Past Library Events - Norman Williams Public Library

2024 March 9 – Friends of NWPL Spring Piano Duet Concert

It’s time for the annual Friends of the Norman Williams Public Library Piano Concert! Eight performers will be delighting the audience with a variety of duets played on two pianos:

Gwen Ambrose
Rebecca Banks
Sherry Belisle
Carol Cronce
Kathleen Dolan
Bob Merrill
Avery Sailsbury
Sonny Saul
Following the musical performances, Sherry will lead us in the “Name That Tune” game! Can you guess which Beatles’ song is being described by its history? For example, do you know which tune first began life with the words, “Scrambled Eggs”? Admission is by donation to the Friends of the NWPL.

2024 February 9 – Creative Play for Seniors: We’re Never Too Old to Play

Project Artists Ham Gillett, Michael Zerphy and Marv Klassen-Landis will present a performance for the public and for future workshop participants introducing the humor and pathos of aging and a sampling of the kinds of genres and activities introduced in the workshop series—readings, storytelling, poems, songs, skits, play excerpts, improvisation.

About the presenters:

Michael Zerphy is a storyteller, clown, poet, musician, banjo jokester and mirth instigator. His inventive and diverse performances have captivated audiences of all ages across the US and Europe for decades. His shows include FoolzJourney, Zany Acts and Codger!

Marv Klassen-Landis is a poet and storyteller who believes in the power of creative expression for healing and discovery. A Vermont Arts Council roster artist and a Children’s Literacy Foundation presenter, he also was the founding creative writer in Dartmouth Health’s arts program. He collaborated with Michael in co-creating and touring Children’s Voices.

Ham Gillett‘s representative roles during his fifteen years as a professional actor include Captain Hook in Peter Pan, Don Quixote in Man of La Mancha, Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night and Reverend Hale in The Crucible. Locally, he performs with We the People Theater and Bel Canto Chamber Singers. He starred in Love Letters at Pentangle, and his reading of “A Child’s Christmas in Wales” has been a perennial favorite in Woodstock for 23 years.

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The Norman Williams Public Library and the Thompson Senior Center are excited to offer a series of weekly workshops presented by three longtime friends and collaborators (who are also older adults): Marv Klassen-Landis, Ham Gillett, and Michael Zerphy.

We invite community elders to participate in arts activities that will provide fun and creative ways to strengthen cognition and well-being through learning new things, interacting with others, and exploring their own identities through personal expression and sharing with the community.

These workshops are free and open to the public. Come for one, two, three, or all of them! Registration is requested; please email Programs@ThompsonSeniorCenter.org.
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We’ll introduce the program leaders and their ideas at a special opening event at the Library.

Opening Event: We’re Never Too Old to Play
February 9, 4:00 pm, Norman Williams Public Library
Project Artists Ham Gillett, Michael Zerphy and Marv Klassen-Landis will present a performance for the public and for future workshop participants introducing the humor and pathos of aging and a sampling of the kinds of genres and activities introduced in the workshop series—readings, storytelling, poems, songs, skits, play excerpts, improvisation.
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The weekly workshops will be held at the Senior Center right after lunch over the next 7 Fridays:

Workshop 1: Read and Discuss
February 16, 1:00-2:30 pm, Thompson Senior Center
What comes up for us when we read? We may have been taught we should analyze, but what about our associations and memories and gut reactions? And then again, what is actually on the page? We will read short pieces of literature aloud and discuss together. (Marv Klassen-Landis, Ham Gillett)

Workshop 2: Oral Interpretation
February 23, 1:00-2:30 pm, Thompson Senior Center
Do you read aloud to your grandchildren or to yourself? Would you like to be a bit more expressive? Bring a favorite children’s story, a poem or a prose passage. We’ll read them aloud to each other and consider ways to bring them to life. (Ham Gillett, Michael Zerphy)

Workshop 3: Storytelling
March 1, 1-2:30 pm, Thompson Senior Center
We all have stories; we all are stories. Storytelling isn’t rocket surgery, but there are skills you can gain by playing storytelling games and telling stories from your life in a small group of good listeners. (Michael Zerphy, Marv Klassen-Landis)

Workshop 4: Personal Writing
March 8, 1-2:30 pm, Thompson Senior Center
Ever try writing in a journal? Ever get stuck while writing? Does personal writing help you sort out thoughts and emotions? We will try a variety of writing techniques and exercises to overcome writer’s block, tap into our playful, intuitive side and get to know ourselves a little better—any sharing of this writing will be completely optional. (Marv Klassen-Landis, Ham Gillett)

Workshop 5: Stepping Out of the Shower
March 15, 1-2:30 pm, Thompson Senior Center
Everyone sings in the shower, right? We will set up the curtains; you give it your best shot. We’ll cheer you on. Then, if you feel like it, we’ll pull back the curtain and sing with you. Or we can just sing as a group. Who knows, we might even have a good time. All participants will be fully clothed. (Ham Gillett, Michael Zerphy)

Workshop 6: Theater Games
March 22, 1-2:30 pm, Thompson Senior Center
If you ever enjoyed a round of charades, you will love this! Play imaginative theater games in which there are no losers, no wrong choices, no audience. Just creative play and lots of laughter. (Michael Zerphy, Marv Klassen-Landis)

Workshop 7: Readers Theater
March 29, 1-2:30 pm, Thompson Senior Center
Let’s pick a play and read it out loud together. We’ll switch roles around and see what happens. Comedy or tragedy? TBD/What’s your pleasure? (Ham Gillett, Marv Klassen-Landis)
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We’ll wrap up the series with a fun final event at the Library:

Final Event: Sharing Our Creative Play!
Friday, April 12, 4:00, Norman Williams Public Library
Participants and artists will share with the community something they have created during the series. Not a requirement for participants but we expect enough enthusiastic volunteers to make for a fun sharing event! (If you decide to share a poem or story or skit or song–individually or in groups–at our final event, join us at the library at 2 for a rehearsal. All three artists will be on hand for coaching and moral support.)

These workshops are free and open to the public.

The series, hosted by NWPL and the Thompson Senior Center, is supported in part by the Vermont Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts.

2024 January 27 – A Response to Our Times: Reversing Climate Change Through Plant-Based Eating

The Plant-Based-Eating Initiative (PBE Initiative) will present a program and panel discussion: “A Response to Our Times: Reversing Climate Change Through Plant-Based Eating.”

The good news is that you can help save the planet, starting now! The situation is far from hopeless, with science showing us the way. You do not have to become a vegan overnight; rather, you can cut your meat intake in half each year. Choosing to cut beef first gives you maximum benefit upfront. You can begin anywhere; every small step helps save our planet.

The program will consist of three 20-minute presentations followed by an hour of audience-initiated questions and discussion about how moving toward a plant-based diet is good for:

the planet, by reversing deforestation and thus absorbing C02,
your compassion toward animals, by reducing their suffering, and
your health, by improving your wellness and lifespan.

The PBE Initiative is a local group of concerned citizens interested in learning and teaching about what we, as individuals, can do to reverse climate change. Abraham Oort, PhD in climate science, will discuss the first aspect with “A Climate Scientist’s Perspective.” Lisa Burke, advocate for non-human animal liberation, will discuss the second aspect with “New Vegan Ethos.” Bineke Oort, MSW, will discuss the third aspect “Improving Our Personal Health.” Sami Saydjari will then moderate a panel discussion with the audience leading the way with their comments and questions.

2023 December 9 – Ham Gillett presents Dylan Thomas’s Lyrical Portrait of Holidays Past

The Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas looks back with a child’s-eye view of a magical time of presents, family, and newly fallen snow in the seasonal classic A Child’s Christmas in Wales, written in the early 1950s.

Ham Gillett has shared this story during Wassail Weekend for more years than he can remember. He offers us a time to be still, to close our eyes, and be transported by Dylan’s matchless weaving of lyrical words and evocative images.“Our snow … came shawling out of the ground and swam and drifted out of the arms and hands and bodies of the trees; snow grew overnight on the roofs of the houses like a pure and grandfather moss, minutely-ivied the walls and settled on the postman, opening the gate, like a dumb, numb thunder-storm of white, torn Christmas cards.” – Dylan Thomas

2023 November 18 – Ben Mezrich – Elon Musk and the Most Controversial Corporate Takeover in History

New York Times bestselling author Ben Mezrich will be in Woodstock to talk about Breaking Twitter–the book Elon Musk doesn’t want you to read!

Breaking Twitter takes readers inside the darkly comic battle between one of the most intriguing, polarizing, influential men of our time—Elon Musk—and the company that represents our culture’s dearest hope for a shared global conversation. From employee accounts within Twitter headquarters to the mission-driven team Musk surrounded himself with, this is the full story from all sides. Can Musk miraculously succeed or will he spectacularly fail? What will that mean to the global town hall that is Twitter? What, really, is Elon’s end goal? The whole world is watching and this book provides ringside seats.

Ben Mezrich is the New York Times bestselling author of The Accidental Billionaires (adapted by Aaron Sorkin into the David Fincher film The Social Network), Bringing Down the House (adapted into the #1 box office hit film 21), Dumb Money (recently released by Sony as a major motion picture), and many other bestselling books. His books have sold over six million copies worldwide.

2023 November 7 – Joni B. Cole – Party Like It’s 2044

Join us as we talk about the stories behind the stories that make up Party Like It’s 2044: Finding the Funny in Life and Death, a collection of eclectic essays by acclaimed writer and teacher, Joni B. Cole. Come for the conversation and leave with a prompt to tap into your own meaningful memories.

Joni B. Cole writes about her worries that Vlad the Impaler may be a distant cousin. She feuds with a dead medium. She thinks (or overthinks) about power trips, insulting birthday cards, and the real reasons writers hate Amazon. At once irreverent and thought provoking, Cole offers a joy ride that lands smack on the sweet spot between soul searching and social commentary, between humor and heft.

“Fabulously readable and thoroughly engaging, it is Cole’s voice that makes her stories sing. Whether she’s leading us into laughter, or holding our hand through dazzling moments of emotional recognition, Cole takes writing seriously while taking herself lightly, and thereby illuminating the world with these memorable essays.”—Gina Barreca; author, scholar, and humorist

“Vibrant, provocative, funny and flavorful…Cole’s deep and generous thinking makes room and fresh air: worth breathing deeply.”—Joan Frank, author of Late Work

Joni B. Cole is the author of seven books, including two acclaimed guides for writers: Good Naked: How to Write More, Write Better, and Be Happier (listed among Poets & Writers Magazine’s “best books for writers”) and Toxic Feedback: Helping Writers Survive and Thrive. She teaches writing at a diversity of academic and nonprofit organizations, and is a contributor to The Writer magazine and Jane Friedman blog.

2023 October 26 – Ann Aiken – A Young Woman’s Guide to Life: A Cautionary Tale

For two decades, beginning in 1996, Ann Aikens’s seriocomic newspaper column “Upper Valley Girl” ran in the Vermont Standard! Now published by the Herald in Randolph, it continues to delight readers with her signature blend of humor and candor.

In A Young Woman’s Guide to Life, Ann has collected her best, uplifting advice into one volume aimed at helping the Young People (hereafter referred to as YPs) avoid her mistakes—or at least make more interesting ones. If you’re a young woman looking ahead to college or your first job or serious relationship, or wondering how to navigate your 20s, this book will help you avoid the potholes in the road of life without missing the sights along the way.Ann holds no advanced degrees in psychology or any other subject. Her advice is based solely on empirical knowledge, having moved 17 times; held countless jobs in varied industries; conversed extensively with strangers for decades; found the best friends imaginable; dated all manner of men; and spent 20+ years as a devoted aunt. This is her first rodeo.

2023 October 17 – Jen Ellis – Bernie’s Mitten Maker: The Story Behind Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’ Infamous Inaugural Mittens

In Bernie’s Mitten Maker, Jen Ellis, shares a raw and honest account of the joy, stress, and shock of sudden internet fame.

Told with captivating storytelling, this memoir explores the many roads that led to the Bernie Sanders mitten meme sensation that followed the 2021 presidential inauguration.Vermont teacher, mother, and crafter, Ellis weaves the stories of her life together with humor and thoughtful insight. She shares her struggles with childhood trauma, infertility, and homophobia and shows us how crafting can build community and generosity can bring joy.

2023 October 13 – Basketball Empire – Lindsay Sarah Kranoff with Alexander Wolff

Join us for a fascinating talk of basketball and history as Alexander Wolff, interviews Lindsay Sarah Kranoff about her new book Basketball Empire: France and the Making of a Global NBA and WNBA.

How and why did France become one of the leading pipelines of top talent to the NBA, WNBA, and NCAA? What this has meant for the league and the players themselves? Going behind the scenes, Krasnoff follows the generations of men and women who, since 1950, have followed their passion for the game to create a basketball breeding ground.The National Basketball Association (NBA), founded over 75 years ago, is watched worldwide and nearly a third of the players were born and trained overseas. Krasnoff shows how basketball’s global takeover could not have happened without France, exploring its interactions with the United States and colonial legacies with francophone Africa and the Afro-Caribbean. Taking us back to the very beginnings of basketball, she shows how remnants of empire have shaped the game.

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Lindsay Sarah Krasnoff is a historian, writer, and consultant specializing in the history of global sport, communications, and diplomacy. She has written on global sport for CNN International, The Washington Post and The New Yorker, amongst other publications, and is an Adjunct Instructor with New York University’s Tisch Institute for Global Sport. She holds a PhD in History from City University of New York, USA, an MA in Journalism and French Studies from NYU, USA, and a BA in International Affairs from The George Washington University, USA.

Alexander Wolff spent thirty-six years on staff at Sports Illustrated. He is author or editor of nine books, including the New York Times bestseller Raw Recruits and Big Game, Small World. A former Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton, he lives with his family in Vermont.

2023 October 3 – Madeleine May Kunin / Walk With Me – Poetry Reading & Conversation

The Yankee Bookshop and the Norman Williams Public Library are pleased to welcome former Governor Madeleine Kunin reading from and discussing her second poetry collection, Walk With Me.

In this collection, the well-versed poet and three-term Vermont governor invites the audience to step into her world, to slow down and find new serenity in older age and unexpected love. Kunin explores the nuances of everyday moments that cultivate a bittersweet appreciation for simple joys. Walk With Me is a beautifully crafted illustration of not only what it means to be a woman on the eve of ninety years of life, but a feminist, a politician, a mother, a lover, a companion, and a living thing in the midst of an ever-turbulent world.

The relationship with the self is a lifelong evolution, a journey that Kunin refuses to tire. Instead, her poems illuminate the confidence and insecurities inherent to all humans, even in older age. The images woven throughout this collection are tender and warm, giving the reader an outlet to appreciate what it means to be alive through each stanza, over and over again.

In her first collection Red Kite, Blue Sky, Kunin established herself as a poet in her own right. The poems in Walk With Me were written in the last few years. True to the poet’s observations in her first collection, the new poems are beautiful, stirring, and often playful tributes to life itself. The important insights—from being an immigrant to losing a spouse, and growing old—will resonate with readers.

Madeleine May Kunin, the first woman to be elected governor of Vermont where she served for three terms, was also the U.S. Ambassador to Switzerland and U.S. deputy secretary of education. She has written four previous books: Living a Political Life, The New Feminist Agenda: Defining the Next Revolution for Women, Work, and Family, Pearls Politics and Power, and Coming of Age: My Journey to the Eighties. She lives in Shelburne, VT, and is currently James Marsh Professor-at-Large at the University of Vermont, where she gives guest lectures on feminism and women, and politics.

She also served on the board of the Institute for Sustainable Communities (ISC), a nongovernmental organization that she founded in 1991, and she launched Emerge Vermont to encourage and support women in politics.

2023 September 30 – Barn Quilts – Green Mountain Quilters Guild

There’s been a quiet but colorful phenomenon growing nationwide – barn quilts on houses, garages, chicken coops, barns, and other outbuildings. Did you know that there are over 600 barn quilts all around Vermont?

The Green Mountain Quilters Guild (GMQG) invites quilters and non-quilters alike to an information session about barn quilts.

Featured speakers will include:

Sharon Perry, coordinator of barn quilt activities in Franklin County
Marianne Kotch, GMQC president

The efforts of these energetic people have resulted in the creation and documentation of over 500 barn quilts in Franklin County and more than 125 barn quilts in the Chelsea area, as well as the recent creation of many more. Learn how they got started, how they spread the word, and also the practical aspects of creating barn quilts that survive Vermont winters.

The GMQG hopes to encourage and document barn quilts statewide with the aim of creating a comprehensive virtual self-guided tour.

“We hope that people go home with information that inspires them to create their own barn quilts,” said GMQG president Marianne Kotch. “And because our ultimate goal is to provide an online, interactive map of barn quilt locations by county, we also hope they’ll be enthusiastic about contributing to the statewide list.”

2023 September 23 – The BenAnna Band Concert for Kids!

The BenAnna Band once again filled the side garden at NWPL with song and movement to help us wrap up our Summer Reading Program! The theme this year — “All Together Now” — is appropriate for reading, sharing, dancing, and more…

The BenAnna Band is a high-energy musical duo utilizing guitar and singing to jam out on pop and throwback covers, traditional children’s songs with a new engaging twist, and new children’s music! BenAnna Band focuses on inclusion and music for kiddos of all ages, abilities and identities.

Free and open to the public. All ages are, of course, welcome, but babies through 10-year-olds should especially enjoy the music and dance that The BenAnna Band will offer.

2023 September 21 – Green Burials – Making a Clean (Energy) Getaway: Eco-friendly Funeral Practices and Products

The Norman Williams Public Library, the Thompson Senior Center, and the Ottauquechee Health Foundation collaborated on an “Age Well Education Series” beginning with a presentation on Green Burials by funeral reform advocate and author, Lee Webster.

How we care for our dead has a tangible impact on the earth. We’ll take a look at the increased environmental and cultural awareness around funeral practices in the US, including the age-old practice of burying naturally in biodegradable caskets or shrouds instead of cement vaults and toxic chemicals. We will also take a closer look at processes and products such as alkaline hydrolysis, natural organic reduction, mushroom suits, and other trending concepts to see where they fit into the climate resiliency picture.

Join us to learn more about the principles of sustainable funeral options and what we can each do to plan for a more affordable, meaningful, and planet-friendly exit. If you’re looking for home funeral and green burial how-tos and why-fors, join us!

Lee Webster is an author, educator, and internationally known public speaker and advocate for funeral reform, including home funerals and green burials. She has served in leadership positions at the National Home Funeral Alliance, Green Burial Council, Conservation Burial Alliance, National End-of-Life Doula Alliance, and NHPCO EOLD Council. She is Director of New Hampshire Funeral Resources & Education and co-creator of the Funeral.org Partnership.

Note: This event was held at the Thompson Senior Center.

2023 September 19 – Marcelo Gleiser – The Dawn of a Mindful Universe: A Manifesto for Humanity’s Future

The Yankee Bookshop and NWPL are excited to host Marcelo Gleiser, award-winning author of The Dawn of a Mindful Universe: A Manifesto for Humanity’s Future.

Since Copernicus, humanity has increasingly seen itself as adrift, an insignificant speck within a large, cold universe. Brazilian physicist, astronomer, and winner of the 2019 Templeton Prize Marcelo Gleiser argues that it is because we have lost the spark of the Enlightenment that has guided human development over the past several centuries. While some scientific efforts have been made to overcome this increasingly bleak perspective—the ongoing search for life on other planets, the recent idea of the multiverse—they have not been enough to overcome the core problem: we’ve lost our moral mission and compassionate focus in our scientific endeavors.Gleiser argues that we’re using the wrong paradigm to relate to the universe and our position in it. In this deeply researched and beautifully rendered book, he calls for us to embrace a new life-centric perspective, one which recognizes just how rare and precious life is and why it should be our mission to preserve and nurture it. The Dawn of a Mindful Universe addresses the current environmental and scientific impasses and how the scientific community can find solutions to them.Gleiser’s paradigm rethinks the ideals of the Enlightenment, and proposes a new direction for humanity, one driven by human reason and curiosity whose purpose is to save civilization itself. Within this model, we can once again see ourselves as the center of the universe—the place where life becomes conscious—and regain a clear moral compass which can be used to guide both science and the politics around it.

The Dawn of a Mindful Universe is a spellbinding and urgent call for a new Enlightenment and the recognition of the preciousness of life using reason and curiosity—the foundations of science—to study, nurture, and ultimately preserve humanity as we face the existential crisis of climate change.

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“Marcelo Gleiser argues that the only hope we have of addressing the current environmental crisis lies in rethinking our relationship to history and to the entire cosmos. The Dawn of a Mindful Universe is a work of great honesty and daring. Its message couldn’t be more alarming, yet it is ultimately optimistic.” — Elizabeth Colbert, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction and Under a White Sky

“An extraordinary book. Marcelo Gleiser has brought together cosmology, environmentalism, and spirituality in a personal and poetic call to arms that is nothing short of breathtaking. Most of the time I was smiling and nodding as I read it, and occasionally I was moved to tears.” — William Egginton, author of The Rigor of Angels, The Splintering of the American Mind, and The Man Who Invented Fiction

2023 September 15 – Reading Banned Books with Lt. Governor David Zuckerman and Guests

Lt. Governor David Zuckerman and guests read excerpts from some books that have been the subject of bans and engage in a discussion about the importance of free speech, inclusion, democracy, and open dialogue. Co-hosted by the Yankee Bookshop and sponsored by Lt. Governor David Zuckerman

Around the country, we have seen the proliferation of book challenges and bans in recent years by school districts and local governments. These bans often target books that feature LGBTQ+ characters; talk about gender and sexuality; highlight racial disparities; or talk about difficult issues such as substance abuse and police violence. Students, teachers, and curious minds should be able to access materials that spark critical thinking, cover difficult topics, and appeal to diverse interests without fear of government interference.

2023 June 15 – Stories in Sound: A Podcast Listening Event

Join three award-winning audio storytellers for a live event at Norman Williams Public Library. Hear performances of passages from their shows and a panel discussion about what goes into making their evocative, sound-rich narrative podcasts.

Podcasts are audio stories that have been set free from radio. They are available free, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and with the help of your smartphone, they are portable!

Our panelists are members of the independent audio collective Hub & Spoke, who create narrative podcasts that weave together taped interviews, ambient sound, music, and narration to tell a story. Done well, narrative audio has the power to change minds and stir souls.

Vermonter Erica Heilman named her podcast Rumble Strip as a way to encourage slowing down to listen. Her conversations with dairy farmers, game wardens, hairdressers, and poets introduce listeners to people they would not otherwise meet and remind us of what we have in common. Rumble Strip is the first independently produced podcast to win a Peabody Award and has received rave reviews from the New Yorker and the New York Times.

Tamar Avishai started The Lonely Palette as a way to “return art history to the masses.” Each episode opens with producer and art historian Avishai standing in front of a work of art with a microphone in hand, inviting museum visitors to describe it to her—and to us. These vivid and accessible descriptions are followed by eloquent and accessible explanations of the art and the history of the artist and the time it was created.

Wade Roush is a technology journalist whose show Soonish explores the places where the future crosses into the present. By talking with inventors, innovators, and scientists he helps listeners understand how technological advances shape our lives and how they are in turn shaped by the way we use them.

“Hub & Spoke is a nonprofit collective of independent audio essayists dedicated to helping one another shine. The collective makes podcasts about art, science, history, language, politics, technology, business, media, current events, and the simple poetry of being human. Today, more than ever—as the founding notions of democracy come under challenge, as civic discourse seems to be breaking down, and as podcasters and other creators face growing pressure to sell out or bow out—there’s a need for creators to band together to defend and nurture great independent audio. For more information visit us at hubspokeaudio.org.”

2023 June 7 – Connelly Akstens “Without Shame, Learning to Be Me”

Transgender author and activist Connelly Akstens will read from her recent memoir, Without Shame: Learning to Be Me. In this collection of essays, Akstens’ writes about her transgender life, but also about her beloved grandfather, the Cambridge music scene in the ‘60s, Woodstock in the ‘70s, her years as an Adirondack fly fishing guide, a lunatic dog and four tuxedo cats, Boston and Cape Cod, a bohemian aunt, and lots more!

Connelly Akstens lives in Rhode Island, and teaches Shakespeare and the History of Ideas at Empire State College of the State University of New York. She has also been a volunteer for SpeakOUT Boston, a concert performer and recording artist, professional fly fishing guide and long-time contributor to Adirondack Life.“Connelly Akstens has written about what is funny, absurd, painful and challenging in a long life with a secret at the center of it…. Connelly’s work encourages us to be honest with ourselves and curious and authentic with each other”—Elaine Handley, SUNY Distinguished Professor of Writing and Poetry

“Without Shame is a beautifully written, amusing and perceptive memoir of a highly unusual life journey, recounted with singularly sly wit.”—Richard Ferrone, actor

“An extraordinary journey. Fascinating. Touching. Funny. Don’t miss it. This is a sharp, beautifully-written book about the happy-sad-frightening-lucky-unlucky discoveries we make about ourselves as we grow up… Akstens offers stunning insight into the transgender experience, and also gives us the humor and emotion of all aspects of a life well lived.”—Richard DiLallo, author

2023 June 6 – Poetry Reading | Laura Foley and Sarah Dickenson Snyder

Please join us for a reading of newly published work by local poets Laura Foley and Sarah Dickenson Snyder. Following the formal reading, we opened up the evening to attendees who wanted to share a poem of their own.

The author of nine poetry collections, Laura Foley’s most recent is It’s This. Her poems have won numerous awards, and national recognition; read frequently on “The Writers Almanac” and appearing in Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry. Her poems have been published in Alaska Quarterly Review, Valparaiso, Poetry Society London, and many others; in anthologies such as: Poetry of Presence: An Anthology of Mindfulness Poems, Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection, and How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope. Laura lives with her wife and their romping canines, among the hills of Pomfret, Vermont.Sarah Dickenson Snyder lives in Vermont, carves in stone, and rides her bike. She says that travel opens her eyes. She has four poetry collections, The Human Contract (2017), Notes from a Nomad (nominated for the Massachusetts Book Awards 2018), With a Polaroid Camera (2019), and Now These Three Remain (2023). Her poems have been nominated for Best of Net and Pushcart Prizes. Recent work is in Rattle, Lily Poetry Review, and RHINO.

2023 May 20 – Tillie Walden, Vermont Cartoonist Laureate

Please join us in welcoming Tillie Walden, recently named the 5th Cartoonist Laureate of Vermont!

A graduate of – and currently a professor at – the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction,

Walden won the Eisner Award for Best Reality-Based Work for her graphic novel memoir Spinning at the age of 22 in 2018. She has published other graphic novels including, On a Sunbeam (originally a science fiction webcomic) and Are you Listening?. She collaborated with Emma Hunsinger on a picture book for children, My Parents Won’t Stop Talking. Walden is currently working on a graphic novel trilogy and, with musicians Tegan and Sara, two books for middle-grade readers.

Walden’s work is celebrated for its intimate and authentic portrayal of adolescence that often explores queer themes with beautifully crafted images paired with realistically emotional text. Entertainment Weekly named her as one of “the most essential graphic novelists of her generation.”

2023 May 11 – Ham Gillett with Recycling Updates

“If it can’t be reduced, reused, repaired, rebuilt, refurbished, refinished, resold, recycled or composted, then it should be restricted, redesigned or removed from production.” –Pete Seeger

To learn about sustainable options, join us for a conversation with Ham Gillett, a long-time Upper Valley resident who knows a lot about recycling.

Are we properly following the guidelines? How does “wish cycling” affect the recyclers and composters? Do the items in your discard pile build up because you are not sure how to dispose of them? What factors should we consider when purchasing? Composition? Packaging?Manufacturing process? Product end of life? Durability? Energy Consumption? Shipping carbon footprint? So many questions!

Ham talks about recent changes in Vermont regulations, how they work and where to find information, exploring where what we donate or toss away actually ends up. As Annie Leonard of Greenpeace said, “There is no such thing as “away.” When we throw anything away, it must go somewhere.”

Ham grew up in Woodstock and, since returning to Vermont 32 years ago, he has been involved with various aspects of recycling, composting, and solid waste management. (Where else would someone with two theater degrees end up?) For his first job, he assisted in the development of Woodstock Recycling & Refuse Corp., at the same time that Woodstock passed its first town-wide mandatory recycling ordinance. It was during this time that he learned the art of dumpster diving and became a founding member of P.U.T.R.I.D. (People Uncovering Trash Rotting In Dumpsters.) He still has his official P.U.T.R.I.D. Tyvek suit and some amazing treasures.

Ham is currently the Program/Outreach Coordinator for the Greater Upper Valley Solid Waste Management District and Outreach Coordinator for the Southern Windsor/Windham Counties Solid Waste Management District.

Norman Williams Public Library is an active member of the Sustainable Library Initiative. As of the filming of this event, we are currently working toward Sustainable Libraries Certification by evaluating our purchasing, operating, and disposal systems–taking into account everything from cleaners to ceiling fans, light bulbs to landscaping, and printers to partnerships.

2023 May 6 – Wrensong Spring Concert : Mysteries, Conundrums, Surprises, Wonders & Conceits

The theme for this special Saturday afternoon concert is as intriguing as their eclectic selection of songs:

Mystery: Something that is difficult or impossible to understand or explain.
Conundrum: A question asked for amusement, typically one with a pun in its answer; a riddle.
Surprise: An unexpected or astonishing event, fact, or thing.
Wonder: A cause of astonishment or admiration.
Conceit: A fanciful expression in writing or speech; an elaborate metaphor.

Wrensong is a group of accomplished singers drawn from Vermont and New Hampshire’s Upper Valley communities. They are devoted to presenting the best in small-group choral music, with a particular focus on the vocal treasures of the Renaissance. Wrensong’s repertoire ranges from the secular to the religious, and their concerts often include narration aimed at giving audiences a context for listening with understanding. Wrensong has performed in many venues around New England and New York, including concerts and devotionals at the Vermont State House and services at Harvard’s Memorial Church. (Wrensong on FaceBook)

2023 April 26 – Martha Leb Molnar – Playing God in the Meadow

Martha Leb Molnar presents her new book, Playing God in the Meadow: How I Learned to Admire My Weeds.

After decades in Manhattan fantasizing and saving, Molnar and her husband found a parcel of land in Vermont. Determined to turn an overgrown and unproductive apple orchard into a thriving and beautiful landscape, they decided to restore this patch of land to a pristine meadow and build a safe haven for their family and nearby wildlife.Propelled by the heated debates surrounding non-native species and her own complicated family history and migration, she decided to research the Vermont landscape, turning to scientific literature, experts in botany and environmental science, and locals who have long tended the land in search of answers about the invasive species that had sprung up around the property.

At turns funny, thoughtful, and conversational, Playing God in the Meadow follows this big city transplant as she learns to make peace with rural life and an evolving landscape that she cannot entirely control.

Martha Leb Molnar is a freelance writer, author, and commentator. A former New York Times reporter, Molnar was a regular contributor to Vermont Public Radio and has written articles for Horticulture, Northern Woodlands Magazine, Mother Earth, and Green Mountain Club Magazine, among other outlets. She is the author of Taproot: Coming Home to Prairie Hill.

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“I don’t think ‘meadow’ and ‘meditation’ have the same root, but perhaps they should—Molnar’s book is a lovely reminder of how you can see the world in an acre.”—Bill McKibben, environmentalist, author, and founder of 350.org

“Molnar creates a valuable testament to our evolving attitudes toward nature. And by weaving in her personal history, Molnar makes this an important contribution to the field of natural history writing in the tradition of Robin Wall Kimmerer and Michael Pollan.”—Robert Taylor, nature writer

2023 March 11 – Gesine Bullock-Prado – My Vermont Table: Recipes for All (Six) Seasons

Gesine Bullock-Prado has a new cookbook, My Vermont Table: Recipes for All (Six) Seasons releasing this March! She will be coming to Woodstock to talk about it with Mary King, a writer, former restaurant manager, and fellow food enthusiast at an event co-hosted by NWPL and the Yankee Bookshop.

When Gesine Bullock-Prado left her Hollywood life in 2004 and moved to Vermont, she fell in love with the Green Mountain State’s flavors and six unique seasons. Spring, summer, fall, and winter all claim their place at this table, but a true Vermonter holds extra space for maple-forward mud season―that time of year before spring when thawing ice makes way for mucky roads―and stick season, a notable period of bare trees and gourds galore prior to winter. In My Vermont Table, Bullock-Prado takes readers on a sweet and savory journey through each of these special seasons with more than 100 recipes and stories.Gesine Bullock-Prado is a renowned pastry chef, cookbook author, baking instructor and television personality. She is the author of five well-received baking books and a baking memoir. Her confections have been featured in publications from Better Homes and Gardens to People Magazine and she’s a regular food presenter on the Today Show. She is the owner and baking instructor at Sugar Glider Kitchen in Hartford, VT.Mary King is a writer and former restaurant manager living in Quechee, Vermont. Mary spent more than a decade working in some of the most celebrated restaurants in the country. Her writing has appeared in The Rumpus and the Toast; her restaurant expertise has been featured in the Huffington Post, Modern Restaurant Management, and the Food Institute. She is currently the senior restaurant writer for FitSmallBusiness.com.

2023 February 21 – Celia Ryker discusses Augusta: A Novel

We are pleased to host the Vermont launch of Augusta, a new novel by local writer, Celia Ryker.

Raised on a hard-knock farm in Arkansas and married off to the father of one of her classmates at the age of thirteen the protagonist, Augusta, was not set up for a life of bliss. Abandoned by her second husband in 1920s Detroit, with four children to provide for, she is forced into a decision that will haunt her forever.From the author of Walking Home, this historical novel is based on the true story of her grandmother, a woman who lived on a lake and taught her how to catch snakes; a woman who fled the hardships of the Ozarks at the turn of the twentieth century for a new city and the chance at a better life.

“Augusta is an ideal blend of storytelling and family history, wit and heartache, persistence and vulnerability.” —Shawn T Anderson, former League of Vermont Writers president

Celia Ryker has been a horse trainer, horticulturalist, and hiker. Celia trained horses and taught students on Southeast Michigan’s hunter-jumper circuit for more than 30 years. Her second career sent her back to school to study gardening fine arts and landscape design. She has kept journals and written short stories and poems all of her life, attending classes and writing seminars. She has contributed articles for newsletters, local newspapers, and The Vermont League of Writers. Celia and her husband Don live in Vermont and Michigan.

2023 February 21 – Joyce Yoo Babbitt Shares The Joy of Pickleball!

Pickleball at the library? Well, yes…

Joyce Yoo Babbitt, an avid pickleball player and certified pickleball instructor, shares her excitement for the sport and talks about Mike Brannon’s book, The Joy of Pickleball: The Definitive Instructional Guide for the Senior Player.

As a student of pickleball, Joyce says she “loves playing it recreationally and competitively, reading books about it, listening to pickleball podcasts, watching pickleball games, and learning new pickleball drills/strategies.” Her passion for pickleball is contagious!Curious about this new sport? Want to be better at it and have more fun? Brannon writes: “Because pickleball is relatively easy to learn but difficult to master, it is both accessible and challenging.” In his book, he offers encouragement for others to enjoy the game.Joyce Yoo Babbitt loves spending time with her family, reading books, paddle boarding, swimming, playing pickleball, and teaching pickleball at the Woodstock Athletic Club. As the Windsor Central Supervisory Union librarian at WES, TPVS, and RES, she enjoys sharing good stories, finding great digital resources, and supporting students in their research.

2023 February 15 – Sonny Saul – Gilgamesh: A Narrative Version of the Ancient Tale

Woodstock musician, artist, and rare book expert, Sonny Saul has published a new edition of Gilgamesh, a book literally thousands of years in the making!

The story of Gilgamesh is the first great work of universal literature. It is an ancient tale of “the hero’s journey” and the oldest account of self-realization that we have, composed at a time shortly after the invention of writing.This edition is based on comparisons of previous translations and a broad study of Mesopotamian culture. The story is updated with recent information collected when megalithic structures–buried on purpose about seven thousand (!) years before civilization began in Sumer–were discovered around Globecki Teppe in Turkey. It includes historical notes and background about the society while avoiding excessive scholarship.

The text is illustrated with annotated, full-color painted bas-reliefs done in the Sumerian idiom by Don Denton, a long-time friend of Sonny’s.

2023 January 17 – Geza Tatrallyay – Poems & Short Stories

Geza Tatrallyay reads from and talks about his two most recently published books in the context of his life, interests, and other writing.

The Mind Spins, his first short story collection, brings together tales based on remembered dreams, some set in Vermont.Many of the poems in The Abyss: Poems for our World express wonder at the beauty of the world around us while others lament the destruction we are wreaking on nature, other species, and ourselves.

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Born in Budapest, Hungary, Geza Tatrallyay escaped with his family in 1956 during the Hungarian Revolution and immigrated to Canada. He attended the University of Toronto, Harvard University, and Oxford University. He earned a Master’s from London School of Economics and Politics.

Geza’s professional experience included stints in government, international organizations, finance, and environmental entrepreneurship. His poetry and articles have appeared in many journals in Canada and the US, and he has published fifteen books (five thrillers, three memoirs, five poetry collections, a short story collection, and a children’s picture storybook). Another thriller is in the pipeline.

2022 December 13 – NWPL Recite! Celebrates PSOV’s 75th Anniversary

In December, the “Recite! Poetry Evening” at Norman Williams Public Library extends a special invitation to the Poetry Society of Vermont’s members in recognition of their organization’s 75th Anniversary.

Founded in 1947, the Poetry Society of Vermont is an association of poets and friends of the literary arts who join in promoting an interest in poetry through workshops, readings, contests, and contributions to The Mountain Troubadour, PSOV’s annual literary journal. They welcome both writers and appreciative readers, including high school and college students and nonresidents of Vermont.

Recite! is a monthly open mic poetry evening that meets at the library on second Tuesdays. Professional poets, amateurs, and first-timers all join in, as well as those who come to listen and enjoy.

2022 December 10 – Wrensong Presents “Songs of the Season”

Another Wassail tradition returns with a holiday sampler of songs by Wrensong in the Mezzanine after the Parade.

Wrensong is an a cappella choral group from Vermont’s Upper Valley that focuses on the vocal treasures of the Renaissance. Singers will present a mix of songs–some simple, some familiar, some more complex, and some sing-along–with introductions from choral leader, Oliver Goodenough.The selections for this concert range from a 15th Century chant through Yiddish Folksong and traditional Austrian carols to a 20th Century anthem.

2022 December 10 – Hamilton Gillett reads “A Child’s Christmas in Wales”

Ham Gillett’s annual traditional reading as part of Wassail Weekend.

A child’s-eye view of a magical time of presents, family, and newly fallen snow is captured in this seasonal classic by Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas.

Ham Gillett has shared this story during Wassail Weekend for more years than he can remember. Familiar faces return–some of them local; some not–to close their eyes and listen to Dylan’s matchless weaving of words and images.

“Our snow … came shawling out of the ground and swam and drifted out of the arms and hands and bodies of the trees; snow grew overnight on the roofs of the houses like a pure and grandfather moss, minutely-ivied the walls and settled on the postman, opening the gate, like a dumb, numb thunder-storm of white, torn Christmas cards.” – Dylan Thomas

2022 November 29 – Mystery Solved: Sarah Stewart Taylor & Tessa Wegert, Sleuthing Books for Reading & Holiday Giving

Puzzled about what to get the mystery reader on your list? Searching for your next book of intrigue? Mystery solved!

A special evening with mystery writers Sarah Stewart Taylor and Tessa Wegert. They reveal their new releases, clue us in about what to read next, and offer great recommendations for mystery lovers. Historic gumshoe, British cozy, or contemporary thriller, there will be something for everyone.Co-hosted by NWPL and Yankee Bookshop.

Sarah Stewart Taylor is the author of the Sweeney St. George series and the Maggie D’arcy series. She grew up on Long Island, and was educated at Middlebury College in Vermont and Trinity College, Dublin, where she studied Irish Literature. She has worked as a journalist and writing teacher and now lives with her family on a farm in Vermont where they raise sheep and grow blueberries.

Tessa Wegert is the author of the popular Shana Merchant novels, which include Death in the Family, The Dead Season, Dead Wind, and The Kind to Kill. A former digital media strategist and freelance journalist, Tessa has contributed to such publications as Forbes, The Huffington Post, The Economist, and The Globe and Mail. Raised in Quebec, she now lives with her husband and children in Connecticut, where she studies martial arts and is co-president of Sisters in Crime CT.

2022 May 24 – Jane Hirshfield Poetry Reading

Jane Hirshfield shares a special live, online poetry reading! Hirshfield is an award-winning poet who explores the political, ecological, and scientific as well as the metaphysical, personal, and passionate.

Hirshfield is the author of nine collections of poetry including The Beauty (2015), longlisted for the National Book Award; Come, Thief (2011), a finalist for the PEN USA Poetry Award; and Given Sugar, Given Salt (2001), a finalist for the National Book Critics Award. Her most recent collection is Ledger (2020). She has also published two books of essays, Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry (1997) and Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World (2015), and edited and co-translated four volumes of world poetry.Hirshfield has been honored with numerous fellowships and awards including from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Academy of American Poets, and the Donald Hall-Jane Kenyon Prize in American Poetry. Her work has appeared in many periodicals and anthologies including The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Times Literary Supplement, The New York Review of Books, Poetry, and ten editions of The Best American Poetry. Hirshfield received the Academy Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets and in 2012, she was elected a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. In 2019, she was elected into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.Though not a full-time academic, Hirshfield has taught widely including at the University of California, Stanford, The Bennington Writing Seminars, and writers conferences at Bread Loaf and Napa Valley.

Currently based in California, Hirshfield was born in New York City and received her bachelor’s degree from Princeton University. She received lay ordination in Soto Zen at the San Francisco Zen Center.

“Poetry, for me, is an instrument of investigation and a mode of perception, a way of knowing and feeling both self and world…I am interested in poems that find a clarity without simplicity; in a way of thinking and speaking that does not exclude complexity but also does not obscure; in poems that know the world in many ways at once—heart, mind, voice, and body.” Jane Hirshfield quoted in Contemporary Authors

“Astonishing strophes of being, Jane Hirshfield stands with the finest contemporary American poets. The Beauty reveals a poetics of being that inhabits mysteries, essences, and beautiful lyrics. In her books of prizewinning poetry, translations, and essays, one realizes her works are apertures into wisdom.” – Robert Bonazzi in World Literature Today

2022 March 29 – Luke Metcalf and Maggie Doyne – Between the Mountain and the Sky: A Mother’s Story of Love, Loss, Healing, and Hope by Maggie Doyne

. . . shows us the goodness that is possible when a single person–regardless of age–takes action to help another and, in the process, changes the lives of hundreds. Maggie will be in conversation with Luke Metcalf who grew up in Pomfret, VT, and spent nearly 6 years working with her in Nepal.Maggie’s story began in suburban New Jersey, in a comfortable middle-class family that supported her decision to travel the world during a gap year before starting college. While in Nepal, she encountered a young girl breaking rocks in a quarry and asked “What have we done as a human family that our children are living this way? More importantly, what can be done to reverse the course?” She invested her life savings–five thousand dollars–to buy a piece of land and opened a children’s home in Nepal.

That home became Kopila Valley Children’s Home, and eventually, the nonprofit Maggie launched, BlinkNow Foundation, also started the Kopila Valley School, which provides tuition-free education for more than four hundred students.

Though Maggie and BlinkNow’s work have been recognized around the world for their innovative, sustainable work, this book isn’t a how-to for fledgling philanthropists or nonprofit founders. It is a coming-of-age story about a young woman suspended between two worlds, as well as the love, loss, healing, and hope she experiences along the way.

Maggie’s inspiring, intimate tale shows readers an important truth: the power to change the world exists within all of us.

“She is what I wish I could be – what we all could be. Her story has inspired countless thousands of people…” –Elizabeth Gilbert

“Maggie has the courage to act for good when she sees a need and the conscience to use her privilege to empower others.” –Cheryl Strayed

Luke Metcalf worked with BlinkNow Foundation, first as a volunteer and then as Construction Project Manager tasked with taking the idea of a new eco-focused school campus from dream to reality. In that role, he was the proxy between Maggie and the many architects, engineers, contractors, and site workers. While there, Luke lived in the Children’s Home and they became his Nepal family.

2022 March 10 – Devi Lockwood – 1,001 Voices on Climate Change

Journalist Devi Lockwood talks about her travels that resulted in the book, 1,001 Voices on Climate Change: Everyday Stories of Flood, Fire, Drought, and Displacement from Around the World. She will be interviewed by Cheryl Elinsky, a Physician’s Assistant at DHMC.

Over five years, covering twenty countries across six continents – often by bicycle – journalist Devi Lockwood collected personal stories about how flood, fire, drought, and rising seas are changing communities.She discovered that ordinary people sharing their stories does far more to advance understanding and empathy than the most alarming statistics and studies. This book is a hopeful global listening tour for climate change, channeling the urgency of those who have already glimpsed the future to help us avoid the worst.

Traveling from Denmark and Sweden to China, Turkey, the Canadian Arctic, and the Peruvian Amazon, Lockwood hears from indigenous elders and youth in Fiji and Tuvalu about drought and disappearing coastlines, attends the UN climate conference in Morocco, and bikes the length of New Zealand and Australia, interviewing the people she meets about retreating glaciers, contaminated rivers, and wildfires.

“A great storyteller needs first to be a great listener, and with each pedal of her bike—up and down previously unknown paths—Devi Lockwood hears from those living through climate change and related water woes literally on the front lines. Her skills at storytelling are matched by her mastery of listening. The results are riveting.” —Bud Ward, Editor, Yale Climate Connections

Devi Lockwood has written about science, climate change, and technology for The New York Times, The Guardian, Slate, and The Washington Post, among others. Her trip to document 1,001 stories on water and climate change was funded in part by the Gardner & Shaw postgraduate traveling fellowships from Harvard and a National Geographic Early Career Grant. Lockwood graduated Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude from Harvard, where she studied folklore and mythology and earned a language citation in Arabic. In 2019, she completed an MS in science writing at MIT. She is an editor for Rest of World and splits her time between New York and Vermont.

Cheryl Elinsky has worked at DHMC for the past 16 years. She practices as a Physician Assistant in Internal Medicine, is the Director of Continuing Professional Development and Education for Advanced Practice Providers and is an Instructor at the Geisel School of Medicine. She lives in Hartland, VT with her wife, Story Smith. She enjoys cooking, gardening, biking and swimming and has a new hobby of building bee hotels.

2022 January 18 – Melodie Winawer & Jillian Cantor – Online Author Talk | Historical Fiction

Melodie Winawer and Jillian Cantor discuss their latest historical novels.

Melodie Winawer’s novel, Anticipation, is a thrilling tale set in the crumbling city of Mystras, Greece, in which a scientist’s vacation with her young son quickly turns into a fight for their lives after they cross paths with a man out of time.

“Winawer enthralls with this unique combination of history, romance, and the supernatural…Winawer draws on her experience as a scientist to make the research aspects of the plot feel real, while expertly switching between the present day and the various time periods of Elias’s lives. Readers will be riveted from the first page.”— Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Melodie Winawer is a physician-scientist and associate professor of neurology at Columbia University. She has published over fifty articles and contributed to several anthologies and is the author of the well-received novel, The Scribe of Siena. Melodie lives with her spouse and their three children in both Brooklyn, NY and Ludlow, VT.

Jillian Cantor, is the author of eleven internationally bestselling novels for teens and adults. Beautiful Little Fools – releasing February 1st – portrays the glittering Jazz Age world of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby from the women’s perspective. It is a quintessential tale of money and power, marriage and friendship, love and desire.

“Jillian Cantor’s shifting kaleidoscope of female perspectives makes F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic tale of Jazz Age longing and lust feel utterly modern. A breathtaking accomplishment.”—Fiona Davis, New York Times bestselling author of The Lions of Fifth Avenue

Born and raised in a suburb of Philadelphia, Cantor currently lives in Arizona with her husband and two sons.

2021 October 13 – Author reading with Archer Mayor

Archer Mayor reads from his new book Marked Man.

Archer Mayor is the author of the highly acclaimed Vermont-based series featuring detective Joe Gunther, which the Chicago Tribune describes as “the best police procedurals being written in America.” He is a past winner of the New England Independent Booksellers Association Award for Best Fiction — the first time a writer of crime literature has been so honored. In 2011, Mayor’s 22nd Joe Gunther novel, TAG MAN, earned a place on The New York Times bestseller list for hardback fiction.

2021 May 13 – Journalist / Author Alexander Wolff: “Endpapers – A Family Story of Books, War, Escape, and Home”

A sweeping portrait of the turmoil of the twentieth century and the legacy of immigration, as seen through the German-American family of the celebrated book publisher Kurt Wolff

Alexander Wolff will be joined in conversation with Bill Colson as they discuss Wolff’s newest book.“A poignant portrait . . . Wolff skillfully contextualizes his father’s and grandfather’s tales with military and political history . . . History buffs and literary enthusiasts will be rewarded.” —Publishers Weekly“Kurt Wolff was born in Bonn into a highly cultured German-Jewish family with ancestors who included converts to Christianity, including Baron Moritz von Haber, a duelist who became famous for his role in touching off bloody antisemitic riots. Drawn to books as a boy, Kurt became a publisher at 23, setting up his own firm and publishing Franz Kafka, Heinrich Mann, Joseph Roth, Karl Kraus, and many other authors whose works would soon be burned by the Nazis. Fleeing Germany in 1933, a day after the Reichstag fire, my grandfather and his second wife, Helen, sought refuge in France, Italy, and ultimately New York, where they founded Pantheon Books in a small Greenwich Village apartment in 1942. The firm would soon take its place in literary history with the publication of Nobel laureate Boris Pasternak’s novel Doctor Zhivago, and as the conduit that brought other major European works to the States.

“But my taciturn father, offspring of Kurt’s first marriage, to Elisabeth Merck, was left behind in Germany, where despite his Jewish heritage he served the Nazis on two fronts. Visiting dusty archives and meeting distant relatives, I learn secrets that never made it to the land of fresh starts, including the connection between Hitler and my grandmother’s family’s pharmaceutical firm E. Merck, as well as the story of a half-brother my father never knew.

“Drawing on never-before-published family letters, diaries, and photographs, Endpapers is my chance to tell an intimate family story, a tapestry of the perils, triumphs, and secrets of history and exile, with resonances for today.” – Alexander Wolff

Alexander Wolff “I spent 36 years at Sports Illustrated, leaving in 2016 as the longest-tenured writer on staff. Besides covering basketball at all levels, I filed from the Olympics, soccer’s World Cup, the World Series, every Grand Slam tennis event, and the Tour de France. SI story assignments took me to China, Cuba, and Iran, and dealt with such issues at the intersection of sport and society as race, ethnicity, gender, drugs, the environment, education, youth development, business, armed conflict, and ethics, as well as cultural themes like art, style, food, and the media. “I’m the author or co-author of seven books about basketball, The In-Your-Face Basketball Book; Raw Recruits, a NYT bestseller that examined college basketball recruiting; Big Game, Small World: A Basketball Adventure, an account of a year spent chasing the game around the globe to take the measure of its impact (a 2002 NYT Book Review Notable Book); and click here for more information, About Alexander Wolff

Bill Colson is a retired journalist who spent 25 years with Sports Illustrated in New York City. From 1996-2002 he was managing editor of the magazine. During his career at SI, Bill covered such sports as college and professional football, tennis, and hockey as well as the Summer and Winter Olympic Games. Bill and his wife, Vick, live in Woodstock and he joined the board of the Norman Williams Public Library in 2016.

More Reviews:

“A poignant portrait . . . Wolff skillfully contextualizes his father’s and grandfather’s tales with military and political history . . . History buffs and literary enthusiasts will be rewarded.” —Publishers Weekly, Top 10 for History, Spring 2021

“Revelatory, riveting, and deeply moving . . . Endpapers is a kind of reckoning: an exploration of the author’s family’s bargains with the Nazis, a reflection on inherited guilt and its imperatives, and a contemplation of the ways that postwar Germans have attempted to expiate the horrific deeds and moral blindness of their elders.” —Joshua Hammer, New York Review of Books

“A powerfully told story of family, honor, love, and truth, by a masterful writer who sees across the oceans and through the generations. In Endpapers we see the Wolff family through war and love, detention camps and immigration hearings, kindness and betrayal, occupying a world equal parts Casablanca and Kafka. It is engrossing and entertaining, a book of conscience and remembrance that tells the beautiful truth that so often those who contribute most to the culture and civic life of a place are the outcast and the refugee.” —Beto O’Rourke

“Alexander Wolff is keen, after a generation of silence, to follow the untold stories wherever they might lead. . . . In the end, Wolff offers the words of Umberto Eco: ‘Those things about which we cannot theorize . . . we must narrate.’ To bring stories into the light, to render their humanity, is our best hope.” —Claire Messud, Harpers

2021 May 6 – Authors Melanie Finn and Makenna Goodman

Join us for a virtual conversation with acclaimed author Melanie Finn, about her most recent novel, The Hare (Two Dollar Radio, January 2021). She will be joined in conversation by Makenna Goodman who recently authored “The Shame” (Milkweed Editions, August 2020).

Melanie Finn’s books have been named one of the New York Times Notable Books of 2016, finalist for The Orange Prize (now Women’s Prize for Fiction), the Guardian’s “Not the Booker,” and the Vermont Book Award. The Hare (January 2021), is an astounding new literary thriller from a writer at the height of her storytelling prowess.“With The Hare, Melanie Finn has written a powerful story of female perseverance, strength, and resilience. This book has rare qualities: beautiful writing while being absolutely unputdownable, and I will be pressing it into the hands of every reader I know.” —Claire Fuller, author of Bitter Orange, Our Endless Numbered Days, and Swimming Lessons

AUTHOR: Melanie Finn, author of Away From You (2004), The Gloaming (2016), The Underneath (2018), and The Hare (2021), was born and raised in Kenya and the US. The Gloaming was a New York Times Notable Book of 2016, a finalist for the Vermont Book Award and The Guardian’s “Not the Booker” Prize. The writer and producer of the DisneyNature wildlife epic “Crimson Wing: Mystery of the Flamingos,” she is also the co-founder and director of the Tanzanian-based charity Natron Healthcare. She and her family live on a remote hill in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont.
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AUTHOR: Makenna Goodman is the author of The Shame, which was named a Harvard Review Favorite Book of 2020, a White Review Recommended Read, a Refinery29 Best New Book, a Literary Hub Recommended Read, a Bustle Most Anticipated Book, a Boston.com Book Club Pick, and more. Interviews, words, and work have been featured in the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Paris Review, Electric Literature, Guernica, Literary Hub, Catapult, The Rumpus, the Adroit Journal, and Commonplace Podcast, and are forthcoming in the Harvard Review, BOMB, the White Review, and the New York Review of Books. Based in Vermont, Goodman is a former editor of books on agriculture and food who writes about, among other things, the intersection of land stewardship and capitalism.

ABOUT “The Shame”
A fable both blistering and surreal, The Shame is a propulsive, funny, and thought-provoking debut about a woman in isolation, whose mind—fueled by capitalism, motherhood, and the search for meaningful art—attempts to betray her.

“A delicious, important moral corrective of a novel.” —SHEILA HETI

“The Shame” is at once a narrative about art, work, capitalism, motherhood, fear, the choices we don’t make and the ones we do, and whether our lives can ever be enough. It is seemingly a perfect novel for our COVID-19 times. The pandemic has affected many working parents (particularly mothers) who have faced hard decisions about work, childcare, and virtual education for their children — sacrifices have inevitably been made. – Boston.com – Book Club pick for October 2020

2021 April 22 – Poetry with Cleopatra Mathis and Ewa Chrusciel

In honor of National Poetry Month, Bookstock and the Norman Williams Public Library are pleased to present poets Cleopatra Mathis and Ewa Chrusciel who will read from their respective books, After the Body and Of Annunciations. Hosting the discussion will be Maudelle Driskell, Executive Director of The Frost Place.

ABOUT AFTER THE BODY:

After the Body charts the depredations of an illness that seems intent on removing the body, piece by piece. Through close and relentless observation of her own physical being, Mathis shows us how miniscule ambition, planning, and a sense of control over our own bodies are—things we so blithely take as real and solid when healthy.

ABOUT OF ANNUNCIATIONS:
Ewa Chrusciel maps the biblical event of annunciation onto the current migration crises. Annunciation becomes a symbol of the “yes” that we utter in front of reality, particularly confronted with exiles, strangers―in other words, the other. The book quivers on the brink between openness to the other and the terror the other brings out in us. What does it mean to say “yes” to a stranger? What implications, threats, blessings and responsibilities do “yes” carry? Can we say “yes” to a dislocated soul in order to become more fully who we were meant to be?

In her latest published book Of Annunciations Chrusciel attempts to give voice to the voiceless and find healing in what seems to be an insurmountable rift of dislocation. In the words of the reviewer from Publishers Weekly: “the effectiveness of Chrusciel’s poetics of witness is impossible to deny.”
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ABOUT CLEOPATRA MATHIS
Mathis is the author of eight books of poems; the most recent is After the Body: Poems New and Selected. Her many awards and prizes include a Guggenheim Fellowship, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and two Pushcart Prizes. Her poems have appeared widely in journals, magazines, and anthologies, including The New Yorker, Threepenny Review, The Georgia Review, The Southern Review, Ploughshares, Best American Poetry, and The Extraordinary Tide: Poetry by American Women. The founder of the creative writing program at Dartmouth College, where she taught from 1982-2016, she lives with her family in East Thetford, Vermont. Her book, After the Body, charts the depredations of an illness that seems intent on removing the body, piece by piece. Through close and relentless observation of her own physical being, Mathis shows us how minuscule ambition, planning, and a sense of control over our own bodies are—things we so blithely take as real and solid when healthy.
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ABOUT EWA CHRUSCIEL
Ewa Chrusciel is a bilingual poet and a translator. Her newest book in English, Of Annunciations, was released by Omnidawn Press in 2017. Her two previous books are Contraband of Hoopoe (Omnidawn Press, 2014) and Strata (Emergency Press, 2011), reprinted by Omnidawn in April 2018. She has also published three books in Polish: Furkot (2001), Sopiłki (2009), and Tobołek (2016). Her second book in English, Contraband of Hoopoe, was translated into Italian by Anna Aresi and was published in 2019 by Ensemble Press in Florence, Italy. Her newest book, Mental Aviary, is scheduled for publication in 2022 by Omnidawn Press.

2021 April 15 – Author Talk with Elizabeth Shackelford, author of The Dissent Channel

“In these norm-shattering times, we urgently need to examine and learn from mistakes of the past. This beautifully written, personal story exposes uncomfortable truths about the costs of America’s foreign policy approach and, without cynicism, offers some hope for a better way forward.” — Yara Bayoumy, National Security Editor, The AtlanticElizabeth Shackelford is a Non-Resident Fellow at the Quincy Institute and an independent consultant. She was a career diplomat with the State Department until December 2017, when she resigned in protest of the Trump administration. Her resignation letter was the first to draw widespread attention to the declining state of diplomacy under Trump. She is the author of The Dissent Channel: American Diplomacy in a Dishonest Age (2020), which shows firsthand that the crisis in our foreign policy predates current efforts to sideline the diplomatic corps.

As a Foreign Service Officer, Shackelford served in Somalia, Kenya, South Sudan, Poland, and Washington, D.C., analyzing information on political and conflict developments, advising Mission and Washington leadership, and advocating for U.S. interests with foreign counterparts. For her work in South Sudan, Shackelford received the Barbara Watson Award for Consular Excellence, the Department’s highest honor for consular work.

Previously, Shackelford was an associate with Booz Allen Hamilton and led USAID projects to assess business environments in developing countries. Shackelford was also an associate with the law firm Covington & Burling, where she focused on international trade.

Shackelford’s commentary and interviews have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, CNN, Foreign Policy, NPR, PBS, and MSNBC. She also speaks with community groups, students, and political organizations to raise broader awareness of our foreign policy challenges. She is chair of the Rochester VT Democratic Committee and a member of the Emerge VT 2019 class. Born and raised in Mississippi, Shackelford now resides in Rochester, VT.

2021 April 6 – Book Jamming for Book Groups & Readers of All Stripes

Spend an hour with Lisa Christie (Book Jam), Kari Meutsch (Yankee Bookshop), and Liana Kish (High School English Teacher), three well-read women, as they discuss a wide-range of new and newish books that they’ve specially chosen for this event

– and with book groups in mind. They’re tag teaming it to cover different genres, themes, and notions of what makes a great book – and a great discussion. You don’t need to be in a book group ’cause who doesn’t love to hear about books!

2021 March 25 – Bookstock presents Bill Noble, author of The Spirit of Place: Making a New England Garden

Join Bookstock & the Norman Williams Public Library for an evening with Bill Noble author of The Spirit of Place: Making a New England Garden. This virtual event will be moderated with a live Q&A session with the audience.

About Bill Noble
As Director of Preservation for the Garden Conservancy, Bill Noble was instrumental in the preservation and restoration of dozens of gardens throughout the United States. In his newly released book, Spirit of Place: The Making of a New England Garden, he describes the pleasures and challenges—both aesthetic and practical—of creating a garden that feels deeply rooted to its place. His garden is included in the Smithsonian Institution’s Archive of American Gardens and has been featured in Martha Stewart Living, House & Garden, The New York Times, Washington Post and the Garden Conservancy’s Outstanding American Gardens.About Spirit of Place: The Making of a New England Garden
How does an individual garden relate to the larger landscape? How does it connect to the natural and cultural environment? Does it evoke a sense of place? In Spirit of Place, Bill Noble—a lifelong gardener, and the former director of preservation for the Garden Conservancy—helps gardeners answer these questions by sharing how they influenced the creation of his garden in Vermont. Sumptuously illustrated, this thoughtful look at the process of garden-making shares insights gleaned over a long career that will inspire you to create a garden rich in context, personal vision, and spirit.

2021 February 25 – Bookstock Author Talk with Sarah Stewart Taylor, The Mountains Wild: a Maggie D’arcy Mystery

Join us for a virtual evening with Sarah Stewart Taylor, author of the Sweeney St. George series and the first Maggie D’arcy mystery, The Mountains Wild. A former journalist and teacher, Sarah writes and lives with her family on a farm in Vermont where they raise sheep and grow blueberries. The second Maggie D’arcy mystery, A Distant Grave, will be published in June 2021. Joining the conversation will be author Paula Munier. This is a Bookstock presentation, co-hosted with the Norman Williams Public Library. The event (on Zoom) will be live followed by a Q&A with the audience.About The Mountains Wild
Twenty-three years ago, Maggie D’arcy’s family received a call from the Dublin police. Her cousin Erin had been missing for several days. Maggie herself spent weeks in Ireland, trying to track Erin’s movements, working beside the police to no avail: no trace of her was ever found. The experience inspired Maggie to become a cop. Now, back on Long Island, more than 20 years have passed. Maggie is a detective and a divorced mother of a teenager. When the Gardaí call to say that Erin’s scarf has been found and another young woman has gone missing, Maggie returns to Ireland, awakening all the complicated feelings from the first trip. The despair and frustration of not knowing what happened to Erin. Her attraction to Erin’s coworker, now a professor, who never fully explained their relationship. And her own determination to solve the case, once and for all.“With its evocative Dublin setting, lyrical prose, tough but sympathetic heroine, and a killer twist in the plot, Sarah Stewart Taylor’s The Mountains Wild should top everyone’s must-read lists this year!” ― New York Times bestselling author Deborah Crombie

About Sarah Stewart Taylor
SARAH STEWART TAYLOR is the author of the Sweeney St. George series and the Maggie D’arcy series. Taylor grew up on Long Island in New York and was educated at Middlebury College in Vermont and Trinity College in Dublin. She lived in Dublin, Ireland in the mid-90s and she now lives with her family on a farm in Vermont where they raise sheep and grow blueberries.

– – – – – The Ex Libris Gala is this weekend! Only a few tickets left! – – – – –