Schedule

Editor of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine Linda Landrigan, bestselling author/literary agent Paula Munier, and award-winning Edwin Hill, author (The Secrets We Share) offer tips on writing the perfect murder. 

Cartoonist and illustrator Emily Zea shares how she brought the rich origins of two Vermont towns to life through comic drawings.

Acclaimed novelist/cartoonist Jeff Danziger, author of Lieutenant Dangerous, in conversation with Veteran’s Writing Award winner Dewaine Farria, author of Revolutions of All Colors.

Award-winning journalist Theo Padnos shares the extraordinary account of being kidnapped and tortured in Syria by al Qaeda for two years (“the best of the genre, profound, poetic, and sorrowful,” The Atlantic

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Edith Wharton Citation of Merit for Fiction, and an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Ayad Akhtar is the author of Homeland Elegies, called “a tour de force” by The Washington Post.

Renowned crime novelists Archer Mayor and Sarah Stewart Taylor conduct a friendly, two-way interrogation, looking for clues to each other’s creative secrets.

Historian and former national park superintendent Rolf Diamant explains how anti-slavery activism, civil war, and the remaking of government gave rise to the American public park and concept of national parks. 

A special gathering with Chard deNiord (author of six collections, including In My Unknowing) and Pulitzer Prize finalists Sydney Lea and Mary Ruefle, longlister for the 2019 National Book Award in Poetry.

Poet Kimberly Burwick and her ten-year-old son, Levi Goodan (illustrator), discuss their collaboration The Rainbow Balloon, created during the first wave of lockdowns. A story of hope and resilience, the book offers a springboard toward a “new normal”.  

Memoirist and Woodstock native Bruce Coffin (declared “a Yankee Proust” for his classic work The Long Light of Those Days) shares his new book, Among Familiar Shadows, a compassionate and enlightened look back on the people who have meant the most to him.

Poets James Crews (The Path to Kindness, How to Love the World) and Diana Whitney (You Don’t Have to Be Everything) share poems, talk anthologies, and discuss the power of poetry to empower and heal, especially in times of loss and disconnection. 

Cartoonist Don Hooper (former Vermont Secretary of State and, in kindergarten, the last to master coloring inside the lines) and author Bill Mares (former VPR commentator, state rep, teacher, and beekeeper)  talk about their illustrated collection of Vermont humor.

Celebrating their new release Last Night in America, poets Partridge Boswell and Peter Money, along with guitarist Nat Williams, fuse poetry and music in a passionate and surprising mash-up. Los Lorcas blur boundaries between spoken word and song, weaving poetry with Andalusian ballads, blues, rock, folk, reggae, hip hop, Americana and jazz in pursuit of the cante jondo (deep song) championed by Federico Garcia Lorca.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for History and National Book Award, Joseph Ellis reads from his new book, The Cause, offering insights into the founding of America, and how “democracy” at the time was more suggestive of mob rule than reasoned deliberation.

Author James Gustave Speth discusses his new book about the role of the US federal government in causing the climate crisis. ("A rousing condemnation of a system bent on short-term gain against long-term health,” Kirkus Reviews)

Novelist Jessica Lahey, New York Times bestselling author of The Addiction Inoculation and Prevention Coach at Sana at Stowe detox and recovery center, in conversation with Brett Ann Stanciu, author of Unstitched, a powerful primer on the complexity of the opioid crisis in a rural state

Instant New York Times bestselling author Flynn Berry shows a le Carré-like flair in her latest thriller, Northern Spy, soon to be a major Netflix production. (“Berry won an Edgar for Under the Harrow in 2017. Here comes another contender,” The Washington Post.) Join for a discussion of the Troubles, the new IRA, and writing early motherhood. 

Sean Prentiss (winner of the National Outdoor Book Award and finalist for the Vermont Book Award for Finding Abbey) and Deep Cuts author Steve Coughlin (“hoping perhaps to rectify—to rewrite—all those long-ago moments that went awry”) share their new memoirs-in-poems while talking about the joys and pitfalls of writing truthfully about our own worlds through poetry. 

Fasten your seatbelts as journalist and much-lauded travel writer Julia Cooke shares the glamour, danger, and liberation of commercial flight in the Mad-Men era.

American writer, spy novelist, and former CIA officer Valerie Plame joins Robert Kerbeck, award-winning author of Ruse: Lying the American Dream from Hollywood to Wall Street, to talk leaks, sneaks, and other assorted spy stories. With an introduction by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and intelligence expert Thomas Powers.

Author and activist Toufah Jallow and Steerforth Press publisher Chip Fleischer in conversation about Jallow’s powerful and inspiring memoir.

New York Times bestselling author Katie Crouch (Girls in Trucks, Abroad, and Men and Dogs) talks about her latest rave-reviewed novel.

Married authors Kimiko Hahn (author of ten books of poems, including Foreign Bodies) and Harold Schechter (author of true crime best sellers, including the award-winning graphic novel Did You Hear What Eddie Gein Done?) in conversation about keeping it creative at home.

Authors, academics, mothers and friends – Makenna Goodman and Camille Guthrie – talk about their recent acclaimed books, The Shame and Diamonds, and how to write while parenting, working, and laughing and crying, often at the same time.

Poet David Cavanagh, author of five books, including The Somnambulist and the Good Life, shares his work and insights on how writers can tap into their own lives and the world around them.

Cartoonist Jarad Greene (Scullion: A Dishwasher's Guide to Mistaken Identity and A-Okay) and Tillie Walden (author of the Eisner award-winning memoir Spinning!) share how they make comics from early sketches to final finished artwork.

Novelist Marjorie Nelson Matthews transports readers to 1930s and ‘40s Honolulu. With host Joni B. Cole, she discusses the book's thought-provoking themes from defying gender norms, to reinvention after loss, to the costs of being "different".

A conversation between Trish Esden author of the new Scandal Mountain Antiques Mystery series and the Northern Circle Coven series and Jennifer McMahon, New York Times bestselling author of eleven suspense novels on fictional Vermont.

Author Shanta Lee Gander discusses themes from her debut collection GHETTOCLAUSTROPHOBIA: Dreamin of Mama While Trying to Speak Woman in Woke Tongues.

Spoken word poet and teaching artist Rajnii Eddins (author of Their Names are Mine) shares his love for poetry, and the power of words and language to inspire, empower, and affirm.

New York Times bestselling author of The Family (also a Netflix documentary) and C Street, Jeff Sharlet talks about his latest book This Brilliant Darkness, a visionary work of radical empathy.

New Yorker and McSweeney’s humorist Kristen Mulrooney (also the co-author of The Official Gilmore Girls Cookbook) talks humor writing.

Former elite firefighter Kevin Goodan reads from his latest poetry collection Spot Weather Forecast. This electrifying work, a follow-up to Goodan’s eye-opening Anaphora, “details the immediacy of the firefighter’s life while offering transcendent reflection on time’s passage and our being in the world.” Library Journal