Village Reads

Readers & Writers in Conversation

Season Two Syllabus & Sessions

Week 1: In preparation for a conversation with Hal Crowther and Lee Smith 

Thursday, July 8, 4:30pm

From The Collected Essays of Elizabeth Hardwick:

• “In Maine” (1971)

Special Guests: New York Times best-selling author and long-time summer resident of Castine, Lee Smith has orchestrated a prolific career writing both fiction and creative nonfiction, including her memoir Dimestore: A Writer’s Life. Lee joined Village Reads last summer as our “Readers and Writers in Conversation” inaugural guest to discuss her April 2020 publication of the novella Blue Marlin. 

Lee’s partner, Hal Crowther, is a journalist, critic, and essayist whose work has appeared in periodicals including Time, Newsweek, The Oxford American, Granta, and other independent weeklies around the country. His wide-ranging essays on politics and media have earned him vast critical acclaim, including the Independent Publisher Book Award for Essay/Creative Non-Fiction.

Read the Welcome Letter from Sonja Krusic O’Donnell, our Reader-in-Residence.

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Week 2: In preparation for a conversation with Phillip Lopate

Thursday, July 15, 4:30pm

From The Collected Essays of Elizabeth Hardwick:

• “Boston” (1959)

• “Bartleby in Manhattan” (1981) 

• “The Genius of Margaret Fuller” (1986)

Special Guest: Phillip Lopate is a professor of writing at Columbia University’s MFA program, a prolific writer of literary nonfiction, and renowned editor of several anthologies including The Art of the Personal Essay, Writing New York, and most recently The Golden Age of the American Essay: 1945-1970, which includes Hardwick’s 1959 essay “Boston.”

Read this session’s letter from Sonja Krusic O’Donnell.

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Week 3: In preparation for a conversation with Maddy Blais

Thursday, July 22, 4:30pm

From The Collected Essays of Elizabeth Hardwick:

• “Domestic Matters” (1978)

• “Sense of the Present” (1979)

• “Memoirs, Conversations, and Diaries” (1953)

Special Guest: Madeleine Blais was a reporter for the Miami Herald and won a Pulitzer Prize before joining the faculty of the School of Journalism at the University of Massachusetts. She is the author of To the New Owners, In These Girls, Hope Is a Muscle, Uphill Walkers, and The Heart Is an Instrument, a collection of her journalism. She is currently working on a collection of personal essays.

Read this session’s letter from Sonja Krusic O’Donnell.

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Week 4: In preparation for a conversation with Annex Arts artist-in-residence, Julia Bouwsma & scholar, curator, and performance artist Myron Beasley

Thursday, August 12, 4:30pm

Read:

• Midden by Julia Bouwsma (2018)

Julia Bouwsma has just been announced by Governor Mills as Maine’s sixth Poet Laureate and lives off-the-grid in the mountains of western Maine, where she is also a farmer, freelance editor, critic, and small-town librarian. She is the author of two poetry collections: Midden and Work. She is the recipient of the 2018 Maine Literary Award; the 2016-2017 Poets Out Loud Prize and the 2015 Cider Press Review Book Award. Her poems and book reviews can be found in Grist, Poetry Northwest, RHINO, River Styx, and other journals. A former Managing Editor for Alice James Books, Bouwsma currently serves as Book Review Editor for Connotation Press: An Online Artifact and as Library Director for Webster Library in Kingfield, Maine.

Myron Beasley is an Associate Professor in the areas of American Studies and Gender and Sexuality Studies at Bates College. His ethnographic research includes exploring the intersection of cultural politics and art and social change, as he believes in the power of artists and recognizes them as cultural workers; He has conducted fieldwork in Morocco, Brazil, the US, and currently in Haiti. The Andy Warhol Foundation, the Whiting Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, and most recently the Reed Foundation (The Ruth Landes Award), have awarded him fellowships and grants, for his ethnographic writing about art and cultural engagement. He has also been recognized for his teaching (awarded teaching awards) and works in the area of pedagogy from the International Communication Association, Ohio University, and Brown University. His writing has appeared in many academic journals including The Journal of Poverty (which he served as guest editor for a special issue on the topic of Art and Social Policy), Text and Performance Quarterly, Museum & Social Issues, The Journal of Curatorial Studies, Gastronomica, ELSE and Performance Research. He is also an international curator.

Read this session’s letter from Sonja Krusic O’Donnell.

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Village Reads combines elements of book clubs, author events, and artist residencies into one community experience produced by Annex Arts and facilitated by Reader-in-Residence, Sonja Krusic O’Donnell, Castine resident, career educator, and passionate defender of the arts.

Village Reads & Literary Arts Events