Author Melanie Finn discusses the development of her latest literary thriller, The underneath, which is set primarily in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. Finn is the author of two earlier novels including The Gloaming, a 2016 New York Times Notable Book. Born and raised in Kenya until age 11, she then moved with her family to Connecticut. After working as a freelance journalist and screenwriter for 20 years in six countries, she wrote her first novel, Away From You in 2014. Free and handicapped accessible.

Vermont author Jessica Aiken-Hall reads from her memoir The Monster That Ate My Mommy, a disturbing and honest account of her abusive upbringing in rural Vermont.

“This is one of the most moving and brave memoirs I have ever read—on par with The Liar’s Club (Mary Karr) and The Glass Castle (Jeanette Walls).”—Sarah Felix Burns, author of Jackfish, The Vanishing Village

Copies of the book will be available for purchase. Proceeds from the sale of her books this night will go to Umbrella, which supports women, families and survivors of interpersonal violence in the Northeast Kingdom.

First Wednesdays Series. Douglass and Lincoln — one born a slave, the other born dirt poor — became respectively one of the nation’s greatest orators and one of its greatest presidents. Harvard professor John Stauffer examines their friendship, the similarities in their lives, and their legacies.

Underwriter: Gil Steil Associates

In her new book Grace Gershuny argues for encouraging as many farmers as possible to convert to organic methods as quickly as possible as the most immediate route to reversing the increase in greenhouse gas emissions that now endangers communities everywhere. The food system contributes at least one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions, and can be part of the solution. 

When a gruesome new tick-borne virus breaks out near a major US city and the outbreak is traced to an extremist group in Southeast Asia, the race to stop a global bioterrorism conspiracy is on. Government epidemiologist Mariah Rossi must leave the safety of her lab to help fellow scientist and covert CIA agent Curt Kennedy track the disease back to its source. Series sponsored by Philip and Marylou Meyer.

From his birth in the Caribbean to death in a duel, Alexander Hamilton’s
life was part romance, part tragedy—and the inspiration for the
blockbuster Broadway musical. Hamilton biographer Willard Sterne
Randall discusses the man and the musical, with excerpts from its score.
Underwriter: Passumpsic Savings Bank

UVM professor Emily Bernard explores how Beloved argues that America
must reckon with the consequences of our nation’s original sin—slavery.
Underwriter: Gil Steil Associates

Whether around the caveman’s fire or the conference table, no signal is
more important to humans’ interpreting social interactions and future
behavior than the smile. Dartmouth Professor of Psychological and
Brain Sciences Paul Whalen explores how the human brain processes
the facial expressions of others and what these responses mean for
understanding our emotional lives.

Watch Paul Whalen's Ted Talk HERE.

UVM professor Emily Bernard explores how Beloved argues that America
must reckon with the consequences of our nation’s original sin—slavery.
Underwriter: Gil Steil Associates.

Visit Emily Bernard's faculty page HERE.

Author Ilan Stavans Shares Inmates' Insights into Hamlet

Celebrated literary critic Ilan Stavans will share his experience teaching Shakespeare in correctional facilities in a talk at St. Johnsbury Athenaeum on November 2 at 7:00 pm. His talk, “Hamlet in Prison,” is part of the Vermont Humanities Council’s First Wednesdays lecture series and is free and open to the public.

Stavans will discuss his teaching of Hamlet in correctional facilities, and share insights his classes have made about the play and revenge, freedom, and redemption.

Stavans is an internationally known, award-winning cultural critic, linguist, translator, public speaker, editor, short-story writer, and TV host, whose best-selling work focuses on language, identity, politics, and history. Born in Mexico in 1961 into a Jewish family with roots in Eastern Europe, he was raised in a multilingual environment. He is the recipient of numerous awards, fellowships, and other honors, including an Emmy nomination, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the National Jewish Book Award, the Latino Hall of Fame Award, Chile’s Presidential Medal, and several grants. He is Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College. His many books include Spanglish: The Making of a New American Language and Quixote: The Novel and the World.

The St. Johnsbury Athenaeum and the Shambhala Meditation Center of St. Johnsbury are delighted to present an inspiring and interactive dialogue among experts in the fields of economics, leadership, climate action and community building.Join these presenters for an evening of food, conversation and creative thinking:

• George Lakey, author of Viking Economics
• Jane Arthur, former director of Vermont Leadership Institute
• Gwendolyn Hallsmith, founder of Vermonters for a New Economy
• K.C. Whiteley, board member from 350Vermont.org

Vermont can be the forerunner, and lead the nation toward a sustainable future!

People often say that Vermont is too small and our footprint is relatively insignificant, therefore there's really not much we can do to affect change. In fact, our political system, economic structure, and way of life are more conducive to positive change, for those same reasons. 

Vermont has what it takes to be a forerunner in establishing a sustainable lifestyle in the face of climate disruption:

• We have the financial infrastructure that could readily lend itself to establishing a state bank. A state-owned bank could retain millions of dollars in Vermont for construction of roads and bridges, to fund our schools and agricultural enterprises, retro-fit our homes for energy efficiency, and invest in alternatives to fossil fuels.
• We have young people coming to Vermont with energy and ideas for local sustainable farming practices and distribution of nourishing foods.
• Our legislators are accessible and we have a reverence for Nature--Vermont could actually be a model for the rest of the nation.

The goal of the evening is to join our minds and hearts in the spirit of moving forward--moving things in a better direction!

Refreshments will be provided. The only other ingredient is you. 

Journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Rumor of War Philip Caputo will discuss the treatment of war in his writing in a talk at St. Johnsbury Athenaeum on October 5 at 7:00 pm. His talk, “Putting the Sword to the Pen,” is part of the Vermont Humanities Council’s First Wednesdays lecture series and is free and open to the public.

Caputo will reflect on how, in his work, war is a context in which our contradictory natures play out, often with stark clarity.

Caputo has written 16 books. His acclaimed memoir of Vietnam, A Rumor of War, has been published in 15 languages, sold two million copies since its publication in 1977, and is widely regarded as a classic in the literature of war. He has published dozens of major magazine articles, reviews, and op-ed pieces in publications including The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, and National Geographic. He has won ten journalistic and literary awards, including the Pulitzer Prize in 1973 for team investigative reporting with the Chicago Tribune. He was born in Chicago, graduated from Loyola University, and served in the US Marine Corps from 1964 to 1967.

The Evolution of Publisher’s Bindings: 1825-1900

Athenaeum Director Bob Joly shows images of and will have on display cloth and paper covered book bindings detailing their evolution from utilitarian leather substitutes to objects of sophisticated design and beauty.

Robert Ford served as the United States Ambassador to Syria from 2010 to 2014. In 2012, he was awarded the Profile in Courage Award by the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation for his work.

Journalist and author Helen Chantal Pike discusses the history of the postcard and its developments through the years. She is the author of, among many books, Greetings From New Jersey: A Postcard Tour of the Garden State.

Julia Shipley and Florence Fogelin

Julia Shipley is an independent journalist and author of The Academy of Hay, winner of the 2014 Julia Shipley is an independent journalist and author of The Academy of Hay, winner of the 2014 Melissa Lanitis Gregory Poetry Prize and Adam's Mark, named a Best Book of 2014 by the The Boston Globe. Winner of the 2006 Ralph Nading Hill Award and two-time recipient of  Vermont Arts Council and the Vermont Community Fund grants, she was also awarded The Frost Place's Grace Paley Poetry Fellowship, as well as fellowships to The Center for Book Arts and The Studios at Key West.

Visit Julia Shipley's Website

Florence Fogelin's "Once It Stops" was featured Oct. 3, 2014, on Poetry Daily, following fall publication in The Florida Review. Press 53 Open Awards Anthology 2013 included three of her poems, one of which was among three published on the Women's Voices for Change website. Her chapbook, Facing the Light (Redgreene Press, 2001), was said by John Engels to be "elegant work, direct, unaffected, eloquent and passionate."
See More About Florence Fogelin

A prominent practitioner of the Arabic "very short story" form, Osama Alomar published three collections of stories and a volume of poetry in his native Syria before events pushed him into exile. Now living in Chicago, Alomar's work has appeared in English translation in a variety of literary reviews and journals, including Ploughshares, The New Yorker Online, and The Southern Review. Fullblood Arabian, a collection of his stories in translation was published in 2013 by New Directions. Another collection, The Teeth of the Comb, is forthcoming in early 2017. Alomar will appear with his translator, Athenaeum Librarian Christian Collins.

May 4 — The Memoir Boom: Who, What, Why
• Irene Kacandes

Dartmouth professor and experimental memoirist Irene Kacandes discusses current approaches to life writing and considers why we continue to love reading about others’ lives. Underwriter: Bill and Sharon Biddle

Prepare a 10-minute story and tell it live, without notes. We will pick 5 names from a hat, and you could be one of them!!!

Brandon Mazur presents the work of this poet’s poet.

Those twenty-six letters filling the blackboard

Compose the dark, compose

The illiterate summer sky & its stars as they appear

One by one, above the schoolyard. —from, Elegy with a Chimneysweep Falling Inside It

In his well-researched book Dan Swainbank tells the continuing story of Vermont’s Farr family’s losses over a 150 year period, and the family’s involvement in the ongoing search for a cure for ALS. The book is an account of the love and support of a family and community which keeps the hope alive that someday this sad story will have a happy ending.

The Eternal City of Rome was a “must see” on the European Grand Tour. Albert Farwell, son-in-law of Athenaeum founder, Horace Fairbanks, traveled extensively, purchasing photographs throughout his journeys at the turn of the 20th century. Living in Rome during a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute, Denise Scavitto recreated some of the photographs in the Athenaeum’s Farwell collection. She will share the history of the Farwell Collection and some of the photos of Roman landmarks, then and now.