Cindy will talk about her most recent book, Mosaic: Poems from Travels in Italy (Wild Dog Press, 2024). Cindy will address the rich history and forms of Italian poetry, historical and contemporary, as well as reading examples from her own works. Cindy Ellen Hill is a Middlebury environmental attorney, author and poet. A 1987 graduate of Vermont Law School, she has forged a career of representing small towns, nonprofit organizations, and citizens groups in land use, utilities regulation, and federal environmental cases. She has maintained a parallel career in journalism and creative writing, winning NENPA awards for news and feature articles while writing for Vermont Woman and Vermont Outdoors, and twice winning the Vermont Writer’s Prize (previously known as the Ralph Nading Hill award) for fiction and poetry. Cindy returned to college in 2022 as a 60th birthday present to herself, graduating with an MFA in Writing (poetry and fiction) from the Vermont College of Fine Arts in July 2024.
Jonathan Mingle is a freelance writer and journalist. He has reported on political, policy, and grassroots battles over natural gas (aka methane) infrastructure and its local and global climate consequences. He has written about many climate and climate related issues for a range of outlets, including The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, Slate, Undark, Yale Environment 360, and The Boston Globe. Jon is a former Middlebury Fellow in Environmental Journalism and a graduate of UC Berkeley’s Energy and Resources Group. He lives in Lincoln with his wife and young daughter.
Kellam Ayres’s debut poetry collection, IN THE CATHEDRAL OF MY UNDOING (Gunpowder Press, 2024), was chosen by Gary Soto as the winner of the Barry Spacks Poetry Prize. Kellam lives with her husband, daughter, and son in East Middlebury, Vermont.
“Is this smalltown America? A place where the air doesn’t move, love is thin, beer fails nightly to do its trick, and hope rides a cloud to the edge of town, then disappears? These poems are located further east than Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, but they offer the same story of lives where the dramas are small, their significance large, the outcome of disappointments seemingly permanent. Here is art, here is truth, poems as portraits.” —Gary Soto
Chris Lincoln
Chris Lincoln of Thetford, a Middlebury College grad, whose book is The Funny Moon, is joined in conversation by Mike McKenna of Weybridge. Lincoln has been recognized with a Clio, advertising’s Oscar. He is also the author of the widely praised non-fiction book, Playing the Game: Inside Athletic Recruiting in the Ivy League. A graduate of Middlebury College and participant at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, he lives in Vermont with his wife. The Funny Moon is his first novel. Recorded 5/14/24
George Bellerose
A healthy forest is a multi-generational responsibility. To be good stewards of the land is this generation’s challenge. Portrait of a Forest: Men and Machine through day-in-the-life photography and wide-ranging interviews helps us understand the people and policies that will determine if we meet that responsibility. George is an author and photographer who lives in Weybridge, VT. VBS will be here will books for sale and signature.
Even as a child, Jackie Tuxill’s world view was expansive. Born in Chengdu, China, of medical missionary parents, as a toddler she escaped the final months of WWII with her family and celebrated her third birthday in India before obtaining passage to the US and settling in a rural West Virginia town in 1948. After graduating cum laude from Muskingum College with a BS in biology, she worked in a medical research lab while her husband attended medical school; they later moved to Alaska, where Jackie discovered a love of outdoor adventure and a passion for nature that led to a thirty-five-year career in environmental work. “Ashes and Rivers,” a chapter adapted from Whispers From the Valley of the Yak, appeared in the 2019 anthology True Stories: The Narrative Project, Vol I. For the past three decades, Jackie has made her home in Lincoln, Vermont. VBS will be here will books for sale and signature.
Vermont Authors Series continues with Cornwall, Vermont’s father daughter poet duo, Gary and Arianna. Arianna has just published her second book of poetry I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You and Gary will be reading from his newest book of poems What it Means to be Happy.
A “fascinating” exploration (Elizabeth Kolbert) of how ecosystems are sculpted and sustained by animals eating, pooping, and dying—and how these fundamental functions could help save us from climate catastrophe. Joe Roman is a conservation biologist, marine ecologist, and editor ’n’ chef of eattheinvaders.org. Winner of the Rachel Carson Environment Book Award for Listed, Roman has written for the New York Times, Science, Slate, and other publications. He is a fellow and writer in residence at the Gund Institute for Environment at the University of Vermont.
Recorded 12/5/23Producer: MCTV
Public, Educational, and Governmental Access for Middlebury, Vermont
