Arlington Common Authors Book Festival
SPEAKER PRESENTATIONS
10:30 AM-11:15 AM
Title to be announced, DAVID R. SCHROONES (political thrillers), Performance Hall
Title to be announced, BETH BOSWORTH (short stories), Watkins House
11:30 AM-12:15 PM
Title to be announced, JULIA McKENZIE MUNEMO (memoirs), Watkins House
Hollywood, Hitchcock, and Homicide, AMY PATRICIA MEADE (cozy mysteries), Performance Hall
12:30 PM-1:15 PM
Title to be announced, THOMAS HENRY POPE (fiction), Performance Hall
Title to be announced, WES DYSON (fantasy), Watkins House
1:30 PM-2:15 PM
Unique Stories of Vietnam, KAT FITZPATRICK (non-fiction, war memoir), Performance Hall
2:30 PM-3:30 PM - PANEL PRESENTATIONS
Mystery & Crime, FRANKIE Y. BAILEY and ROBERT KNIGHTLY, Performance Hall
Three Poets Share and Discuss Their Work, HARMONY DEVOE, DENNISNURKSE, CHARD deNIORD, Watkins House
MEET THE SPEAKERS
Kat Fitzpatrick was one of the few American dependents living in Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War (1975), the daughter of a CIA operative who worked in ultra-secret propaganda. Her first experience with writing was corresponding regularly with her father while he was away on assignment. The spell of the writing life never released her and she is the author of the 2023 narrative nonfiction book, For the Love of Vietnam: a war, a family, a CIA official, and the best evacuation story never heard.
UNIQUE STORIES OF VIETNAM; 1:30 PM-2:15 PM, Performance Hall
Robert Knightly retired from the NYPD in September of 1987 and became a lawyer trying criminal cases in Manhattan and Queens, NY for 18 years. Relocating to Albany, NY he now acts as a criminal defense attorney. He says, "I take the real events, people, and fictionalize them all. I do not write true crime. Too hard, too restrictive. Much easier to add make-believe, and in the end, depending on your skill, truer."
Frankie Y. Bailey is a “crime professor”. She is a PhD and tenured full professor in the School of Criminal Justice, University at Albany (SUNY). She studies crime and justice in American culture, focusing on crime history, mass media/popular culture, and material culture. In her other career, Frankie is a mystery writer. She is the author of five mysteries featuring amateur sleuth Lizzie Stuart and two police procedurals novels featuring Albany police detective Hannah McCabe.Whether she is engaged in academic research and non-fiction writing or researching and writing crime fiction, Frankie’s mantra is “dig deeper.” She believes, “Every crime deserves context.”
David R. Schroones has held several jobs during his life, but he considers the two most important were his time in the United States Coast Guard and the fifteen years he spent as a high school science teacher. When he retired he turned to writing, and in 2022 he wrote the scariest, prescient, most realistic book possible, REFUGE. He currently lives in Rhode Island with Cathy, his wife of 45 years. Schoorens lives in Rhode Island with Cathy, his wife of forty-two years.
Talk - Title to be announced; 10:30 AM-11:15 AM, Church Building
Julia McKenzie Munemo earned a Master’s degree in education at Harvard and later a Master of Fine Arts at Stonecoast. Her first book, The Book Keeper: A Memoir of Race, Love, and Legacy, has been called a powerful addition to the conversation about race in America. She directs the Williams College Writing Center and is currently at work on her second book.
Her essays have appeared in Electric Literature, The Masters Review, Solstice Literary Magazine, Inside Higher Education, and elsewhere. She’s hard at work on her second book, a memoir about race, mid motherhood, and anxiety.
Talk - Title to be announced; 11:30 AM-12:15 PM, Watkins House
Thomas Henry Pope is a novelist, journalist, teacher, actor and lifelong Buddist. His thrillers, dystopian tales, and literary fiction have won the Nautilus Award, the American Legacy Book Award, and the Page Turner Award. He gives the settings in his novels as much agency to influence events as he does to his characters. To capture the people who appear in them he travels to the countries where the stories unfold. He teaches meditation and lives in Vermont where the peepers sing.
Imperfect Burials: Winner 2024 American Legacy Award, Winner 2023 Page Turner Award
The Trouble With Wisdom: a new twist on post-apocalyptic fiction set in
2055
The Last Redwood Circus: Winner 2024 Nautilus Book Award
Talk - Title to be announced; 1:30 PM-2:15 PM, Watkins House
Chard deNiord is a former poet laureate of Vermont (2015-2019) and author of seven books of poetry, including In My Unknowing (2020), The Double Truth (2011), which the Boston Globe named one of the top ten books of poetry in 2011, Night Mowing (2005), Sharp Golden Thorn (2002), and Asleep In The Fire (1900).
Beth Bosworth is an award-winning writer of short stories and novels. Her collection, THE SOURCE OF LIFE & OTHER STORIES, won the coveted Drue Heinz Literature Prize. She has taught at the New School for Social Research, CUNY’s NYC Technical College, and for many years at Saint Ann’s School in Brooklyn, where she is also founding editor of the Saint Ann’s Review. Her publications include a novel, Tunneling, and a collection of short stories, A Burden of Earth. Her stories have appeared in the Kenyon Review, the Seneca Review, Forward, IMAGE, Hanging Loose, Guernica, and elsewhere. Boswell divides her time between Brooklyn where she teaches at Saint Anne’s School, and her home in Arlington.
Talk - Title to be announced; 10:30 AM-11:15 AM, Watkins House
Wes Dyson lives in Western Massachusetts with his four lovably wild mutts. His first novel, MYRACLES IN THE VOID, is the recipient of multiple independent book awards including the Eric Hoffer Award. Kirkus Reviews called him “an exciting new voice in Fantasy.” His friends call him“..alright.”
Awards: First Horizon Award (Eric Hoffer Book Awards), 2023 - Eric Hoffer Award Science Fiction/Fantasy Winner, 2023 - Firebird Award, Fantasy, 2022
Finalist/Shortlist: Forward INDIES Book Awards, Fantasy Finalist, 2023 - American Fiction Awards (Fantasy: General), 2022
Amy Patricia Meade is returning to Arlington as she once lived in the former Whitney House. She currently resides in upstate New York where she has become the author of sixteen books in five critically acclaimed mystery series. The fourth book in her Vermont Country Living series is due out in July 2025. She is currently the Vice President of the Upper Hudson Chapter of Sisters in Crime.
In the Vermont Country Living Mysteries, medieval tapestries expert, Stella, and her forest ranger husband, Nick, have left NYC for the Green Mountains of Vermont. In the Marjorie McClelland Mysteries, the young writer’s solitary, comfortable life gets disrupted in what Kirkus Reviews calls, “A vintage mystery...”
Publishers Weekly says of the Tish Tarragon Mysteries that “Tish is the ideal cozy heroine - clever, and sensible with just the right amount of daring.”
Meade’s Evelyn Galloway Series is her newest series and features a Hollywood script writer.
HOLLYWOOD, HITCHCOCK, AND HOMICIDE; 11:30 AM-12:15 PM, Performance Hall
POETRY PANELISTS
“Three Poets Share and Discuss Their Work”
2:30 PM-3:30 PM, Watkins House
Each of the panelists has used the language of poetry to speak out for the preservation of the earth, human justice, and our place in the world.
Chard deNiord - Vermont Poet Laureate 2015 - 2019
"The force that gives us meaning/is terrible, bloody and sweet." from In My Unknowing, 2020
Harmony Devine - First Vermont Yourth Poet Laureate
"The past cannot be changed.
But the future can be rearranged." from Land
Dennis Nurkse - Vermont author of 12 collections of poetry which have been translated into a dozen languages.
"Tonight my children are facing live ammunition." from Order to Disperse, 2022
FOR SPEAKER INFORMATION AND INTERVIEWS
CONTACT MAX FOLSOM AT MAXFOLSOMAUTHOR@GMAIL.COM