Spotlight on Tony Tallent

inthejasperspotlight_TonyTallentTony Tallent is currently contributing more than his fair share to the Columbia arts community. Tallent is the Director of Literacy and Learning at the Richland Public Library, but that title alone does not come close to covering his efforts. He has his hands on far more than literacy and learning. He handles a lot of the coordination between some of the main library services including collections, digital presence, programs and partnerships, and new initiatives.

Before coming to Columbia, Tallent worked in Boulder, Colorado for a couple of years as director of both the library system and the arts program. He says that Boulder “has a great commitment to the environment, a great commitment to the arts, and to expression. Those are areas that I’ve been interested in for most of my life, so I was able to bring a little, or a lot, of that energy along with me when I got here to Columbia—trying to weave together a more artful library.”

To Tallent, a library is significantly more than what lies on the shelves. He says, “I know we often think of libraries as places of information, but for me it’s really been in my life a place of inspiration…it was the people, and the activity, and it was that you were able to connect in this sort of crossroads fashion to things outside yourself, outside your normal routine, and this great patchwork of the community existed in the library. There were bits and pieces of the theatre world, bits and pieces of the arts world, hardcore genealogists, power readers, writers, and they all came together for me at the library.”

In Tallent’s eyes, the library also offers another very unique edge—open access. “We offer services that don’t require a ticket, don’t require a membership, don’t require you to be dressed in any certain way, or to be of any certain rank in the community. We really open our arms to the community and make learning opportunities, artful opportunities, and opportunities for the community to really challenge themselves in a way that’s open and accessible—in a way that I can’t think of any other service agency that does quite the same.” He says this aspect is really important to the Richland Public Library and to himself; “it’s a place that everyone has a voice in and is welcome.”

Before his incredible day job, Tallent spent over three years producing a theatre piece he wrote himself entitled Ramble Mountain. It consists of a series of vignettes accompanied by original music and inspired by his life and his grandmother’s life in the Appalachian mountains of North Carolina. After traveling around with it and finding success, he decided to develop it into a two-act full stage play, which was performed in several theatres, mostly throughout western North Carolina. He says, “I was doing everything from the writing to the acting to creating the sets themselves, so it was really a kind of jack of all trades experience, which I wouldn’t trade for anything.” Since Ramble Mountain, Tallent has done a lot of writing in various platforms. Lately, he has been focusing on fiction writing and has had some of his short stories published.

Tallent has trouble choosing just one favorite writer, but says he likes “writers that write with a lot of deep imagery and have a strong voice that verges on poetry even in narrative fiction…I’m not so much a reader for plot, but writers who are really working and massaging the grey matter with beautiful imagery are what I’m drawn to.” He cited Toni Morrison and Elizabeth Strout as his favorite examples of this.

-by Abby Davis

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