Catherine Tudish and Brett Ann Stanciu both have new novels set in small-town Vermont. Yankee Bookshop and NWPL are excited to welcome them to Woodstock to talk about A Thousand Souls, Call It Madness, writing, life in our rural state, and more!

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Catherine Tudish’s A Thousand Souls: A Novel in Stories interweaves the lives of three generations in this rural Vermont town of “upward of a thousand souls.”

A boy born of a secret affair meets his father. A recent widow and Boston transplant solves the mystery of a teen girl gone missing. A beloved sheriff breaks up a drug operation, only to get busted himself for helping undocumented workers evade ICE. The disappointed wife of a rural mail driver presents him with a nude portrait – of herself. A shy girl befriends a black bear… People unknown, yet familiar.

Catherine Tudish is the author of the story collection Tenney’s Landing and the novel American Cream. She has taught writing and literature at Harvard University, Dartmouth College, and the Bread Loaf School of English. She lives in a village in central Vermont, where she teaches a community writing workshop at the local library and serves as one of the town’s three Fence Viewers.

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Brett Ann Stanciu’s Call It Madness unfolds in the immensity of a frozen Vermont winter, where buried truths rise and endings refuse to follow the script.

Millennial Avah Lavoie’ s crumbling relationship is the final push she needs to answer her estranged mother’ s unexpected call: her great-grandfather Opa has died. Driving north to rural Vermont, Avah hopes to untangle the murky history of a family she barely knows. Rumors swirl— about a long-lost farm, a sawmill accident, and Opa’ s drinking….

Brett Ann Stanciu is the author of Unstitched: My Journey to Understand Opioid Addition and How Communities Can Heal and Hidden View. Recipient of a 2020 Vermont Arts Council Creation Grant and a 2024 Fellowship to the Vermont Studio Center for the Arts, Stanciu lives in Hardwick, Vermont, in a century-old house built for granite workers and surrounded by lilacs.