With the Woodstock Bookfest approaching, April 3 through 6, founder and executive director Martha Frankel gave us a phone interview from her car, which was parked where her office was once located in Boiceville. The building was knocked down years ago, after she had left, but she still sometimes sits in the parking lot “to take a breath,” she explained. “The office was a place of tremendous creativity. I taught writing classes here for years.”
The office was down the street from Onteora High School, where Frankel was one of the first participants in the mentor program. As mentor to young Sophie Strand, Frankel thought she would ask her mentee to organize the books that were piled all over the office. “When she came to my writing class and read her work, I thought, she’s a real talent. She’s not going to be organizing my books.”
Strand, who just published her third book, The Body is a Doorway, will be on a Bookfest panel for the second year in a row, discussing the art of memoir with Frankel, Jennifer Kabat, and Oliver Radclyffe.
As always, the panel topics are wide-ranging, from feminism to rock music, with Holly George-Warren combining the two as she hosts “Women in the Rock & Roll Fast Lane” on Friday, April 4. The author of a Janis Joplin biography and co-author with Dolly Parton of the Grammy-nominated Behind the Seams: My Life in Rhinestones, George-Warren will converse with Moon Unit Zappa about caring for her celebrated father and with Lori Tucker-Sullivan, who interviewed and profiled fourteen widows of famed rock musicians.
“I interviewed Moon Zappa when she read from her memoir at the Golden Notebook,” said Frankel. “She’s such a generous soul, beautiful and open. Everyone wanted to tell her their Frank Zappa story, which she’s heard her whole life. You’d think she’d be tapping her foot, but she really listened.” When George-Warren was nominated for a Grammy award for her liner notes to a five-disk set of Janis Joplin albums, she gave Frankel a ticket to the awards ceremony in Los Angeles. “It was amazing to see how respected Holly is in the rock world,” Frankel recalled. “Everyone knew her, or at least knew her name.”
Saturday night, Frankel will interview keynote speaker Griffin Dunne, whose talents include acting (Scorcese’s After Hours, An American Werewolf in London), directing (Addicted to Love, Practical Magic), documentary filmmaking (The Center Will Not Hold, about his aunt, Joan Didion), and writing, with the publication of his 2024 memoir, The Friday Afternoon Club. The book describes growing up in a family of prominent intellectuals, including his father Dominick Dunne.
“I knew Griffin’s dad,” said Frankel. “He was a writer for Vanity Fair, covered the OJ trial, and wrote about his daughter’s murder.” The traumatic period of the murder is described in Griffin Dunne’s memoir. “He grew up in a rarefied air,” Frankel continued, “and has a wild story. His parents had huge parties. His father was a social climber before he got sober. I loved the book. We have a mutual friend, and every few days, I’d call her and leave a line from the book, and she’d call back and leave me one.”
Through the friend, Frankel connected with Dunne, who instantly agreed to participate in the Bookfest. “I never do the interview with the keynote, but I am truly the right person to do this,” said Frankel, whose past includes years of interviewing celebrities for such publications as The New Yorker, Redbook, and Cosmopolitan. “I know how to research, I’ve been looking at his movies and TV shows, I’m steeped in him. He’s an incredible raconteur. He can tell a story like no one else, and he has the stories. ”
One of the Saturday afternoon panels is “Women and Wisdom Keepers: Illuminating a Path During Dark Times,” hosted by wise woman Gail Straub. Emmy Award-winning journalist, author, and historian Dr. Janus Adams will join local luminaries Beverly D’Onofrio and Abigail Thomas, discussing how the wisdom that comes with aging influences their craft. “Who knows where those three will wind up going?” said Frankel. “They’ve been writing so long about so many different things.”
“Women’s Rights in Post-Roe America” brings together journalists Marianne Schnall and Clara Bingham, with feminist activists Jessica Valenti and Jamia Wilson. Melissa Holbrook Pierson moderates a panel on the importance of place, with journalists Ben Ratliff of the New York Times and Alex Hannaford from Columbia University. In the panel “On Permission: Daring to Tell,” Sari Botton, Jonathan Lerner, Hyeseung Song, and Elissa Altman will address whether we have the right to tell other people’s stories when writing a memoir. The “Love and Heartbreak” panel features Timothy Liu, Ada Calhoun, and Lisa Phillips.
The annual Story Slam, with stories containing the phrase “I Knew I Had To Do Good”, opens the Bookfest on Thursday night, as always, but this year it will be held at the Woodstock Playhouse. Sunday morning’s fun event will be a Gilmore Girls trivia contest with Ann Hood, who edited a book of essays on the celebrated TV show.
Frankel mused on why the Bookfest, which started in 2010 under the name Woodstock Writers Festival, continues to be popular. “People love to read, and they love stories, and that doesn’t change. My parents would read to me every night, and I remember the first time I took the book and read it myself. That’s what we touch in people. People want to know your story, what separates us and what makes us alike. Your story, only you can tell it, but when I read it, I think, man, I felt the same way.”
Join the family! 
