Don’t miss this chance to hear former local teacher Fran McIntsoh read from and discuss her newly published book The Walker, the Driver, and Otto. It is an absolutely delightful book: equal parts harrowing and heartwarming, beautifully written, and expertly crafted for a pleasant reading experience all around.
You may remember when Don McIntosh, AKA “Mr. Mac,” everyone’s favorite PE teacher, went on his 1987-1988 circumnavigational walk around the continental US. Well, Fran supported him on that walk, in spite of no longer being obligated by marital bonds, as she was, by then, married to David Disque, who owned what was then known as Forth ‘n Goal (now The Middlebury Shop) with Vin Fucile. Though these personal details are not the focus of the book, the history of their triad and the strong family that grew from it does emerge, along with the quiet strength of the woman at its center.
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
Alma Cruz, the celebrated writer at the heart of The Cemetery of Untold Stories, doesn’t want to end up like her friend, a novelist who fought so long and hard to finish a book that it threatened her sanity. So when Alma inherits a small plot of land in the Dominican Republic, her homeland, she has the beautiful idea of turning it into a place to bury her untold stories—literally. She creates a graveyard for the manuscript drafts and the characters whose lives she tried and failed to bring to life and who still haunt her.
Alma wants her characters to rest in peace. But they have other ideas and soon begin to defy their author: they talk back to her and talk to one another behind her back, rewriting and revising themselves. Filomena, a local woman hired as the groundskeeper, becomes a sympathetic listener to the secret tales unspooled by Alma’s characters. Among them, Bienvenida, dictator Rafael Trujillo’s abandoned wife who was erased from the official history, and Manuel Cruz, a doctor who fought in the Dominican underground and escaped to the United States.
The Cemetery of Untold Stories asks: Whose stories get to be told, and whose buried? Finally, Alma finds the meaning she and her characters yearn for in the everlasting vitality of stories. Julia Alvarez reminds us that the stories of our lives are never truly finished, even at the end.
About Julia:
Julia Alvarez left the Dominican Republic for the United States in 1960 at the age of ten. She is the author of six novels, three books of nonfiction, three collections of poetry, and eleven books for children and young adults. She has taught and mentored writers in schools and communities across America and, until her retirement in 2016, was a writer in residence at Middlebury College. Her work has garnered wide recognition, including a Latina Leader Award in Literature from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, the Hispanic Heritage Award in Literature, the Woman of the Year by Latina magazine, and inclusion in the New York Public Library’s program “The Hand of the Poet: Original Manuscripts by 100 Masters, from John Donne to Julia Alvarez.” In the Time of the Butterflies, with over one million copies in print, was selected by the National Endowment for the Arts for its national Big Read program, and in 2013 President Obama awarded Alvarez the National Medal of Arts in recognition of her extraordinary storytelling.
Julia will appear on stage in conversation with Carolyn Kuebler, editor of the literary journal based in Middlebury, New England Review. Kuebler’s debut novel, Liquid, Fragile, Perishable will go on sale May 7.
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.
Rick returns to IPL this time to share his latest book, Save Me A Seat: A Life With The Movies! Rick Winston’s genial and companionable memoir is the chronicle of a lifelong love affair with movies. Movies, the pleasure of movies, the ways in which movies bring people and communities together and change lives, movies in general and movies in particular, fill the book. Rick moved to Vermont in 1970 and shortly afterward founded the Lightning Ridge Film Society, which morphed into the Savoy Theater in 1981. He was one of the founders of Montpelier’s Green Mountain Film Festival and was its Programming Director until 2012. 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.
Recorded 1/2/24Producer: MCTV
Public, Educational, and Governmental Access for Middlebury, Vermont
