Literary Festival

Brattleboro has an amazing Literary Festival that was going on this past weekend. It involves probably 70 or more authors, many of them nationally-known, award-winning authors. Typically, two authors (who have similar interests) are scheduled for an hour, and they each have about 20 minutes to read from their work and/or talk about their work, and then answer questions. There are five simultaneous venues, going on morning and afternoon, Saturday and Sunday. We have yet to go to a dull event. We went to four on Saturday.

1. Ben Green (The Smart Enough City) and Tatiana Schossberg (Inconspicuous Consumption) talking about urban technology and climate change.

2. Jabari Asim (Preaching to the Chickens) and Michael Glatcher (Americus, Raising Fences) both African-American authors dealing in some way with racial issues.

3. Dani Shapiro talking about her book, Inheritance, which tells the story of how a DNA test revealed that her father was not actually her biological father.

4. A panel of five authors reading from their work.

I found Tatiana Schossberg and Dani Shapiro especially interesting.

Ben Green and Tatiana Schossberg

Michael Glatcher and Jabari Asim

Dani Shapiro

We feel so fortunate to have a festival of this quality in our little town. And it is all free and open to everyone. Amazing!

Today after our Osher lecture on Henry IV, Part I (which was the best one yet), Ellen and I took a little fall drive up to Grandma Miller's bakery in Londonderry, then Lowell Lake, outside Londonderry, and then The Vermont Country Store in Weston. Perfect day for a drive. The color is still great in Dummerston but the trees were bare farther north. But it was still beautiful.

Lowell Lake, one of my favorite places in the world

Enjoying an almond horn and an eclair at Grandma Miller's

The Maple Syrup display at the Vermont Country Store