LIT Board of Directors

KARLAN SICK, CHAIR

Karlan graduated from the University of Kansas in 1960 with French and German majors and a teaching certificate, and attended library school at Columbia University. She has worked at libraries in Virginia and at the New York Public Library. She served on several Young Adult Library Services Association committees, including Best Books for Young Adults (twice), Outstanding Fiction for the College Bound, the Printz Award Committee, and the Alex Award Committee (twice).

After retiring from NYPL, Karlan joined LIT’s board as its president and seeks to improve library facilities for all of New York’s juvenile detainees.

JUDY FROST

Judy is from Minnesota, and received a BA in Humanities from the University of Chicago. After moving to New York she studied at NYU, where she was awarded a Master’s in Urban Planning. Much of her career has involved research and writing on government procedures, especially corruption prevention. She has also been an editor of books and articles, including fiction, memoirs and scholarly works. For the past 15 years she has worked as a volunteer on behalf of the indigenous people of southern Africa in their struggle to save their homelands and maintain their ancient cultures. In recent years, she has also volunteered as a tutor with New York City school children.

MA’LIS WENDT

Ma’lis Wendt grew up in the San Francisco East Bay area and received her BA and Masters of Library Science from the University of California, Berkeley. After graduating with her MLS she moved to New York in 1968 and worked at The New York Public Library for over thirty-five years in the Branch Library System. She started as a young adult outreach librarian and eventually became an administrator in charge of all the libraries in the Bronx for almost twenty years and the libraries in Staten Island for her last two years.

Since her retirement in 2007, Ma’lis has been very active with a variety of activities. In addition to being the Treasurer for Literacy for Incarcerated Teens, she volunteers weekly in the collection management department at the Lefferts Old Dutch Farm House Museum in Prospect Park; she still very active in the American Library Association and is currently the Past President of the new Retired Members Round Table as well as continuing to participate in accreditation visits to library schools throughout the country. She swims five days a week and visits at least one museum a week.

DANA LEHRMAN

Dana worked as a young adult librarian in the New York City public schools for over 35 years, and as head librarian at Jane Addams High School in the south Bronx for the last 25 years before her retirement in 2007. She has also served on the board of the Carl Schurz Park Association, a civic group working for the betterment of that lovely East River park; was a teacher-participant in the Lincoln Center Institute bringing the arts to the city’s public schools; and established children’s libraries at Manhattan’s Central Synagogue and Temple Shaaray Tefila. In 2009 she founded ROOMS FOR IMPROVEMENT, a service that uses her organizing skills to help New Yorkers banish the clutter and gain more living space at home. Dana has been a member of the board of Literacy for Incarcerated Teens since 2008.

MARYBETH ZEMAN

Marybeth Zeman has been an educator for more than thirty years and, since 2010, has served as transitional counselor for the School Program for Incarcerated Youth at the Nassau County Correctional Center. When she built a small library and began pushing a library cart there, she became a champion for providing library services to the incarcerated. Her book, Tales of a Jailhouse Librarian: Challenging the Juvenile Justice System One Book at a Time, is testament to the transformative power of books to those in jail.

In 2007, she was awarded a Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian scholarship and earned a master’s degree in Library Science and Information Services from St. John’s University, New York, after many years in education as a high school ESL teacher, adjunct professor at Queensborough Community College, Nassau Community College and St. Joseph’s College in Brooklyn.

Presently, she has become involved with the juvenile justice community and is an advocate for the rights of the incarcerated and the formerly incarcerated.

She contributes as a blog writer for Public Libraries Online and The Chronicle for Social Change, where she posts regularly advocating for the need for outreach library services for juvenile offenders, the incarcerated and their families.

ELIZABETH DREIER

I am a New Yorker, born and bred. I was born here in 1933. I graduated from Barnard College and then got a Masters degree in education from Harvard University.
I taught primary grades in the New York public schools for 5 or 6 years, and then stayed home for a while to raise my three children. I now have 6 grandchildren.

For seven or eight years, I was a faculty member of the City College School of Education, supervising student teachers and teaching courses in Teaching Reading
I was on the Board of the New Lincoln School, and an administrator in independent schools. Then, I became Principal of an elementary school in Larchmont and retired from there after 17 years.

In retirement, I have volunteered teaching reading to primary children in public schools and to adults in a program sponsored by the New York Public Library.

ANGELA CARSTENSEN

Angela grew up in Pennsylvania and earned a B.M. from Oberlin Conservatory and an M.L.S. from the University of Illinois/Urbana-Champaign. She has served on YALSA book award committees including the Michael L. Printz, Excellence in Nonfiction and Alex Awards and published The Readers’ Advisory Guide to Teen Literature with ALA Editions. After enjoying 23 years as a school librarian in New York City and Connecticut, she now teaches as an adjunct lecturer in Young Adult Literature, reviews for Booklist magazine, and serves on the Schneider Family Book Award committee, which recognizes works that represent the disability experience.