Marathon reading of The Odyssey in Saugerties
Sunday, April 22: Emily Wilson’s new translation of Homer’s epic poem will be read by local poets, artists and actors.
Books
Tim Youd retypes Mary McCarthy’s The Group in Vassar performance piece
Thursday, 4/19 and several dates afterward: In his ongoing 100 Novels project, Youd specializes in retyping novels (with the same make and model typewriter used by the author) from beginning to end in locations that are charged with literary significance in the author’s biography. The retyping of Mary McCarthy’s The Group will constitute the 56th novel that Youd has typed, and is one of several titles that he will undertake in the Hudson Valley in 2018.
Mary Beth Pfeiffer reads from her new book on Lyme disease in Woodstock & Poughkeepsie
Sunday, April 15: Lyme: The First Epidemic of Climate Change has already garnered critical accolades, including from such environmentalist icons as Jane Goodall and Bill McKibben. The book makes the case that Lyme disease is spreading rapidly around the globe as ticks move into places they could not survive before, infecting half a million people in the US and Europe each year, and untold multitudes in Canada, China, Russia and Australia.
Junot Díaz to speak at Vassar
Wednesday, April 18: Díaz won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics’ Circle Award for his novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, but this week in particular, the world of belles-lettres is abuzz with admiration for Díaz’s moving account in The New Yorker about the fact that he was raped at the age of eight, and the way that the need to conceal that fact has twisted his life and relationships ever after.
SUNY-Ulster Poetry Forum presents Martín Espada
Thursday, April 12: A former tenant lawyer in Greater Boston’s Latino community, Espada is a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. He is also the author of more than 20 books as a poet, editor, essayist and translator.
One Book/One New Paltz will examine The Plot Against America
Philip Roth’s alternate history that imagines Charles Lindbergh winning the 1940 presidential election and allying with Nazi Germany is the choice for this year’s community read.
Host of Inquiring Minds poetry sessions publishes sixth book
Turn Out the Lights, the sixth book by Saugertiesian Laura Lonshein Ludwig, promises to contain “a new wave of movies that are as good as the classics of the Gold and Silver Age” on its jacket.
Joyful Bookfest
Woodstock Bookfest founder and executive director Martha Frankel was ecstatic Monday morning, following completion of the annual event’s ninth outing. Attendance had been the best ever. Local restaurants and shops were chockablock with happy customers all weekend. Books were selling like generators and bottled water before a major storm front.
Steve Lewis is letting his new stories tell themselves
“Writing is easy,” sportswriter Gene Fowler famously said. “All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.”
Autism panel is one highlight of Woodstock Bookfest
Completely new this year at the Woodstock Bookfest will be its first gathering of writers who specialize on the subject of autism, at 4 p.m. Saturday, March 24 at the Kleinert/James Center for the Arts, 36 Tinker Street, Woodstock.
