Festival of Books

Free on Zoom: Registration required. Read with us. Please join the Spencertown Academy Arts Center for our second Community Reads event This America: The Case for the Nation by Jill Lepore, a work that examines the dilemma of nationalism and the erosion of liberalism in the twenty-first century. Ms. Lepore will join us live for the […]

Two authors will discuss their historical fiction with Daphne Kalotay, prize-winning author of short stories and novels (Russian Winter; Sight Reading; Blue Hours). Passage West tells the story of a Punjabi family, their Mexican in-laws and their Japanese neighbors at the onset of World War I in California. Mary Toft; or, The Rabbit Queen fictionalizes […]

More than 400 carefully selected volumes in like-new condition, as well as CDs, DVDs, vinyl LPs and ephemera, fill the virtual shelves of the Special Book Room. Richly illustrated coffee table books and rare collectible books are highlights this year. The collection includes art, architecture, design, biography/memoir, cookbooks, fiction, children’s/young adults, history, music/film, photography, signed […]

More than 400 carefully selected volumes in like-new condition, as well as CDs, DVDs, vinyl LPs and ephemera, fill the virtual shelves of the Special Book Room. Richly illustrated coffee table books and rare collectible books are highlights this year. The collection includes art, architecture, design, biography/memoir, cookbooks, fiction, children’s/young adults, history, music/film, photography, signed […]

Culinary professional and author Rick Rodgers will conduct a cooking demonstration while being interviewed by Madaline Sparks, Festival Committee member. On the menu will be Almas Pite, or Hungarian Apple Pie, a classic pastry found in most any kaffeehaus and maybe soon your home. Their conversation will range from baking tips to celebrities and famous […]

Peter Sís is an internationally acclaimed author-illustrator of books for children and adults. He will discuss his latest title, and how it fits in with his overall work, with Carl Atkins, Festival Committee member. Nicky and Vera is true story of the Holocaust written for children but with a message of decency, action and courage […]

Ayad Akhtar, Pulitzer Prize-winning author for his play Disgraced, and recently named New Your State Author, blends fact and fiction in his latest work, the story of a Pakistani immigrant and his American-born son in post-Trump America. Homeland Elegies is a deeply personal narrative that explores fault lines that occur in families and countries, and […]

Russell Shorto, historian and author of Amsterdam and The Island at the Center of the World, turned his research and writing inward with his latest book. In Smalltime: A Story of My Family and the Mob, the author reveals how his grandfather and great-uncle ran the mob in his hometown in Pennsylvania. It’s a story […]

THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELED. Nancy Castaldo turns her own fascination with the natural world into science-themed books that inform and engage children, sometimes calling them to action. Her topics range from saving animals from extinction to the biology of their brains, and from how farms feed us to the vital need to save seeds. […]

Ann Gainer, storyteller and librarian at New Lebanon and Altamont Libraries, will read and discuss with children Peter Sís’s Nicky and Vera: A Quiet Hero of the Holocaust and the Children He Rescued. Nicky was a young Englishman who went to Prague to help refugees from the Nazis; Vera, one of the children he saved. […]