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.
Triumph over hardship. Pay it forward. The power of community. These were the moral codes of Dave Morse (1937-2015), a beloved Vermont Sports Hall of Fame journalist who spent 20 years at the Hardwick Gazette writing “The Morse Code,” an all-sports, all-ages column. The Vermont Book Shop and Ilsley Library welcome Middlebury College alumnus and retired Hardwick physician Brendan Buckley, who will read from and discuss his new book about the intriguing figure of Dave Morse, The Morse Code: Legacy of a Vermont Sportswriter.
Brendan Buckley fell in love with Vermont while attending Middlebury College. After graduation, he taught sixth grade for two years, but then decided to pursue a career in medicine. He did his internship and residency at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center and then moved to Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, where he practiced primary care medicine at the Hardwick Area Health Center for thirty four years, until his retirement in 2019. He continues to live in East Hardwick with his wife Helen, a retired school psychologist. Their children, Matthew and Emma, live in California and Utah. The Morse Code: Legacy of a Vermont Sportswriter is his first book.
Local author, Leslie C. Smith, discusses her new book, Spitfire: A Story of Adversity, Acceptance and Resurrection. With unique insight, candor, and encouragement, Leslie recounts a life lived well and with intention, even with the odds stacked against her. She had one goal to begin it all: “I needed to learn to accept myself and the diagnosis I had been given… I was on a personal journey to find peace, accept my new life and assimilate into a life that I wanted to live. I had heard the restrictions that would be part of my life and now I needed to find the flip side of the limitations.”
Recorded 5/2/23 Producer: MCTV
Public, Educational, and Governmental Access for Middlebury, Vermont
