffes, by Lynda Rutledge
From Amazon:
Woodrow Wilson Nickel, age 105, feels his life ebbing away. But when he learns giraffes are going extinct, he finds himself recalling the unforgettable experience he cannot take to his grave.
It’s 1938. The Great Depression lingers. Hitler is threatening Europe, and world-weary Americans long for wonder. They find it in two giraffes who miraculously survive a hurricane while crossing the Atlantic. What follows is a twelve-day road trip in a custom truck to deliver Southern California’s first giraffes to the San Diego Zoo. Behind the wheel is the young Dust Bowl rowdy Woodrow. Inspired by true events, the tale weaves real-life figures with fictional ones, including the world’s first female zoo director, a crusty old man with a past, a young female photographer with a secret, and assorted reprobates as spotty as the giraffes.
Part adventure, part historical saga, and part coming-of-age love story, West with Giraffes explores what it means to be changed by the grace of animals, the kindness of strangers, the passing of time, and a story told before it’s too late.

Seedy Saturday
2026-03-28 13:00 - 15:00 | Hartung Hall
Seed swap – Bring your saved/extra seeds. Come browse our extensive seed catalog and “check out” some seeds!
At 2:00, we will be holding a seed starting workshop. Information on variety selection, starting dates, container selection and temperature and lighting.
Learn more about the community garden and Seed Library, seed stewards, the Spring plant sale and Alaska gardening.

Board of Director's Meeting
2026-03-31 18:30 - 20:30 | Clausen Cabin, 3629 Main Street, Ester, 99725

Adult Book Club
2026-04-04 15:30 - 17:00 | Clausen Cabin, 3629 Main Street, Ester, 99725
This month, “Delicate, Edible Birds”, by Lauren Groff.
This, from Amazon:
Following the publication of Groff’s first novel, The Monsters of Templeton (2008), comes this collection of nine short stories, six of which have never been published. The richly conceived, finely detailed stories offer portraits of smart, daring women who are in search of, in thrall to, or disillusioned by love. In “Lucky Chow Fun,” winner of a Pushcart Prize, Groff returns to the town of Templeton to tell the story of a high-school swimmer who uncovers the sordid sexual secrets of her seemingly idyllic small town. “L. DeBard and Aliette,” included in the latest edition of Best American Short Stories, is a reimagining of the love story of Abelard and Héloïse that sees the couple recast as an Olympic swimmer and his pupil, both of whom suffer through the flu epidemic of 1918. And in the title story, an unconventional female reporter, fleeing the Nazis in rural France along with a band of male correspondents, must strike a sordid bargain with a brutal farmer to secure their safe passage.

Spring Fundraiser: Once Upon a Spring
2026-04-18 19:00 - 22:00 | Golden Eagle Saloon, 3530 Main Steet, Fairbanks, 99709, United States
So far, we’ve got round trip tickets for the following tours: Northern Alaska Tour Company’s Fly and Drive to the Arctic Circle, Stan Stephens Columbia Glacier cruise, and Alaska Railroad tickets from Anchorage to Seward (all tours are for 2 people), the Pump House Restaurant, and the Fairbanks Children’s Museum.
These are just a few of the items up for the silent auction. We have lots more – tools, kitchen implements, art and prints and swag from local breweries and restaurants.
Come on out, dressed as your favorite literary character (or not – costumes not required)! We’ll have a photo booth and a DJ from 7-10 Saturday, April 18, 2026!

Adult Book Club
2026-05-02 15:30 - 17:00 | Clausen Cabin, 3629 Main Street, Ester, 99725
“The World According to Color” by James Fox
From Amazon:
We have an extraordinary connection to color―we give it meanings, associations, and properties that last millennia and span cultures, continents, and languages. In The World According to Color, James Fox takes seven elemental colors―black, red, yellow, blue, white, purple, and green―and uncovers behind each a root idea, based on visual resemblances and common symbolism throughout history.
Through a series of stories and vignettes, the book then traces these meanings to show how they morphed and multiplied and, ultimately, how they reveal a great deal about the societies that produced them: reflecting and shaping their hopes, fears, prejudices, and preoccupations.
Fox also examines the science of how our eyes and brains interpret light and color, and shows how this is inherently linked with the meanings we give to hue. And using his background as an art historian, he explores many of the milestones in the history of art―from Bronze Age gold-work to Turner, Titian to Yves Klein―in a fresh way. Fox also weaves in literature, philosophy, cinema, archaeology, and art―moving from Monet to Marco Polo, early Japanese ink artists to Shakespeare and Goethe to James Bond.
By creating a new history of color, Fox reveals a new story about humans and our place in the universe: second only to language, color is the greatest carrier of cultural meaning in our world.

Annual Plant Sale
2026-05-30 12:00 - 15:00 | Clausen Cabin, 3629 Main Street, Ester, 99725
See the Plant sale flyer
Come on down to the library and get your starters for the year! Ornamental and edible plants for sale, all to support the library.

Monthly Book Club
2026-06-06 15:00 - 16:30 | Clausen Cabin, 3629 Main Street, Ester, 99725
“The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek” by Kim Michele Richardson
From Amazon:
The bestselling historical fiction novel from Kim Michele Richardson, this is a novel following Cussy Mary, a packhorse librarian and her quest to bring books to the Appalachian community she loves, perfect for readers of William Kent Kreuger and Lisa Wingate. The perfect addition to your next book club!
The hardscrabble folks of Troublesome Creek have to scrap for everything—everything except books, that is. Thanks to Roosevelt’s Kentucky Pack Horse Library Project, Troublesome’s got its very own traveling librarian, Cussy Mary Carter.
Cussy’s not only a book woman, however, she’s also the last of her kind, her skin a shade of blue unlike most anyone else. Not everyone is keen on Cussy’s family or the Library Project, and a Blue is often blamed for any whiff of trouble. If Cussy wants to bring the joy of books to the hill folks, she’s going to have to confront prejudice as old as the Appalachias and suspicion as deep as the holler.
Inspired by the true blue-skinned people of Kentucky and the brave and dedicated Kentucky Pack Horse library service of the 1930s, The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek is a story of raw courage, fierce strength, and one woman’s belief that books can carry us anywhere—even back home.
