After reading from, answering questions about and signing copies of The Highest Glass Ceiling: Women’s Quest for the American Presidency next Thursday night, Ellen Fitzpatrick will gratefully sit back in one of the Spartan benches at the Canaan Meetinghouse, maybe with a cookie or a cup of punch, and listen to National Book Award nominee Mary Gaitskill share her new novel The Mare.
“I’m always preferring to listen to someone else,” Fitzpatrick, whose 2010 book Letters to Jackie: Condolences from a Grieving Nation made The New York Times list of nonfiction bestsellers, said during a phone interview on Wednesday. “There’s nothing in what I’m saying that’s new to me.
“It’s always a pleasure to be a civilian.”
Civilian bibliophiles and authors alike this summer can dip their toes into a steady stream of readings in the Upper Valley: In addition to the Canaan Meetinghouse’s four Thursday sessions with two authors each in July, the Bookstock literary festival the last weekend in July will bring a parade of writers, led by poet Richard Blanco, to Woodstock.
Over three Thursday nights in August, the Town House Forum in Strafford will host a versatile lineup of writers.
And if you haven’t already taken the scenic ride up the White River or over Bethel Mountain to Rochester, Vt., for BigTown Gallery’s author series, they’re holding three more sets of readings between July 31 and Labor Day weekend, when the one-two punch of former Vermont Poet Laureate Sydney Lea and novelist Sue Miller will close the season.
Fitzpatrick’s reading from The Highest Glass Ceiling next week, with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the verge of making history as the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party, kicks off a series that moderator Phil Pochoda this week said evolved into “The Year of the Woman.”
“Often, without planning, it’s 50-50 between male and female authors,” Pochoda continued. “Now it’s 7 to 2, women to men.
“It’s going to be interesting to see whether there’s any cumulative effect, hearing from women about women in a variety of guises.”
The writers following Fitzpatrick and Gaitskill at Canaan include, on July 14, New Hampshire-based nature writer Sy Montgomery reading from her Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness, a 2015 nonfiction finalist for the National Book Award, and novelist Diane les Bequets sampling from Breaking Wild, a thriller in which a park ranger searches for a missing outdoorswoman.
Subsequent readings feature poet Vievee Francis and novelist Dawn Tripp on July 21 and, on July 28, New York Times magazine columnist Pagan Kennedy before Tommy O’Malley and Doug Purdy close the series with samplings from their We Were Kings (The Boston Saga).
Fitzpatrick, a University of New Hampshire history professor and a friend of Pochoda’s wife, former Dartmouth history professor Mary Kelley, read from Letters to Jackie at the meetinghouse several years ago. She expects this coming Thursday’s reading of her new book, which looks back at the candidacies of Victoria Woodhull in 1872, Margaret Chase Smith in 1964, Shirley Chisholm in 1972 and dozens of even lesser-known aspirants, to be more relaxing than the whirlwind of media appearances she’s made since the delegate math added up to Clinton securing the nomination.
“When the book came out in February, it wasn’t clear what was going to happen,” Fitzpatrick said. “Once it became apparent how it was going to go, I’ve done maybe 50 interviews and talks. … It’s almost like it’s the first time it’s ever happened, when in fact there is a history.”
Each week’s Canaan Meetinghouse reading begins at 7:30 p.m. For more information, visit meetinghousereadings.wordpress.com.
As has become standard with this annual literary festival, you’ll want to bring sturdy walking shoes and plan carefully for which readings you most want to attend between July 29 and 31.
Among the few presentations not running at the same time as others is the keynote talk on July 30 at 11 by Richard Blanco, the Cuban-American writer who delivered his poem One Today at President Obama’s second inauguration in 2013. He will appear at the North Universalist Chapel, which poets will occupy for most of July 29 and 30. Featured reciters include current Vermont Poet Laureate Chard deNiord on the afternoon of July 29 at 1 and Pulitzer Prize-winner Jorie Graham on the afternoon of July 30 at 1.
The deNiord appearance, in which he will share the stage with Kerrin McCadden and Tim Mayo, will take place while former Vermont Attorney General and Supreme Court Chief Justice Jeffrey Amestoy is at St. James Episcopal Church, reading from Slavish Shore, his book about a 19th-century voyage to California of Two Years Before the Mast author Richard Henry Dana Jr.
Additional readings by, among others, novelist Howard Frank Mosher, nature writer Mary Holland and short story writer Megan Mayhew Bergman, will be taking place at venues ranging from the Norman Williams Public Library and the Woodstock History Center to Zack’s Place and the ArtisTree Community Arts Center in South Pomfret.
Bonus events include a screening, at Town Hall Theatre the night of July 30, of South Woodstock resident Jim Sadwith’s movie Coming Through the Rye, a dramatization of the director’s encounter with author J.D. Salinger in Cornish in 1969.
And at the Norman Williams library at 1:30 on the afternoon of July 31, Northern Stage Artistic Director Carol Dunne and Managing Director Eric Bunge will describe their planning and assembling of the theater company’s 2016-2017 season, which will range from Macbeth to Mamma Mia.
For a full schedule, and for biographies of the readers, visit bookstockvt.org.
Poet, biographer, novelist and scholar Jay Parini, whose most recent work chronicles the life of Gore Vidal, kicks off the series on Aug. 4 at 7 p.m., alongside E.M. Forster biographer Wendy Moffat.
On Aug. 11, the readers are former Maine Poet Laureate Baron Wormser and poet/essayist Dawn Potter.
The series concludes on Aug. 18 with readings by fiction writer Megan Mayhew Bergman (who also appears at Bookstock) and Vermont Poet Laureate Chard deNiord.
For more information, visit townhouseforum.com
The series opens July 31 with novelist Susan Choi, whose debut book The Foreign Student won the Asian-American Literary Award for fiction, and poet Peg Boyers.
Poets Alice Lyons and Cammy Thomas headline the Aug. 21 reading.
And on Sept. 4, Newbury, Vt.-based poet Sydney Lea and part-time Vermont resident Sue Miller (The Good Mother) will read.
Each reading session starts at 5:30 p.m. To learn more, visit bigtowngallery.com
For the next presentation at Woodstock’s Norman Williams Public Library, Lee Hope Belcher will read from her debut novel Horsefever, on July 19 at 6:30 p.m. The mystery mixes equestrian sports, marriage and the connection between animals and humans, inspired by a real-life murder case.
If you missed the Norwich Public Library’s participatory reading Thursday of abolitionist Frederick Douglass’ 1852 speech about the irony of expecting former slaves to celebrate Independence Day, the Vermont Humanities Council is hosting two more recitations in the Upper Valley over the next several days: at Randolph’s Kimball Public Library at noon on Monday, July 4, and at the Tunbridge Public Library at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, the anniversary of the day Douglass delivered it. For more information about these and other readings around Vermont, visit vermonthumanities.org/event/reading-frederick-douglass-2016.
David Corriveau can be reached at dcorriveau@vnews.com and at 603-727-3304.