The Brattleboro Literary Festival returns on the weekend of Oct. 17–19. Organizers note that “Brattleboro is a natural setting for this event. Writers have always found it a congenial place to live and work.”
You’re invited to the 18th Annual Brattleboro Literary Festival, Oct. 17–20, which will host more than 70 authors in more than 40 events and discussions exploring identity: personal, cultural, and national.
Many of a diverse array of world-class authors are reporting back from the frontier of the most urgent and complex issues of all time. Organizers invite guests to participate in provocative discussion “as we try to discover who we really are.” From these books participants will hear stories of identity—both real and imagined. These are the stories of Tennessee Williams, Harper Lee, Rock Hudson, Peggy Guggenheim, Virginia Woolf, Circe, Antigone, Cassandra, Andrew Johnson, Daniel Chester French, Abbie Hoffman, Rudyard Kipling, and Mary Wilkins Freeman.
There are authors with books about DNA, superbugs, slavery, integration, immigration, and how we can save the environment. They’re about Havana, Bangkok, Nigeria, Hong Kong, London, and Canada.
Most of all, organizers say, these books remind us who we are and where we’ve been as we search for our own identity. Festival events will include readings, panel discussions, films, exhibits, and an interactive workshop.
Also on tap are special events, children’s and young adults’ events, and workshops.
The Brattleboro Literary Festival was founded in 2002 by a very small group of bibliophiles from area bookstores and libraries. The first festival featured Nobel Prize-winning legend Saul Bellow in his final public appearance. Since then the festival has gone on to present more than 400 authors, including winners of the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, Newbery Medal, and the Caldecott Medal.
To view recordings of past festival events featuring Bill Littlefield, Annette Gordon-Reed, Ann Beattie, Rick Bass, Joseph Ellis, Jay Parini, Howard Frank Mosher and more, recorded by Brattleboro Community Television, check out http://www.brattleborotv.org/brattleboro-literary-festival.
The festival is known for presenting new literary voices and for reintroducing established award-winning authors. This year’s festival features Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning author Joseph Ellis (American Dialogue: The Founding Fathers and Us), New York Times-bestselling novelist Madeline Miller (Circe), 2018 Women’s Prize winner Kamila Shamsie (Home Fire), New York Times bestselling memoirist Dani Shapiro (Inheritance), Obama inaugural poet Richard Blanco (How to Love a Country), 2019 Ruth Lilly Prize-winning poet Marilyn Nelson, New York Times bestselling journalist Casey Cep (Furious Hours), National Humanities Medal winners Andrew Delbanco (The War Before the War) and Harold Holzer (Monument Man), environmental journalist Tatiana Schlossberg (Inconspicuous Consumption), diverse, award-winning authors Jabari Asim (We Can’t Breathe), Emily Bernard (Black is the Body), Anna Maria Hong (Age of Glass), Pablo Medina (The Cuban Comedy), E.C. Osondu (Voice of America), Brenda Shaughnessy (The Octopus Museum), Pitchaya Sudbanthad (Bangkok Wakes to Rain), Sergio Troncosio (A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant’s Son), and Xu Xi (This Fish is Fowl).
Sponsors are Tim Mayo, the National Endowment for the Humanities, The Stepanski Family Charitable Trust, the Thompson Trust, the Windham Foundation, the Vermont Community Foundation, the Vermont Arts Council, the Vermont Humanities Council, and Vermont Public Radio.
All festival events are free and open to the public. Festival headquarters this year will be at the Brooks House Lobby, 132 Main St., corner of Main and High streets. The entrance is on Main Street next to Duo Restaurant or from the Harmony Parking lot. Inside you’ll find the Festival’s pop-up bookstore, run by Antidote Books in Putney. They will stock all festival titles for the weekend—plus other fun things—and will be open from 9a-4p each day.
Coffee and information about the festival will also be available in the lobby, as will seating, restrooms, and a cash machine.
For more information, including a complete list of participating authors, visit brattleboroliteraryfestival.org.
