Posted By Elizabeth M. Seyler on Tue, Oct 26, 2021 at 3:47 PM

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Courtesy of Luke Awtry Photography

The Flynn marquee

I’ve attended many captivating performances at the Flynn Main Stage since the 1990s, but Saturday’s Grand Reopening Celebration was historic. The art deco theater was beautiful; the staff was friendly and well organized, as usual; and the performances were stellar. But Vermont storyteller Ferene Paris Meyer and Flynn executive director Jay Wahl moved me to tears. Their personal yet universal accounts of the past 19 months clarified the essential nature of gathering with neighbors in a beloved place for a live performance.

“Dear Flynn Theater!” were Paris Meyer’s opening words — the first spoken from the Flynn stage to an audience since mid-March 2020. Her story was part love letter to the theater, extolling its community-enriching capacity, and part memoir of her journey to develop her voice as a woman of color. She reminded us of the Black lives lost to violence and the requisite reckonings of the recent past.

Tags: Flynn , Flynn Main Stage , Angélique Kidjo , Dwight & Nicole , Ferene Paris Meyer , Jay Wahl , Resistance Revival Chorus , Kaleider , Flynn gallery , mural , Web Only , Image , Slideshow

Posted By Chris Farnsworth on Fri, Oct 15, 2021 at 6:30 PM

courtesy of Caleb Kenna

Zach Pollakoff

Artist, musician and advertising professional Zach Pollakoff is throwing the second show at his Bauschaus VT gallery in Charlotte this Saturday, October 16. Six artists will display large-scale installations in Pollakoff's historic gallery and home, accompanied by a live soundtrack from Brooklyn's Elori Saxl, an Emmy-nominated composer and filmmaker, and Photay, an electronic producer, also from New York City.

Tags: Zach Pollakoff , Bauschaus VT , Elori Saxl , Photay , Tin and Ed , Vanishworks , Rory Pots , Wylie Garcia , Jemila MacEwan , Will Gebhard , Carl Bausch , Maize Bausch , Zero Gravity , Ambient Music , Web Only , Image

Posted By Mary Ann Lickteig on Wed, Oct 6, 2021 at 2:16 PM

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Courtesy of Kekla Magoon

Kekla Magoon

Updated at 3:58 p.m.

Kekla Magoon had just picked up groceries to cook dinner on Monday evening when she saw that she had missed a phone call.

“I didn’t even hear the phone ring,” the Montpelier author said on Wednesday. She was in the grocery store parking lot when she noticed a voicemail from a 212 number.

“I figured that might be related to publishing, so I listened,” she said. “And it was the executive director of the National Book Foundation.”

Magoon is one of five finalists for the 2021 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature for her forthcoming nonfiction book Revolution in Our Time: The Black Panther Party's Promise to the People. “It’s pretty exciting,” she said. “A little surreal, also.”

She had known since September that she was on the long list for the prize, and she knew that the foundation planned to announce all 25 National Book Award finalists — five in each of five categories — on Tuesday, October 5, at 10 a.m. She hadn’t expected to hear anything until then. In a long “congratulatory voicemail with some logistics information,” foundation executive director Ruth Dickey asked Magoon to keep the news quiet and not to tell even her publisher.

Tags: National Book Award , Kekla Magoon , Vermont College of Fine Arts , author , children's book , Web Only , Image

Posted By Chris Farnsworth on Fri, Oct 1, 2021 at 11:52 AM

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courtesy of Tom McNeill

Kiel Alarcon at the Windsor Exchange

Windsor music collective What Doth Life roars back to life this weekend. After a tough year with little to promote, the WDL crew is staging What Doth Life Fest II on Saturday, October 2, at the Windsor Exchange.

Tags: What Doth Life , Kiel Alarcon , The Pilgrims , Carton , Derek & the Demons , Chodus , Time Life Magazines , Folquinette , The Windsor Exchange , Web Only , Image