BRATTLEBORO — At this year's Brattleboro Literary Festival, more than 55 authors of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry will delve into the rich - and, sometimes, contentious - theme of identity.
“To survive in the world, you need to know who you are and where you come from,” said festival founder Sandy Rouse.
Rouse said that at this year's festival - the 18th - the literary works presented will focus on identity, from the personal, to the communal, to the global.
The festival committee hopes to create a discussion around how individuals all fit within the world, their communities, and their selves through the books presented at venues around downtown from Oct. 17 to Oct. 20.
“People are struggling a bit right now with all the things going on” in the country, said Rouse, pointing out that people are being targeted because of their background or differing experience.
In Rouse's experience, people in the United States used to identify as American - “but what does that mean any more?” she asked.
In her opinion, many people feel lost because pieces of their identities have flaked away.
A Friday panel discussion - What Is Home? - with four international authors (Amitava Kumar, E.C. Osondu, Pitchaya Sudbanthad, and Xu Xi) will be moderated by SIT/World Learning President Sophia Howlett and will center on what creates a sense of belonging, and will grapple with questions of how place and identity intersect.
Readers and authors make connections
Author Tim Weed, a festival volunteer for eight years, said the Brattleboro Literary Festival lives in a category of its own, one designed to connect readers and authors.
So many other book festivals are geared toward writers, said Weed, who also appreciates the festival's wide gamut of authors, on career trajectories ranging from the up-and-coming to the firmly established.
“I really think it's one of the greatest book festivals in the country,” said Weed, author of the short-story collection A Field Guide to Murder & Fly Fishing, published by Green Writers Press in 2017.
The authors were chosen by a 12-member committee, explained Rouse, who Weed described as the “driving force” behind the festival's success.
“She is a very quick and avid reader,” he said. “This is her baby.”
“I'm immersed in books all year long,” she said.
In the turmoil of global politics and fast-paced media, these connections between authors and readers, and the celebration and elevation of the written word, can matter more than ever.
Books - whether printed on paper or in digital form - and the stories within can remind people how they arrived and where they now stand, Rouse said.
For example, as the U.S. House of Representatives considers impeaching President Donald J. Trump, author Brenda Wineapple's book The Impeachers studies the country's first-ever impeachment of a sitting president, Andrew Johnson, in the days after the Civil War.
Meanwhile, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Joseph J. Ellis's book American Dialogue considers the question: What would the founding fathers think of today's divisive issues?
Rouse said that these authors' collective works “are all extremely current even though they're [focused] on the past.”
To Weed, literature in general remains current and crucial because “it is an art form that does something no other art form can do.
“It gives us the ability to vicariously experience the world from inside another person,” Weed said. “That [connection is] something we crave - to transcend the loneliness of existence.
A story for everyone
Authors invited to this year's Brattleboro Literary Festival range across writers of fiction, from novel to short story. They range from poets to cartoonists.
Rouse said everyone can find a story or topic to relate to at the festival, whose offerings are free and open to the public.
Feeling overwhelmed and like nothing you do makes a difference? Rouse said to check out Madeline Miller's presentation on Oct. 20, and her novel Circe. This retelling of the Greek myth is also about “a woman who fought against the system and won,” said Rouse.
Authors' books featured at the festival tell the stories of immigrants, of LGBTQ people, of global warming, of being black in America, of super bugs.
Readers divided by education, income
According to a recent study by the Pew Research Center, approximately one quarter of adults in the United States haven't read a book - in print or digitally, in whole or in part - during the past year, an increase over 10 years.
To non-readers, books can come across as dusty and two dimensional. That's not the case, in Rouse's view. To her, books are “very 3-D.”
According to Rouse, books and the stories they contain give people the space to gather their thoughts and process the information and experiences spinning at them through their jobs, social media feeds, and news stations.
“You need to be informed, but you can't be submerged,” she said. “Heaven knows we can all use a little quiet time.”