Brattleboro Literary Festival

2007 Brattleboro Literary Festival Authors

Debby Applegate is the author of The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher, winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for biography and finalist for the National Book Critic’s Circle Award. She has taught at Yale and Wesleyan Universities. Debby lives in Connecticut and Oregon.

Deirdre Bair received the National Book Award for Samuel Beckett: A Biography, and her biographies of Anaïs Nin, Simone de Beauvoir, and Carl Jung were also prize finalists. Her latest book, the result of more than 400 interviews, is Calling It Quits: Late-Life Divorce and Starting Over. Deirdre has been a literary journalist and a professor of comparative literature. She divides her time between New York and Connecticut.

Ibtisam Barakat is an award-winning Palestinian writer, educator, and the founder of Write Your Life seminars. Her book Tasting the Sky: A Palestinian Childhood captures what it is like to be a child whose world is forever altered by war. Her stories, essays, and poems have appeared widely. She grew up in Ramallah and now lives in Columbia, Missouri.

Ann Beattie has for three decades been one of the nation's most important fiction writers. She has published eight collections of short stories and seven novels, including Chilly Scenes of Winter. She has received numerous awards for her work, among them an award in literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She is the Edgar Allan Poe Professor of Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Virginia.

Sven Birkerts is one of this country’s leading literary critics. He is the author of seven books, including The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age. His newest book is Reading Life: Books for the Ages. Sven is the Briggs-Copeland lecturer at Harvard, a member of the core faculty of the low-residency Bennington Writing Seminars, and editor of the literary journal AGNI.

Laure-Anne Bosselaar grew up in Belgium, where her first language was Flemish. She is the author of a book of poems in French, Artemis (1973), and three collections of poems in English: The Hour Between Dog and Wolf; Small Gods of Grief, which won the Isabella Gardner Award; and A New Hunger, which was published this year. She teaches poetry workshops at Sarah Lawrence College.

Kurt Brown has published four collections of poetry: Return of the Prodigals, More Things in Heaven and Earth, Future Ship, and Fables from the Ark, which won the 2003 Custom Words Prize. He was the founding director of the Aspen Writer’s Conference 30 years ago, and was recently the Bruce McEver Visiting Chair in Writing at Georgia Tech in Atlanta.

Marian Burros is a food columnist for the New York Times. She has over 30 years experience as a writer, editor, and reporter covering food and consumer issues. She has authored 13 books on food and cooking, among them Cooking for Comfort, The New Elegant but Easy Cookbook, 20 Minute Menus, and Pure and Simple. She is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including an Emmy.

Augusten Burroughs is the author of the #1 New York Times best-seller Running with Scissors, which has remained on its list for over two and a half consecutive years. His other books include Dry, Magical Thinking: True Stories, Possible Side Effects, and Sellevision, which is currently in development for film. Augusten was named one of the 15 funniest people in America by Entertainment Weekly.

Wayne Carhart has recently published Brattleboro: Pages in Time, a collection of his essays on the history of Brattleboro, Vermont, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of its Chamber of Commerce. Carhart’s lifelong interest in history and the idiosyncrasies of people are reflected in his writing. His work has appeared in A Chrysalis Reader and as monthly essays in The Brattleboro Reformer.

Jon Clinch is a native of upstate New York and a graduate of Syracuse University. His first novel, Finn, concerns Huck Finn’s father. It has been widely and approvingly reviewed. Publisher’s Weekly called Finn “a darkly luminous debut. Clinch lyrically renders the Mississippi River’s ceaseless flow.” Jon lives in Pennsylvania with his wife and daughter.

John Crowley is the author of more than a dozen books of fiction, including Little, Big, which received the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel. His recently published conclusion to the Aegypt sequence has received rave reviews. The New York Times Book Review calls the Aegypt sequence “A dizzying experience, achieved with unerring security of technique." John lives in Amherst and teaches at Yale.

Ellen Dudley is the author of Slow Burn and The Geographic Cure. She is a recipient of an Individual Arts Fellowship from The Vermont Arts Council and has been a fellow at the Vermont Studio Center and Dorland Mountain Arts Colony. Ellen is the founder and editor of The Marlboro Review in Marlboro, Vermont. She divides her time between Vermont and Hawai’i.

Joshua Harmon's first novel, Quinnehtukqut, was published this year. The first section of the novel, “The Legend of Jimmy Frye,” was published in its entirety in The Iowa Review, and, at 80 pages, was the longest piece of fiction ever published by that journal. The novel is experimental in form, and concerns the early establishment of the area in northern New Hampshire that contains the watershed for the Connecticut River. Josh is a graduate of Marlboro College and Cornell.

Randall Kenan is the author of four books, including James Baldwin: American Writer, and Walking on Water: Black American Lives at the Turn of the 21st Century as well as the novel A Visitation of Spirits. His work has been awarded a Guggenheim, a Whiting Writers Award, the Sherwood Anderson Award, the John Dos Passos Award, and the Rome Prize.

Haven Kimmel is the #1 New York Times best-selling author of A Girl Named Zippy and She Got Up Off the Couch. She is also the author of three novels: The Solace of Leaving Early, Something Rising (Light and Swift), and her latest book, The Used World. She studied English and creative writing at Ball State University and North Carolina State University, and attended seminary at the Earlham School of Religion.

Galway Kinnell has won both the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award, and is one of the most influential American poets of the latter half of the 20th century. He has been a MacArthur Fellow and the state poet of Vermont. His 11th book of poems, Strong Is Your Hold, was published last year to great acclaim. He is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

Michael Lesy is a writer and professor of literary journalism at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. His books, which combine historical photographs with his own writing, include Wisconsin Death Trip, Dreamland: America at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century and (with Angelo Rizzuto) Angel’s World: The New York Photographs of Angelo Rizzuto.

Lois Lowry is the author of more than 30 books for children and young adults, including The Giver, Number the Stars, and Gossamer. She has won two Newbery medals and numerous other awards. The Giver, which is set in a world where freedom of choice has been taken away, has the distinction of having been banned in certain school districts. She divides her time between Massachusetts and Maine.

Deborah Madison is the author and co-author of more than a dozen books, including The Greens Cookbook, Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, The Savory Way, and Local Flavors: Cooking and Eating from America’s Farmers’ Markets. She has cooked in several of America’s finest restaurants, including Chez Panisse and Greens. She is the recipient of many awards, including two James Beard awards and the M. F. K. Fisher Mid-Career Award.

Colum McCann is the author of two collections of short stories and several novels, including Zoli, This Side of Brightness, and Dancer, two of which were international best-sellers. His fiction has been published in 26 languages. His awards and honors include the Hennessey Award, the Rooney Prize, and the 2002 Ireland Fund of Monaco Princess Grace Memorial Literary Award. Raised in Ireland, he now lives in New York with his family.

Martha Rhodes is the author of three poetry collections: Mother Quiet, Perfect Disappearance, and At the Gate. Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Agni, Fence, Ploughshares, TriQuarterly, and other journals. She teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and at the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She is a founding editor and the director of Four Way Books, an independent literary press in New York City.

Jeffrey Roberts is a co-founder and principal consultant to the Vermont Institute for Artisan Cheese at the University of Vermont. Jeff is active in Slow Food USA as a director and treasurer of the national board and a Northeast Regional Governor. Jeff is a frequent speaker on artisan cheese, sustainable agriculture, and the working landscape. His new book, Atlas of American Artisan Cheeses, was published in June by Chelsea Green Press of Vermont.

Allen Shawn is a composer, pianist and author. He has produced a large catalog of orchestral, chamber, vocal, and piano works, as well as music for ballet, theater, and film. His books include Wish I Could Be There: Notes from a Phobic Life, and Arnold Schoenberg’s Journey. He teaches music at Bennington College.

Leda Schubert has lived in Vermont for more than 30 years. Her book Ballet of the Elephants was a Kirkus Editor's Choice for 2006 and is also on the Horn Book Fanfare list. For 17 years, she was the school library consultant for the Vermont Department of Education. She has also served on the Caldecott Committee, the Arbuthnot Committee, and the Boston Globe–Horn Book Committee.

Zak Smith is a Brooklyn-based artist. His recent book, Pictures Showing What Happens on Each Page of Thomas Pynchon’s Novel Gravity’s Rainbow consists of more than 700 individual drawings, paintings, and photographic works. His work was shown at the Whitney Biennial, and is in the permanent collection of the Walker Museum.

Keith Stewart is the author of It’s a Long Road to a Tomato: Tales of an Organic Farmer Who Quit the Big City for the (Not So) Simple Life. He has been the proprietor of Keith’s Farm, in Orange County, New York, since 1986 and is one of the longest-standing purveyors at New York City’s Union Square Greenmarket. Stewart lives on his farm with his wife, artist Flavia Bacarella, who provided the illustrations for Stewart’s book.

Matt Tavares wrote and illustrated his first picture book, Zachary’s Ball, as his senior thesis at Bates College. After several revisions, Candlewick Press published the book in 1998. The book went on to be named one of Yankee Magazine's 40 Classic New England Children’s Books. Since then, Matt has published three more books: ’Twas the Night Before Christmas, Oliver's Game, and Mudball. He is an avid Red Sox fan.

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