Thursday, November 15, 2018
Last evening, November 14, Gov. Phil Scott and the Vermont Arts Council honored six Vermont artists at the annual Governor’s Arts Awards ceremony, held at the Statehouse in Montpelier.
This year’s Award for Excellence in the Arts went to two recipients, selected by Scott from among 20 nominees: Sculptors Chris Miller and Jerry Williams, who worked together on a new Ceres statue for the top of the Statehouse dome. (The previous one had rotted and was removed earlier this year.) The figure, an allegorical representation of Vermont’s agricultural heritage, will be installed on November 30.
Tags: Governor's Arts Awards , Alison Bechdel , Jerry Williams , Chris Miller , John Willis , Judith Chalmer , Allison Coyne Carroll , Vermont Arts Council , Gov. Phil Scott , Image , Web Only
Wednesday, November 7, 2018
The West Baltimore, Md., native said he had a “very radical but limited view of politics." Coates had felt that voting was "bad" and thought he would end up endorsing “for the lesser evil, at best.” But a professor friend recently told him, “Yes, that’s true, but I’m in favor of less evil.”
Tags: Ta-Nehisi Coates , Between the World and Me , University of Vermont , First-Year Summer Read program , Image , Web Only
Friday, October 12, 2018
Poet Terrance Hayes, a past National Book Award winner and a MacArthur Fellow, will be a guest writer at the college's MFA in Writing program this December. A finalist for American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin, written during the first 200 days of the Trump presidency, he's the artist-in-residence at New York University.
Closer to home, East Calais young-adult author M.T. Anderson is also no stranger to the NBA roster: He won for The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume 1: The Pox Party in 2006 and was a finalist for Feed in 2002.
Tags: National Book Award , Vermont College of Fine Arts , Dartmouth College , Terrance Hayes , M.T. Anderson , Rebecca Makkai , Colin Calloway , literature , Image , Web Only
Monday, September 3, 2018
More than a century later, Moustafa Bayoumi posits that Arabs and Muslim Americans are the “new problem” of American society since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Tags: Moustafa Bayoumi , Muslims in America , Will Miller Social Justice Lecture Series , University of Vermont , Image , Web Only
Saturday, September 23, 2017
Poet Major Jackson, who received the honor last year, made the announcement. In addition, VCFA founding president Thomas Christopher Greene used his time on the stage to unveil a new scholarship sponsored by Phoenix Books in late Vermont author Howard Frank Mosher's name for students in VCFA's writing and publishing program.
Selected by the judging panel from eight finalists for the award, Beach teaches in the undergraduate program at Johnson State College and is a faculty member in the graduate writing and publishing program at VCFA. When he took the stage, he said, "I've never won anything in my life — not even a fucking lottery ticket." He tacked on praise for the college and Vermont itself, saying, "this place means a lot to me."
Tags: Jensen Beach , Vermont Book Award , Vermont College of Fine Arts , Image , Web Only
Thursday, August 3, 2017
Jones was 93 and had worked as an editor at Alfred A. Knopf for more than half a century. She was perhaps best known for seeing to publication the manuscripts that would become the books Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl and Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child. In a 2010 interview with this reporter , Jones described Child's cookbook as "manna from heaven."
In addition to her work with cookbook writers, Jones was a literary editor who edited all the novels (and other books) by John Updike. Other authors Jones worked with include John Hersey and Anne Tyler.
"I think her most important contribution was probably making cookbook writers be significant," Dunne said. "That is, she kind of blended her literary tradition with her interest in food.
"There was this kind of marvelous thing that she loved the writer's voice," Dunne continued. "She felt that way about John Updike and she felt that way about Lidia Bastianich. It was very important that their voices be heard."
Jones grew up in Manhattan and her primary home was in the city, but she had lifelong ties to Vermont. Her paternal grandparents lived in Montpelier, in the big white house on the corner of Bailey Avenue and State Street. As a child of 11 or 12 she left New York and the Brearley School for a year to live with her grandmother, a choice Jones made for herself, Dunne said.
It was during childhood visits to her grandparents' home that Jones first gained an appreciation for food, she told Seven Days in a 2011 piece about a dinner in Greensboro to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the publication of Mastering the Art of French Cooking.
Tags: Judith Jones , Julia Child , Mastering the Art of French Cooking , John Updike , Vermont , Image , Web Only
Tuesday, July 25, 2017
But occasionally, a writer and director’s artistic sensibilities coalesce with such kinship that their paths seemed destined to cross. Such was the case with director Jay Craven and celebrated Northeast Kingdom novelist Howard Frank Mosher, who died from cancer on January 29 at the age of 74.
Tags: Howard Frank Mosher , Jay Craven , novels , Vermont , Image , Web Only
Monday, June 19, 2017
The Essex store is one of a handful owned by Michael DeSanto and Renee Reiner — in Rutland, Burlington and Chester (Phoenix Books Misty Valley). They're also new co-owners of Vermont's oldest independent bookstore, the Yankee Bookshop in Woodstock.
Tags: Phoenix Books , Essex , business , booksellers , bookstores , Image , Web Only
Friday, May 5, 2017
These are some of the whimsical details that careful observers will spot in the mural by Underhill artist Kristin Richland that was officially unveiled last night in the children's section of Phoenix Books Burlington. It's part of Children's Book Week (May 1 to 7), which the store will also celebrate with a special story time on Saturday devoted to Adam Rubin and Daniel Salmieri's Dragons Love Tacos.
Tags: Phoenix Books , Burlington , Kristin Richland , mural , art , Children's Book Week , independent bookstores , Image , Web Only
Tuesday, January 31, 2017
Like thousands of Vermonters who have been touched by Howard Mosher and his writing, I feel a deep sense of loss at the realization of life without him. No one has produced a larger body of work exploring the distinctive character and culture of Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. No one has been more generous to fellow writers, taking time to chat, read their work and help them. No one was more tirelessly committed to his readers, through his cross-country sojourns in his 20-year-old Chevy Celebrity (dubbed the “loser cruiser") and his frequent signings at independent bookstores throughout New England.
Tags: howard frank mosher , Image , Web Only