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.
Recorded 1/2/24 Producer: MCTV
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 12/5/23 Producer: MCTV
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.
Recorded 8/1/23
Producer: MCTV
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
Local author, Matthew Hongoltz-Hettling, discusses his new book, If It Sounds Like a Quack…A Journey to the Fringes of American Medicine. A bizarre, rollicking trip through the world of fringe medicine, filled with leeches, baking soda IVs, and, according to at least one person, zombies.
Recorded 4/4/23
Producer: MCTV
Local author, Meg Madden, discusses her new book, This is a Book for People Who Love Mushrooms. A celebratory compendium of nature’s weirdest and most wonderful fungi, with gorgeously illustrated profiles of notable mushrooms and information on foraging, understanding, and appreciating these magnificent living things. Recorded 3/7/23
Producer: MCTV
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[/ezcol_1third] [ezcol_2third_end]Local Charlotte author, Giovanna “Jo” Brunini Congdon discusses her new book, Never a Cloud. Some things can only be hidden for so long. Some things are too difficult to talk about, and some things you have to repeat even when no one is listening . . .Never a Cloud charts the course of three women—Violet, Ava, and Margot— who find their way to a new understanding of home and family at Otyrburn, an estate in rural Scotland. We are happy to be partnering with Vermont Book Shop for this local author series. Recorded 2/7/23 [/ezcol_2third_end][ezcol_1third] Producer: MCTV
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“I’m curious about what went so suddenly sour with American patriotism, American faith, and American prosperity.”
Like so many of us, McKibben grew up believing—knowing—that the United States was the greatest country on earth. As a teenager, he cheerfully led American Revolution tours in Lexington, Massachusetts. He sang “Kumbaya” at church. And with the remarkable rise of suburbia, he assumed that all Americans would share in the wealth.
But fifty years later, he finds himself in an increasingly doubtful nation strained by bleak racial and economic inequality, on a planet whose future is in peril.
And he is curious: What the hell happened?
In this revelatory cri de coeur, McKibben digs deep into our history (and his own well-meaning but not all-seeing past) and into the latest scholarship on race and inequality in America, on the rise of the religious right, and on our environmental crisis to explain how we got to this point. He finds that he is not without hope. And he wonders if any of that trinity of his youth—the flag, the cross, the station wagon—could, or should, be reclaimed in the fight for a fairer future.
Recorded 6/20/22 at CVUUS.[/ezcol_2third_end][ezcol_1third]
Producer: VT Book Shop