Northshire Bookstore Event: Cookies & Conversation with the VT Book Award Finalists
Manchester Center, VT – On Saturday, April 18 at 6 pm, join writers of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and children’s literature from all across Vermont for conversation and a sweet treat as they talk inspiration, writing process, the state of literature today, and how they wrote their award-winning books.
The participating finalists are:
- Tyler Alexander – If I Can Get Home This Fall
If I Can Get Home This Fall chronicles the epic story of Dan Mason, a white man who served in the Civil War as a soldier in the Sixth Vermont Infantry and as an officer in the Nineteenth U.S. Colored Troops. It is a story of these two units from very different realities but with a common purpose.
- Chard deNiord – Westminster West
This collection bears witness to ecstasy and grief through persona. By inhabiting the voices of Adam and Eve, Abelard and Heloise, etc., deNiord reveals the enduring alterity contained within the self. Westminster West traverses the worlds of here and beyond. Chard deNiord divines “the everydayness of the mystery . . . in which being and making poetry are the same.”
- Kristin Dykstra – Dissonance
In Dissonance, translator Kristin Dykstra’s first book of original poetry, the author leads us to inner worlds shaped partly by the New England countryside, tracking shifts in the region’s nature, infrastructure, and people, while sharing observations on borders and climate catastrophe that reverberate globally.
- Sasha Hom – Sidework
Sasha Hom’s Sidework is a lyric, page-turning novella about a homeless Korean adoptee and mother of four. During her busy Sunday shift waiting tables, her customers— rock stars, locals, and the Grim Reaper himself— bring her face to face with larger issues of motherhood, suicide, environmental degradation, death, and belonging.
- Jeff McRae – The Kingdom Where No One Dies
The Kingdom Where No One Dies is a deeply textured and emotionally resonant poetry collection that explores memory, loss, family, and the enduring tension between rootedness and impermanence. Structured in three parts, the manuscript moves with grace and subtle force through personal history, rural landscapes, and shifting states of mind.
- Aaron Starmer – Night Swimming
Summer, 1994. Trevor can barely wrap his mind around the fact that he and his friends have graduated high school. And yet there’s no rush to get to college. He’s determined to live one night at a time. Riding shotgun from party to party, windows down, music up, his focus is entirely on his crush, the enigmatic girl in the driver’s seat. Will things ever go anywhere with Sarah? Maybe? Because Sarah has proposed a mission: They’re going to swim all the pools in town.
The Vermont Book Awards, created in 2015, are annual prizes for outstanding literature by Vermont authors. They are awarded through a partnership between Vermont Humanities and the Vermont Department of Libraries.
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For more information on this or other events, email events@northshire.com, or visit the Northshire Bookstore website at www.northshire.com.Northshire Bookstore, originally founded in 1976, has locations in Manchester, Vermont and Saratoga Springs, NY as well as at Northshire.com. Our large but intimate general bookstores carry the largest selection of categories and genres including new & used fiction, history, cooking, arts and rare author-signed editions. We also have entire floors devoted to Children’s Books and toys, a full line of stationery, magazines, music, cards, calendars, locally-sourced foods and many fine gifts from clothing to jewelry. Open to the public daily from 10:00 AM to 7:00 PM and 24/7 online with free shipping at www.northshire.com