Artist and designer Michael Updike is well known throughout the North Shore for his art and sculpture. He is also the son of literary legend John Updike, whose letters were published last year in the Selected Letters of John Updike, a more than 900-page collection edited by James Schiff. Join us Friday night for a reading by Michael about being John Updike’s son and Michael’s encounters with novelist Philip Roth, along with images from his collection. The New York Times Book Review critic Alexandra Jacobs, a life-long Updike fan, will interview Michael about the book and his experience growing up Updike.
Presenter: Michael Updike
Moderator: Alexandra Jacobs
Friday 7:15 PM
Mission Oak Grill’s Steeple Hall
26 Green Street
Poetry
Saturday 8:30 AM
Central Congregational Church
The nationally recognized Powow River Poets open the Day of Poetry sharing breakfast breads, pastries, fruit, and beverages generously donated by our local vendors. The Day of Poetry readings begins at 9:00 a.m. with Jean L. Kreiling reading her endearing poems of home, family, loss, nature, and travel, in traditional forms, from Home and Away (Kelsay Books, 2025). A master of the sonnet, she includes many in this collection, closing with a Sonnet Crown. James Najarian follows, sharing light poems of several lesser-known late Romanticist poets who appear in his newly released scholarly text, Minor Literature in Late Romanticism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025), such as Thomas Hood with his “The Song of the Shirt,” which exposes the monotonous dehumanizing work settings of Victorian era sweatshop labor, opening with “Stitch! Stitch! Stitch!”
Presenters: Jean L. Kreiling and James Najarian
Moderator: Owen X. Grey
Annie Hartnett (Rabbit Cake and Unlikely Animals) takes readers on an emotional journey in her latest novel, The Road to Tender Hearts. The darkly comic and warm-hearted novel features an old man on a cross-country mission to reunite with his high school crush—bringing together his adult daughter, two orphaned kids, and a cat who can predict death. John Irving calls it “a miraculous novel—an actual and spiritual road trip you won’t forget.” Hartnett will be in conversation with Graceland author Nancy Crochiere.
Presenter: Annie Hartnett
Moderator: Nancy Crochiere
Fiction
Saturday 9:00 AM
Jabberwocky Bookshop
Kirkus Reviews calls The Complex by Karan Mahajan “beautiful and unforgettable. A masterly novel, seemingly influenced by Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, by a talented and self-assured writer.” The book moves between the U.S. and modern India, following the illicit liaisons, real estate dramas, political ambitions, and mortal betrayals of one prominent Delhi family. Mahajan, a National Book Award finalist for The Association of Small Bombs, is also an associate professor in Literary Arts at Brown University. In conversation with writer and performer Nicole Beckley.
Presenter: Karan Mahajan
Moderator: Nicole Beckley
Fiction
Saturday 9:00 AM
Old South Church
Sarah Stewart Taylor’s latest release, Hunter’s Heart Ridge, brings readers to 1960s Vermont, where there’s been a shooting during deer season. Library Journal called it “an entertaining, quick-moving story that would be a good addition to a mystery section.” Fast forward to modern-day Vermont in The Lake Escape by Jamie Day, which follows three friends as things at their longtime lake getaway “unravel into a labyrinth of betrayals, hidden motives, and chilling revelations,” according to CamilleStyles.com. Meanwhile, Tracy Sierra’s Warning Signs brings readers to a ski cabin in the woods where things are not as they seem. These three thriller writers will talk settings, suspense, and suspects with Connie Hambley, an author who is on the committee of the New England Crime Bake.
Presenters: Jamie Day, Sarah Stewart Taylor, and Tracy Sierra
Moderator: Connie Hambley
Poetry
Saturday 10:00 AM
Central Congregational Church
“I’m broken like bread. / Take, eat.” As powerfully as breath drawn in and released from every cell of the body, the poetic line unfolds. Such are the poems published by the prestigious Copper Canyon Press in Diannely Antigua’s Good Monster. “Sometimes,” one love song concludes, “touching is the only food around, sometimes / I set the table for the wounds.” Complementing this poet’s music is the exceptional rhythmic counterpoint of Jan Schreiber’s Breath Lines: How Poems Work and Why They Matter (LSU Press, 2025). Schreiber delivers with striking scope and in simple, supple prose, what his subtitle promises. A highly accomplished poet and educator, he draws richly on examples from across the canon, citing unexpected and delightful sources.
Presenters: Diannely Antigua and Jan Schreiber
Hosts: Priscilla Turner Spada and Deborah Warren
Nonfiction
Saturday 10:00 AM
City Hall
Gold was discovered in the Klondike, now Yukon Territory, in 1896. In just two years, over 40,000 people rushed to Dawson City to stake mining claims, but fewer than 4,000 found gold. Newburyport’s Safford brothers, William and Edward, jewelers and watchmakers, were among the thousands traveling to the Northwest. Their journey, captured in vivid detail through William’s letters home to his wife Lucy, forms the heart of this presentation you won’t want to miss. Will Edward and William’s determination pay off in gold? Join local historian and author Ghlee Woodworth for an illustrated talk as she shares the Safford brothers’ adventure to the Klondike Gold Rush. Seats fill up fast!
Presenter: Ghlee E. Woodworth
Fiction
Saturday 10:00 AM
Unitarian Universalist Church
Catherine Newman returns to Newburyport to celebrate her latest novel, Wreck, the sequel to Sandwich and an instant New York Times bestseller. “If you liked Sandwich, you’ll love Wreck, its warm, witty sequel,” according to NPR. “In Wreck, Catherine Newman has given Rocky, the sharp-witted, neurotically doting mother who narrates her delicious 2024 novel, Sandwich, a repeat engagement. . . . Wreck is even funnier, yet also more earnest in its explorations of life’s fundamental impermanence.” Newman will be in conversation with novelist, journalist, and ghost writer Holly Robinson.
Presenter: Catherine Newman
Moderator: Holly Robinson
Nonfiction
Saturday 10:00 AM
Old South Church, Social Hall
Gabrielle Oliveira’s Now We Are Here follows the lives of sixteen migrant families from Brazil, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras as they navigate the promises and challenges of the American education system. Drawing on immersive ethnographic research, Oliveira offers an intimate portrait of these families’ experiences in the U.S. Peter Orner has edited several volumes in the Voice of Witness book series—co-founded by acclaimed author Dave Eggers—which uses oral history to illuminate human rights crises around the world. Journalist Martha Mercer Ribeiro (The Daily Beast) will moderate.
Presenters: Gabrielle Oliveira and Peter Orner
Moderator: Martha Mercer Ribeiro
Journalist Wil Haygood returns to Newburyport to discuss The War Within a War: The Black Struggle in Vietnam and at Home with fellow writer Peter Guralnick. The New York Times called Haygood’s book “a rare, illuminating look at the way the war shaped the struggle for equality back home.” Reporting on the real lives of soldiers and officers, doctors and nurses, journalists and activists, artists and politicians, Haygood illuminates a generation caught between two battles: one on the front lines in Vietnam and another for justice and dignity in America. In conversation with former Newburyport Literary Festival honoree Peter Guralnick, whose latest book, The Colonel and the King: Tom Parker, Elvis Presley, and the Partnership that Rocked the World, came out in 2025.
Presenter: Wil Haygood
Moderator: Peter Guralnick
Nonfiction
Saturday 10:30 AM
Jabberwocky Bookshop
Two journalists revisit the stories of remarkable women who changed the world, whether we know it or not. In Starry and Restless: Three Women Who Changed Work, Writing, and the World, Julia Cooke profiles three women—journalists, authors, mothers, lovers, friends—across three decades and five continents. In a similar fashion, journalist Julie Satow dives into the lives of three women who shaped the golden age of New York City department stores in When Women Ran Fifth Avenue: Glamour and Power at the Dawn of American Fashion.
Presenters: Julie Satow and Julia Cooke
Fiction
Saturday 10:30 AM
Old South Church
Go back in time with novelists Emily Franklin (Love & Other Monsters), Brooke Lea Foster (Our Last Vineyard Summer), and Juliet Faithfull (Liar’s Dice). Franklin unveils the origin story of Frankenstein in a feminist reckoning of sisters, survival, and the creation of monsters, while Faithfull’s astonishing novel follows a teenage girl in 1970s Brazil who is torn away from her twin sister. Foster tells a dual timeline tale of politics and family secrets in Martha’s Vineyard. No matter the setting, the stories come down to love and fighting for what’s most important. In conversation with Elizabeth de Veer (The Blazekeeper of Bowmore House).
Presenters: Emily Franklin, Brooke Lea Foster, and Juliet Faithfull
Moderator: Elizabeth de Veer
Nonfiction
Saturday 11:00 AM
City Hall
Before Benedict Arnold was branded a traitor, he was one of the colonies’ most valuable leaders. In September 1775 (250 years ago this fall), eleven hundred Colonial soldiers boarded ships in Massachusetts, bound for the Maine wilderness. They had volunteered for a secret mission, under Arnold’s command, to march and paddle nearly two hundred miles through the impenetrable wilderness of Maine and Quebec to seize British-held Quebec City. Before reaching the Canadian border, however, scores of them died from hypothermia, lightning strikes, exposure, disease, and starvation. The survivors were forced to eat everything from dogs to lip salve just to survive, all the while struggling—undaunted—through a hurricane and then a blizzard to attack Quebec and almost take Canada from the British. Despite its apparent failure, Arnold’s expedition to Quebec paved the way for the Colonial victory in the American Revolution. With the enigmatic Benedict Arnold at its center, Through a Howling Wilderness is a timeless adventure narrative telling of heroic acts, men pitted against nature’s fury, and a fledgling nation’s fight against a tyrannical oppressor.
Presenter: Tom Desjardin
Poetry
Saturday 11:15 AM
Central Congregational Church
Who can write the Book of Love? Can Jenna Lê vie for this in her striking new collection, Manatee Lagoon (University of Chicago Press, 2022) in which the sea creature’s huge sad eyes say “they could love you like no land wife ever could” and ancient Athenaeus relates “how the loveliest girl in Greece / once laid Diogenes, / the homely sage, for free”? Jenna Lê—whose Vietnamese parents fled Vietnam—learned young that people of her community “must protect each other.” Petrarch may still hold the key in his 366 idealized passionate and lyrical sonnets to his beloved Laura who did not return his love. A.M. Juster, master of the sonnet—the only three-time winner of the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award, among many other prestigious literary prizes—reads from his recently released Canzoniere: A New Translation, each sonnet brilliantly hewed to the meter and rhyme of Petrarch’s Italian and the depth of his emotions for his virtuous, unattainable Laura.
Presenters: Jenna Lê and A.M. Juster
Hosts: Zara Raab and Alfred Nicol
Fiction
Saturday 11:30 AM
Unitarian Universalist Church
They say write what you know. Novelists Jenna Blum (Murder Your Darlings) and Matthew Pearl (The Award) have done just that, using the literary world as a backdrop for their latest work. While Blum brings readers a contemporary, suspenseful novel about love, loss, and revenge in the world of books, The Award is a timely, razor-sharp, and unputdownable novel about writing groups, publishing, ambition, human foibles, and the dangerous things we will do to get ahead. In conversation with Sara Nelson, senior vice president and executive editor at Harper and Harper Perennial, who worked with both authors on their books.
Presenters: Jenna Blum and Matthew Pearl
Moderator: Sara Nelson
Fiction
Saturday 11:30 AM
Old South Church, Social Hall
Two very different coming-of-age stories: First up, Bad Bad Girl, Gish Jen’s exploration of the mother-daughter bond, which Junot Díaz calls “the multigenerational mother-daughter epic of our new century.” The second, Anyone’s Ghost, August Thompson’s novel about a summer of love and friendship between young men and its reverberations through their lives. Simply put, “this book will make you cry,” according to Jonathan Safran Foer. Author and book reviewer Liberty Hardy will moderate.
Presenters: Gish Jen and August Thompson
Moderator: Liberty Hardy
Poetry
Saturday 12:15 PM
Central Congregational Church
Book table is open for sales
Nonfiction
Saturday 1:00 PM
City Hall
Andrew Lunt was an imaginative, sensitive, adventurous child—or so he would be recalled by the man he became. He was born in 1797, a decade after the end of the American Revolution, and spent his earliest years in a warren of tumble-down houses in Newburyport’s Joppa neighborhood, then still part of Newbury. Andrew Lunt’s family had a tragic, romantic past and a hard-scrabble, transient present. His recollections, scrawled in the spare pages of a business ledger recently donated to the Museum of Old Newbury, bring to life a whole cast of Dickensian characters: the wall-eyed “pious sharper” who swindled young privateers, the wild girl tied to her rocking chair, the seducing Scotsman, the bone-crushing captain downstairs, the kindly schoolmaster who filled the dark tenement wall with chalked letters so this boy could learn to write, and so many more. This is the only known record of a Joppa childhood from the early 19th century. Come for an hour of storytelling from a lost chronicle of Newbury(port) life.
Presenter: Bethany Groff Dorau
MIT professor and writer Alan Lightman (The Miraculous from the Material, Einstein’s Dreams) is back! His latest book, The Shape of Wonder: How Scientists Think, Work, and Live, co-written with British cosmologist and astrophysicist Martin Rees, is an inside peek at what makes scientists tick—their daily lives, passions, and concerns about the societies they live in. A longtime friend of the festival, Lightman goes beyond the laboratory and into the everyday lives of scientists from Washington state to India in order to demystify the scientific process. In conversation with writer, author, and scientist Susan Reslewic Keatley.
Presenter: Alan Lightman
Moderator: Susan Reslewic Keatley
Nonfiction
Saturday 1:00 PM
Old South Church
The remarkable story of Edward McCabe, a Black man who tried to establish a Black state within the United States, Caleb Gayle’s Black Moses: A Saga of Ambition and the Fight for a Black State was called “powerful” and “fascinating” by The Washington Post, was one of The New York Times 100 Notable Books of the Year, and was longlisted for the National Book Award for Nonfiction. Gayle’s research and reporting reveal an America that almost was. He will be in conversation with Tufts professor Kendra Taira Field. Sponsored by Mass Center for the Book.
Presenter: Caleb Gayle
Moderator: Kendra Taira Field
Fiction
Saturday 1:30 PM
Unitarian Universalist Church
Festival favorite Andre Dubus III (Ghost Dogs: On Killers and Kin, Townie) and longtime friend Marianne Leone (Five-Dog Epiphany: How a Quintet of Badass Bichons Retrieved Our Joy, Christina the Astonishing) reunite for an afternoon of readings and conversation. Dubus and Leone will talk about writing, literary heroes, works in progress, and more. Dubus will read from his new novel, due out next winter, and Leone will also share some of her work.
Presenters: Marianne Leone and Andre Dubus III
Poetry
Saturday 1:45 PM
Central Congregational Church
In breath-taking imagery, Oliver de la Paz’s masterful The Diaspora Sonnets (Liveright, 2023, long listed for the National Book Award and 2023 winner of the New England Book Award for Poetry) evokes landscapes that migrant children move through and briefly call home: the heavy boughs laden with apples the father harvests; clouds of dust “scattering the sun”; rain that keeps pouring despite the need for sleep; and skeins of geese “arrowing past.” Different in mood and meaning are the Vermont landscapes captured in Rachel Hadas’s Pastorals (Measure Press, 2025) familiar since childhood and steeped in a lifetime of memories, inextricably intertwining lines of prose poetry with poets she has known. “By noon,” she writes, “tall shadows are already looming . . .” Here “almost everything goes unharvested.” Join us for this hour. “Come, pick an apple up, take a bite.”
Presenters: Oliver de la Paz and Rachel Hadas
Hosts: Priscilla Turner Spada and Meredith Bergmann
Nonfiction
Saturday 2:00 PM
City Hall
Sankovitch will present the compelling true story of Universal Friend, a self-proclaimed genderless minister, purportedly sent by God to save the world, who ended up founding communities which, in the years following America’s independence from England, provided anyone—no matter their gender or race—with the opportunity to enjoy the “unalienable rights to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” that had been promised to all Americans in the Declaration of Independence. Universal Friend, in other words, did what other early American leaders had promised and then reneged on: created a society that strove to uphold equality and opportunity—and succeeded beyond all expectations. But into every Eden comes a snake.
Presenter: Nina Sankovitch
Fiction
Saturday 2:00 PM
Jabberwocky Bookshop
Where do families in crisis turn? In Evening Begins the Day by Jessica Keener, they turn to religious ritual, among other things. The novel, by the author of Night Swim and Strangers in Budapest, weaves together two families in crisis—one reeling from a marital betrayal and the other grappling with their at-risk teenage daughter. When they adopt the ancient Jewish practice called the Counting of the Omer, it leads them down unconventional pathways for answers. In conversation with author Jenna Blum.
Presenter: Jessica Keener
Moderator: Jenna Blum
Editor Ron Borges brings some of Boston’s most influential sports reporters together for the digital release in e-book and audio release Tales Of Titletown: How Boston Became America’s Sports Capital, a collection highlighting the rich sports culture and history of Boston, from parades to personalities. Hear from voices like Boston Globe basketball columnist Bob Ryan, Emmy Award-winning Bruins Sportscaster Dale Arnold, and former NFL commentator Upton Bell. This panel will be followed by a launch party to celebrate the book.
Presenters: Bob Ryan, Dale Arnold, Upton Bell, and Chris Ciulla
Moderator: Ron Borges
Fiction
Saturday 2:30 PM
Old South Church
Wit is part of the appeal of authors like M.T. Anderson (Nicked), Kristin Bair (Clementine Crane Prefers Not To), and Liza Tully (The World’s Greatest Detective and Her Just Okay Assistant). But it’s easier read than done. Join the three authors for a conversation about humor in storytelling, when to crack a joke and when to keep it serious, and working wit into their writing—plus, ideally, more than a few laughs. Gina Barreca, editor of the Fast Funny Women series of flash nonfiction, will moderate.
Presenters: M.T. Anderson, Kristin Bair, and Liza Tully
Moderator: Gina Barreca
Nonfiction
Saturday 2:30 PM
Old South Church, Social Hall
Artist and sculptor Michael Updike takes us on a tour of authors’ gravestones, including the one he carved for his father, literary legend John Updike, and the one Philip Roth commissioned his handyman to create for him.
Presenter: Michael Updike
Poetry
Saturday 3:00 PM
Central Congregational Church
Award-winning Newburyport High School Poetry Soup students—each reading one of their own exceptional poems—join the poets, expressing the inner voices that they have begun to share with the world. We remember the essential voice of Charles Coe, poet, educator, musician, and community activist, in a Melopoeia for Charles Coe, performed by the original Diminished Prophets. Poets Rhina P. Espaillat and Alfred Nicol read two significant poems by Coe, accompanied by John Tavano on Spanish guitar, followed by a moment of silence. Proud Dominican American Rhina P. Espaillat, our city’s most inspiring and accomplished poet, translator, essayist, short story writer, and mentor, delves deeply into the fragile moments of humanity with her exceptional lyricism, humor, and wisdom, from her newly released for instance: poems (Wiseblood Books, 2026), her ninth full collection of poetry—capping our celebration of the 250th birthday of our nation of immigrants.
Presenters: NHS Poetry Soup students, The Diminished Prophets, and Rhina P. Espaillat
Hosts: Debbie Szabo, Paulette Demers Turco, and NHS Poetry Soup
Nonfiction
Saturday 3:00 PM
City Hall
Some of the fiercest battles today involve questions about the rights of disabled people, yet we know very little about how our current views are shaped by the past. In this talk, Alex Green will share insights from a decade of research into a hidden history that began here in Massachusetts. Green will read from his National Book Critics Circle Award–winning biography, A Perfect Turmoil: Walter E. Fernald and the Struggle to Care for America’s Disabled, and discuss groundbreaking efforts that have recently unsealed more than ten million records of individuals who lived and died in segregated disability institutions.
Presenter: Alex Green
Nonfiction
Saturday 3:00 PM
Meet at Brown Square
across from City Hall
The mission of the award-winning Newburyport Black History Initiative is to affirm Black heritage and belonging in the city of Newburyport by illuminating histories that were overlooked and ensuring these stories are publicly accessible to a broad audience. This walking tour will feature some of the historic interpretive signs installed in the downtown core and will be led by the three co-founders of the Initiative, Geordie Vining, Kabria Baumgartner, and Cyd Raschke. We will hear stories of Black Americans, including domestic servants, mariners, barbers, soldiers, lawyers, and activists, who lived and worked in Newburyport from the pre–Revolutionary War
era to the early 20th century. The circular walking tour will cover about half a mile and last approximately 1.5 hours.
Presenter: Geordie Vining
Fiction
Saturday 3:00 PM
Unitarian Universalist Church
In Christine Pride’s All the Men I’ve Loved Again, high school crushes come together twenty years later—it just gets complicated when two guys surface at the same time. Stephanie Burns’ Far from the A-List is a look at the characters the protagonist has played, both as a former child actor and as the star of her own life. In Kiss, Marry, Kill by Lori Gold, friends wake up to a new reality after a rousing evening playing the game that gives the book its title. These emotionally satisfying stories of “What If?” explore past loves, friendships, and fate with humor and heart. In conversation with Betty Cayouette (I Kissed Her First).
Presenters: Lori Gold, Stephanie Burns, and Christine Pride
Moderator: Betty Cayouette
Fiction
Saturday 3:30 PM
Jabberwocky Bookshop
In former festival honoree Peter Orner’s newest novel, The Gossip Columnist’s Daughter, a cold case of a young Hollywood starlet’s death sets a contemporary writer on an epic and comic quest to uncover the truth—and its connection to his own family. The New York Times Book Review called it “a moody and engrossing meditation on the ephemerality of memory, the persistence of family myths and a haunting ode to a bygone Chicago. A memorable novel of the stories and people everybody has already forgotten.” In conversation with longtime friend of the festival Steve Yarbrough (Stay Gone Days, The Unmade World).
Presenter: Peter Orner
Moderator: Steve Yarbrough
Join us for an evening of readings of women’s writing from the Revolutionary War era. As the U.S. reflects on 250 years as a nation, this event celebrates voices that were largely uncelebrated at the time.
Presenter: Nicole Beckley, Peter Berkrot, Sierra Gitlin, and Sara Sheckells
Sunday’s programming via ZOOM – Registration coming soon.
Nonfiction
Sunday 9:00 AM
Meet at the Essex Street Inn
Join author and historian Ghlee Woodworth for a morning stroll through sites connected with Newburyport’s Revolutionary past. The route will trace downtown Newburyport’s historic streets and will last around an hour.
Presenter: Ghlee Woodworth
Nonfiction
Sunday 9:00 AM
Inspired by all the great authors at the Newburyport Literary Festival? Write with us on Sunday! For the third year, our virtual day kicks off with a guided writing session. Award-winning author Sara Reish Desmond (What We Might Become) will lead the webinar and provide a prompt to inspire writers to get their words and ideas onto the page. There will be an opportunity for feedback after the prompt. All writers are welcome.
Presenter: Sara Reish Desmond
Nonfiction
Sunday 10:15 AM
In The Golden Toad, brothers Trevor and Kyle Ritland set off to investigate an environmental mystery with unexpected revelations, a story that speaks to our own collective and uncertain future. Guided by Costa Rican naturalists—including the last person to have seen the golden toad alive—Trevor searches for survivors while Kyle hunts the killer, and their paths lead them through an imperiled forest, a deadly pandemic, and a changing climate, finally intertwining at the site of the golden toad’s last emergence deep in Monteverde’s Bosque Eterno de Los Niños. The Ritlands will share images of their Costa Rican adventures along with their talk.
Presenters: Trevor Ritland and Kyle Ritland
Nonfiction
Sunday 11:30 AM
In Plastic Inc., award-winning journalist Beth Gardiner gives readers an up-close look at the plastic industry’s relentless growth, its extraordinary profits, its toxic pollution and its hidden role in exacerbating climate change. The New York Times Book Review calls it a “compelling true-crime story,” while Elizabeth Kolber (The Sixth Extinction) said the book is “deeply researched, sharply written, and totally compelling.”
Presenter: Beth Gardiner
Nonfiction
Sunday 1:00 PM
West Newbury–based Christopher Clarey covered professional tennis for The New York Times from 1991 to 2023. Over the years, he has interviewed both Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal—and the players who battled them on the court—countless times and compiled two biographies: The Master: The Long Run and Beautiful Game of Roger Federer (2021) and The Warrior: Rafael Nadal and His Kingdom of Clay (2025). Clarey will talk tennis with Drew Hendrickson, the founder of All Court Enrichment, which provides high-quality summer programs focused on tennis and writing for students in Somerville, Massachusetts.
Presenter: Christopher Clarey
Moderator: Drew Hendrickson
Fiction
Sunday 2:15 PM
Both M.T. Anderson and Patricia Park have written for both young adult and adult audiences. Park’s debut novel, Re Jane (2015), was an adult book, but the following three have been YA novels: Imposter Syndrome and Other Confessions of Alejandra Kim, What’s Eating Jackie Oh?, and Ambrosia Lee Drops the Mic (coming in April). Anderson, on the other hand, has written stories for adults, picture books for children, adventure novels for young readers, graphic novel adaptations of ancient French tales, and several books for older readers. His latest adult novel, Nicked, is out in paperback, and he is well known for his Octavian Nothing series, among other books. The writers will discuss the differences and similarities between the genres, what they love about each, and how they decide in what aisle the book belongs. In conversation with multidisciplinary poet and artivist Alli Tervo.
Presenters: M.T. Anderson and Patricia Park
Moderator: Alli Tervo
Fiction/Nonfiction
Sunday 3:30 PM
Join Book Shop of Beverly Farms co-owners Sam Pfeifle and Hannah Harlow, who is also on the steering committee of the festival, for a special edition of their podcast, Four Books a Fortnight. The dynamic brother-sister duo will read four books—which they do every two weeks—and tell you all about them. They even rate each book with a sound effect!
Presenters: Sam Pfeifle and Hannah Harlow