2021 Saratoga Book Festival Program

Thank you for attending the 2021 Saratoga Book Festival.

Couldn't make it to all the sessions?Video recordings are now bachelor by clicking on the session names below.

Fri, October 15, 2021

Ellen Aggravate, Saratoga Book Festival President
Klare Ingram, President of the Friends of the Saratoga Springs Public Library
Joseph Bruchac, Author and Nulhegan Abenaki Denizen


2021 Literary Champions Awards

Lifetime Accomplishment Award: Lew and Patricia Titterton

Youth Award: Isabella Sementilli

Saratoga Reads

Issac Pulver, Director of the Saratoga Springs Public Library and Carol Daggs, 2021 Saratoga Reads author, speak near her books, the Saratoga Reads program, and denote the 2022 nominees.

(Invitation Just Due to Infinite Imitations)

Sat, October 16, 2021

Forenoon Sessions

Known for beautifully drawn and heartwarming illustrations, Elizabeth Zunon published her first authored illustrated children'south book, Granddad Cacao: A Tale of Chocolate from Farm to Family, in 2019. In an analogy workshop for ages v to 9, children will create pictures inspired by the story's characters. Saratoga Springs Public Library Children's Room, Lower Level.

Notation: Video for this session is not bachelor.

A discussion of the important role literature plays in the strengthening of Native America and the deep and accurate connections the incorporation of Ethnic language provides to the creative procedure. Plan includes bilingual poetry reading, music. and traditional stories.

The award-winning Abenaki poet, novelist, storyteller, and scholar of indigenous culture, Dr. Joseph Bruchac, addresses actuality and Native American identity in literature with sons James Bruchac, an Abenaki storyteller and cultural educator, and Jesse Bruchac, a storyteller, musician, and Abenaki language instructor.

Sentinel the Video Here

Kim van Alkemade, writer of the NYT bestselling novels Bachelor Girl and Orphan #8 is a Saratoga Springs favorite. She joins laurels-winning author of the international bestselling novels The German Girl and The Daughter's Tale, Armando Lucas Correa, for a book conversation nigh their mutual love of historical fiction. Correa's most recent work is the memoir In Search of Emma: How We Created Our Family unit.

Watch the Video Hither

The acclaimed journalist, author, and Guggenheim Fellow David Gates interviews fellow Vermonters Peter Cameron and Brad Kessler in a discussion about their latest works and the writing life. Cameron is the writer of 8 novels and three collections of stories. His short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Rolling Rock, and several literary
journals. His latest book, What Happens at Night, has been called a masterpiece and a "bright gift of a novel" past the Chicago Review of Books. Kessler is the author of the critically acclaimed novels, Birds in Autumn and Lick Creek, and the award-winning memoir, Goat Vocal. His piece of work has been published in The New Yorker, The Nation, Kenyon Review, and Flop. Kessler is the
recipient of the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Whiting Writer's Honor.  His new book, North: A Novel is a powerful moving piece of work most the interconnected lives of a Vermont monk, a Somali refugee, and an Afghan state of war veteran.

Watch the Video Here

BREAK

Brothers James and Jesse Bowman Bruchac are Nulhegan Abenaki citizens, authors, storytellers, and co-directors of their family-run education center, Ndakinna, where they teach Native American life ways.

James is an honour-winning author, Abenaki storyteller, animal tracker, wilderness survival expert, cultural educator, and instructor of the martial arts who has over 30 years' feel delivering educational programs to people of all ages around the world.

Jesse is a traditional storyteller, musician, and Abenaki language instructor. Jesse has lectured at Yale, Harvard, Dartmouth, Princeton, and is co-education a Wabanaki Linguistic communication grade with Conor MCDonough Quinn at the University of Southern Maine. He is the manager of the School of Abenaki, which launched at Middlebury College in 2020. Jesse has also acted equally consultant and linguistic communication coach for programs on AMC, National Geographic, and PBS, including Turn, Saints and Strangers, and Jamestown, which first aired on BBC. He won the Best Storyteller Competition at Indian Summer in Milwaukee in 1995.

Watch the Video Here

Passion and criminal offence in the art world is the settings for a new novel by criminal offence fiction master Jonathan Santlofer.  Called "a must for fans of Dan Brown and Arturo Perez-Reverte," by Kirkus Reviews, Jonathan Santlofer'southward new book,The Last Mona Lisa, is a colorful and absorbing mystery, steeped in art and complete with exciting activeness scenes and cute descriptions of Florence, Paris, and Squeamish.

Tom Piazza is celebrated as a novelist and a author on American music. His twelve books include the novels A Gratis CountryandCity Of Refuge, the postal service-Katrina manifestoWhy New Orleans Matters, and the essay collectionDevil Sent The Pelting. He was a principal writer for the innovative HBO drama series TREME, and the winner of a Grammy Accolade for his anthology notes toMartin Scorsese Presents The Dejection: A Musical Journey.

Here Santlofer and Piazza will appoint in discussion of subjects, themes, and genres they have explored in their careers as writers.

Watch the Video Here

Robert Repino, Chana Porter, and Keith Willis talk near world building and their latest works. Repino, is a science fiction/fantasy author best known for his No Name Serial, dystopian novel where animals take revenge on the planet's few remaining humans. He is editor of religious studies and history for Oxford Academy Press. Chana Porter is a MacDowell Fellow, whose debut novel, The Seep, offers a new, more than hopeful version of the classic alien invasion story. Named an ABA Indie Next Option in February 2020, The Seep received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Library Periodical, and Foreword Reviews. Keith Willis writes swashbuckling medieval fantasies, including the award-winning Knights of Kilbourne series. Willis is a member of the Hudson Valley Writers Order, and the Latham/Albany/Schenectady/Troy Science Fiction Association.

Sentry the Video Here

Violent crime leaves behind ripples of pain and suffering that tin can envelop survivors and whole communities for decades. In a panel word devoted to the intersection of memoir and true crime, Betsy Bonner, Jeannie Vanasco, and Jim Tracy, share their contempo books and the stories they could not let get. In the Book of Atlantis Black, Bonner explores her sis's complicated life and mysterious disappearance in a securely personal piece of work that sifts through babyhood trauma, family unit pain, and the final years of a sibling gone missing. In Things We Didn't Talk Most When I Was A Girl, Vanasco writes nearly her rape by a high school friend and how the rape impacted his life equally well equally her own, asking uncomfortable questions with unflinching honesty. The volume was a New York Times Editors' Choice, a Kirkus Best Volume of the Year, a Time mag Must-Read Volume of the Year, and the 2020 winner of the Ohioana Volume Award in nonfiction. In Sworn to Silence, Tracy weaves together a true crime narrative that should rank with some of the most compelling American crime stories of modern times. He does and so while taking you—the reader—on a page-turning journey back to the early 1970s, unveiling an American series killer nigh people accept never heard of.

Note: Video for this session is not bachelor.

Afternoon Sessions

Children'due south book author Krystyna Poray Goddu leads a workshop for ages 10 and up entitled, "Writing Poetry with Emily Dickinson & Edna St. Vincent Millay." The writer looks at both poets' nature-focused poetry and offers opportunities for participants of all ages to write their own poems. Goddu's latest book, Becoming Emily:  The Life of Emily Dickinson introduces centre-grade readers to the life and work of the enigmatic American poet Emily Dickinson. Publishers Weekly called the book "a lively and constructive introduction to Dickinson's life and work." Kirkus Reviews, called it a "thorough study [that] is sure to entice centre-course readers to explore i of the 19th century's greatest poets." Her earlier biography, A Daughter Called Vincent: The Life of Poet Edna St. Vincent Millary was named a Eureka! Honor Book Honour by the California Reading Association.

Note: Video for this session is non available.

Some Girls Do, Jennifer Dugan newest YA title is an LBTQ+ romance that asks, "Can an out & proud track star trying to make the world better and a closeted dazzler queen with classic car dreams get together and go the distance?" Joining Jennifer on the SBF stage is Rory Power, YA/horror author and author of Wilder Girls and Burn Our Bodies Downward. Both craft the kind of
messy girl characters that they wish they could have read when they were growing up.

Scout the Video Here

Joining united states of america on the celebrated Caffe Lena stage are poets April Bernard and Peg Boyers

April Bernard has received a Guggenheim fellowship in poetry and the Stover Memorial Prize. She is Professor of English language and Director of Artistic Writing at Skidmore College and a faculty fellow member of the Bennington Writing Seminars MFA plan. She lives in Saratoga Springs, New York. Her first book of poetry, Blackbird Cheerio Good day was chosen by Amy Clampitt as the winner of the 1989 Walt Whitman Laurels from the Academy of American Poets. Her other acclaimed books of verse include Brawl & Jag, Romanticism, Swan Electric, and Psalms. She is also the author of two novels, Pirate Jenny and Miss Fuller, which was shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Prize.

Peg Boyers is Executive Editor of Salmagundi magazine and author of Hard Breadstuff, Honey With Tobacco, To Forget Venice and most recently The Album, a volume of ekphrastic poems with images of the works which inspired them. She regularly teaches writing workshops at Skidmore College and the New York Summer Writers Institute and, every other year, at Columbia University.

Chase Twichell, who was formerly announced as part of this session is unfortunately unable to attend and sends her regrets.

Lookout man the Video Here

Marcus Kwame Anderson is a fine artist and illustrator who recently illustrated The Black Panther Party: A Graphic Novel History, written by David F. Walker. In this session, he talks with fine artist and author Jonathan Santlofer almost the art of visual telling and the appeal of graphic novels, and electric current projects.

Watch the Video Hither

Break

Frances Cha'south debut novel, If I had Your Face, is about four young women navigating early on adulthood in modern-twenty-four hour period Seoul. It is an unflinching look at how the women, who practice non come up from wealth or condition, pursue their dreams and ambitions in the hyper competitive South Korean capital. In this book chat, Cha contextualizes Republic of korea's loftier beauty standards, rigid social norms, and deeply entrenched old-boy network.

Join Cha in conversation with former journalist Himanee Gupta-Carlson, now Acquaintance Professor at Empire State College, as they explore authenticity and representation of the Asian American experience in literature today.

Lookout man the Video Here

C.R.E.A.T.Eastward. Customs Studios

Create a elementary hand-made volume that tin can exist used as a journal or to write your own curt masterpiece. No experience required. All materials included.

This program is presented past Saratoga Springs Public Library in memory of children's author, illustrator, and longtime library trustee Bruce Hiscock. Note: Video for this session is non available.

Want to know more about craft beer? JoinEm Sauter as she guides you through an introductory course in all things beer. How'south beer made? What's the difference between an ale and a lager? What'south an IPA and why are they everywhere? We'll hash out everything from the brewing procedure, beer styles, the right way to sense of taste beer, ingredients and more.

Note: Video for this session is not available.

"The earth belongs . . . to the living, the dead have neither power nor rights over it." These famous words, written past Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, reflect the Jefferson's lifelong belief that each generation ought to write its own Constitution. Madison'due south response was that a constitution must endure over several generations to gain the credibility needed to go on a nation potent and united. History tells the states that Jefferson lost that debate. But what if he hadn't? In a Constitution for the Living, Beau Breslin reimagines American history to answer that question. By tracing the story from the 1787 Constitutional Convention up to the present, Breslin presents an engaging and insightful account of historical figures and how they might have shaped their particular generation'due south Constitution. Appearing with Breslin is Jamie Malanowski, a former editor of TIME, Spy, and other magazines and the writer of the biography, Commander Volition Cushing, Daredevil Hero of the Civil War, and two novels, The Insurrection and Mr. Stupid Goes to Washington. SBF attendees are invited to join the session'southward speakers in—appropriately enough—a dimly lit tavern, where over spectacles of wine or pints of beer, they can imagine what a Constitutional
Convention might yield today.

Sentry the Video Here (delight note that due to technical difficulties, this is a partial video)

Nancy Klepsch of Troy Poets, and Thom Francis, President of Albany Poets, host an open mic for attending writers and poets to share two poems, or five minutes of prose, to shine a spotlight on the many local and varied writers working in the greater Saratoga region.

Note: Video for this session is not bachelor.

Keynote Sessions

Tickets are required to attend either keynote event. Use the button to purchase your tickets today!

For Saratoga Volume Festival'southward inaugural keynote, bestselling and prize-winning author Joyce Carol Oates speaks with Robert Boyers, Professor of English, editor of Salmagundi Literary Magazine, and director of the New York State Summertime Writers Institute. Oates is a recipient of the National Medal of Humanities, the National Volume Critics Circumvolve Ivan Sandrof Lifetime
Achievement Accolade, the National Book Award, and the 2019 Jerusalem Prize, and has been several times nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. She has written some of the virtually enduring fiction of our time, including the national bestsellers We Were the Mulvaneys; Blonde, which was nominated for the National Volume Award; and the New York Times bestseller The Falls,
which won the 2005 Prix Femina. She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University and has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978.

Published in August 2021, her newest book Exhale is an intimately detailed honey story, part horror story rooted in existent life. The novel is an exploration of unbridled, feral grief determination and the human desire to be true-blue to the beloved, and to survive the trauma of loss.

"Fecund with fearfulness and ache, and driven past raw, breathless narration, this hallucinatory tale
will not disappoint. Oates is on a roll."

— Publishers Weekly

Robert Boyers is the author of 11 books, the near recent of which is The Tyranny of Virtue: Identity, The Academy and the Chase for Political Heresies. The book is a combination of memoir and cultural criticism, which draws upon a lifetime of experience as an editor (SalmagundiMagazine), writing programme managing director (The New York Land Summer Writers Institute), college professor and frequent correspondent to such national magazines as The Nation, Harpers, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and The New Republic. Boyers' previous books include a book of short stories, a book of personal essays on the fate of ideas (including authorisation, the other, beauty, judgment, and allegiance), and several works on the politics of novels and novelists.

Presented in partnership with the New York Summer Writers Plant

Lookout man the Video Here

BREAK

Foregone, the newest novel by the acclaimed and bestselling Russell Banks is a searing novel about memory, abandonment, and betrayal.

At the centre of Foregone is famed Canadian American leftist documentary filmmaker Leonard Fife, one of sixty yard draft evaders and deserters who fled to Canada to avoid serving in Vietnam. Fife, now in his tardily seventies, is dying of cancer in Montreal and has agreed to a final interview in which he is determined to bare all his secrets at terminal, to demythologize his
mythologized life. The interview is filmed by his acolyte and ex–star student, Malcolm MacLeod, in the presence of Fife's wife and aslope Malcolm's producer, cinematographer, and sound technician, all of whom have long admired Fife but who must now absorb the significant of his amazing, dark confession.

Imaginatively structured around Fife'south secret memories and alternating between the experiences of the characters who are filming his confession, the novel challenges our assumptions and understanding nigh a meaning lost chapter in American history and the nature of memory itself. Russell Banks gives united states a daring and resonant work about the telescopic of one man'due south mysterious life, revealed through the fragments of his recovered past.

"A challenging, risk-taking work marked past a wry and compassionate intelligence."
— Kirkus Review

"During a career stretching almost half a century, Russell Banks has published an extraordinary collection of dauntless, morally imperative novels. The same marrow-delving impulse runs through them all, but otherwise information technology would be difficult to characterize such a vast and diverse body of work. Banks presents the story of a man vehement through the angel of others in search of a sense of purpose commensurate with his ego . . .In this complex and powerful novel, we come up face up to face up with the excruciating allure of redemption."
— Washington Post

Before joining Yaddo in 2000, award-winning author and editor Elaina Richardson was editor-in-master of Elle magazine. Prior to Elle, she worked for publications in the US and her native Uk, including Mirabella, the Guardian and the BBC. She holds an MLitt from Oxford University, an M.A. from the University of Edinburgh, and an honorary doctorate from Kenyon
College, and has written and lectured extensively on 18th-century literature and culture.

Presented in partnership with Yaddo

Watch the Video Here

The Art of the Cocktail, Special Presentation in Partnership with SPAC

Join the Saratoga Book Festival, SPAC, the Activity Council and Inferior Committee, and for CulinaryArts@SPAC: "The Negroni with Matt Hranek" on Sat, October 16 , 5:30pm. This result kicks off on the Pines Terrace with hors d'oeuvres past Kim Klopstick of Lily and the Rose, and a flight of Negroni variations past writer Matt Hranek and mixologist/co-owner of Village and Ghost Brendan Dillon . WAMC'due south Joe Donahue will lead a chat with Hranek and Dillon, followed by a book signing and audience Q&A.

Note: Video for this session is not available.

Cheers to our 2021 Cultural & Programming Partners

2021 Saratoga Book Festival
Corporate Sponsors

Bravos & Publishers

Saratoga Arts made this program possible with a Community Arts Grant funded by the New York State Quango on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Yard. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

Editors, Agents, & Friends