Brattleboro is a book-reading and book-buying town. There are no less than five bookstores downtown with books available in other stores as well. There is an annual literary festival, every October. And there are more book venues scattered around the county from Putney to Newfane and on into Keene. Read the iBrattleboro Books section for the latest in local book news from readings to reviews covering new publications and old favorites.
Nominations are now open for the 2026 Vermont Book Awards, Vermont’s premier literary prize. Please nominate books of outstanding literary merit published (or forthcoming) in 2026.
You can nominate books for four categories: Fiction, Poetry, Children’s Literature, and Creative Non-Fiction. Click the link in this post to go to the nomination page.
Who has time for literary festivals? Who has time for books at all? Nobody. And until now, nobody has had time to fix that.
Introducing the Cliff Notes Readers Club: join us and explore your hatred of great literature. Colonizer favorites like Ichabod Crane, Macbeth and Moby Dick will be discussed in full abbreviated form, in a guilt-free space.
PUTNEY, VT — Next Stage Arts will host a special literary evening on Tuesday, May 26, from 6:00 to 8:00 PM, celebrating the release of The Gatepost, a new novel by acclaimed author Tim Weed.
Set against the evocative backdrop of rural Vermont, The Gatepost follows Esme Weatherhead as she returns to her childhood home two decades after her father’s mysterious disappearance. What begins as an attempt to tell his story unfolds into a deeper journey, as Esme uncovers cryptic journals, traces of psychedelic experimentation, and clues pointing to a long-hidden cave in the surrounding forest. With the help of a local geologist, her search pushes beyond the limits of conventional understanding, exploring themes of loss, love, and the enduring mysteries of the natural world.
DIANA WHITNEY’s powerful poems tell the truth of her experiences – they are dynamic, subversive, brave. The beauty of her words connect us in their authenticity. Diana is also an advocate for “Out in the Open”, our local LGBTQ+ community, and her new book “Girl Trouble” had just been published.
PUTNEY, VT — Next Stage Arts presents an evening of literary conversation with acclaimed author Victoria Redel, joined by award-winning writer Robin MacArthur, on Friday, May 8 at 7:30 PM at Next Stage Arts in Putney.
The event will center on Redel’s highly anticipated new novel, I Am You, a sweeping and intimate story set in 1600s Amsterdam. Drawing on historical inspiration, the novel follows the intertwined lives of Gerta Pieters, a young girl raised as a boy in service to a Dutch household, and Maria van Oosterwijck, a painter forging her path in the Dutch Golden Age. Through their stories, Redel explores questions of love, identity, gender, and the constraints placed on women throughout history.
PUTNEY — In honor of National Poetry Month, Next Stage Arts presents an evening of poetry, conversation, and dancing with poet Diana Whitney on Friday, April 10 at 7:30 p.m. Doors open at 7:00 p.m. at Next Stage Arts, 15 Kimball Hill in Putney. The event celebrates the release of Whitney’s new poetry collection, Girl Trouble, which early readers are calling “unstoppable” and “deeply subversive.”
Whitney will read from the new book and be joined in conversation by poet Eve Alexandra, whose prize-winning collection None of Us in White was released in 2025. The evening will conclude with a dance party, celebrating the spirit of connection and community that poetry can inspire.
Looking for a gift for someone who loves Brattleboro? There’s a new book celebrating all the various types of parades that have marched through town.
“Brattleboro On Parade” by Kevin O’Connor, featuring photos from the Brattleboro Historical Society is now available at most bookstores in town and at the BHS offices on the third floor of the Municipal Center. It is hot off the presses.
Next Stage Arts presents Pulitzer Prize– and National Book Award–winning journalist Tim Weiner on Sunday, September 21, at 7:00 PM at Next Stage Arts, 15 Kimball Hill in Putney. Doors open at 6:15 PM. Tickets are $10, available at nextstagearts.org.
Weiner, acclaimed author of Legacy of Ashes, returns with his explosive new work The Mission: The CIA in the 21st Century, a New York Times bestseller. Drawing from exclusive on-the-record interviews with CIA directors, spymasters, and undercover officers, Weiner reveals the high-stakes battles shaping America’s intelligence community today—at a time of escalating conflicts between the White House, U.S. intelligence, the press, and free speech itself.
With a new award-winning novel just published, author Tim Weed talks about the many worlds of fiction, his outdoor adventures and leading international education programs through NatGeo and Putney Student Travel. “The Afterlife Project”book launch party is at NXT Stage on June 3 at 6pm.
Join acclaimed local author Tim Weed for the launch of his highly anticipated novel, The Afterlife Project, with a reading and celebration on Tuesday, June 3 at 6:00 pm at Next Stage Arts in Putney.
A finalist for the 2023 Prism Prize for Climate Literature, The Afterlife Project is a gripping and poetic work of literary speculative fiction. The story follows microbiologist Nicholas Hindman, who is launched 10,000 years into Earth’s future using experimental time-travel technology originally designed for deep-space exploration. In a haunting, uninhabited wilderness, Hindman searches desperately for evidence of the human race. Meanwhile, in the year 2068, the scientists who sent him on this mission are on a perilous journey of their own—a voyage by sailboat to a volcanic island off Sicily in search of another test subject, and perhaps, a future for humanity.
I just sent this msg to our Governor. We should start this movement.
Dear Governor Scott,
Please consider doing this for Vermont. We cherish our freedom and our libraries.
“PRINCETON, N.J. (AP) — New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy signed a law Monday to prohibit public and school libraries from banning books in the state and to enshrine protections against civil and criminal charges for librarians who comply with the law.”
If you’re a reader, fond of acquiring books, and have ever moved, you know there’s a day of reckoning when the sheer mass of paper harkens back to its original arboreal form. There’s also the curious phenomena where the sight of the cover, or even the pages themselves, trigger a corresponding site in the brain, bringing back some of the content and memories of reading, circumstances and experience. Books are not just objects, they can become part of our identity. But these are considerations for another time.
The bulk and burden of books may or may not be a vanishing element in our lives, as digital media proliferates, and reading actual volumes wanes as an entertainment or information source. It seems to me fitting that the packed box or carton of books has so much heft. Books ARE heavy in more ways than one. There’s no way around it. Having recently moved sparked an intensive bout of assessment. Are all books keepers indefinitely? Are they really toss-able? Or, heaven forbid, burnable, as an act of lightening and transformation rather than censorship and intimidation? It’s beneficial to recall; All is transitory in this world.
“Where Are the Women?” is a new book just published by EVIE KIEHLE, a BUHS senior. She looks at the lack of women in American Politics and has written a guide to the ways we can change this. Evie also talks about growing up in Brattleboro, and the people and activities that influence her.
On Friday, November 10 at 5:00 pm, the Brattleboro Literary Festival invites you to join us for an online conversation with New York Times bestselling author Adam Goodheart interviewed by Tom Clynes, discussing Goodheart’s new book, The Last Island. Register at http://bit.ly/LitCocktail33 . Free.
In November 2018, a young American missionary kayaked onto a remote beach in the Indian Ocean and was killed by indigenous islanders wielding bows and arrows. News of that fatal encounter on North Sentinel Island—a small patch of land in the Andaman archipelago—fascinated people around the world. Most were unaware such a place existed in our time: an island whose hunter-gatherer inhabitants still live in near-total isolation.
Book is about the arming of madman Hitler’s Nazi Germany that made a war that killed off 3% of the world’s population at that time (which included the mega horrific Holocaust). – each chapter presents something astounding Larger scope of the book is corp. war investor control of the world as their criminal media holds our attention on subterfuge.
Exposes the myth that the US played a benevolent role in world affairs
The Village is a fictional account of life in a small Vermont town as told by a narrator who is a member of a family that purchased a country store that became the center of their new life after leaving New York City.
The narration paints a picture of Vermont that has all but faded into oblivion. The lives of three local characters and an encounter with tourists shopping at the store give the reader glimpses into the values and ethos of Vermont at a time when most of the inhabitants of the state were born there and stayed close to where they were born, while making a life for themselves and their families.
Join Next Stage Arts on Tuesday, August 29 at 7:00pm for an interactive fireside with author Kat Vellos all about friendship in adulthood. What are the biggest challenges of adult friendship and how can we overcome them? How do we “make new friends and keep the old”? What is social wellness and how does it factor into our overall health and wellbeing? And how can we create more meaningful connections with coworkers, who are often the primary source of new friends in adulthood? We’ll dig into all this and more. The fireside chat will be followed by a Q&A so come with your questions too. The discussion will take place at Next Stage Arts, 15 Kimball Hill, in Putney.
“Cultivating meaningful relationships can be a challenge, and as we look to the future of creating a region that is welcoming and inviting to all people, expanding our toolbox can only be a positive thing,” says Keith Marks, Executive Director of Next Stage Arts. “Kat Vellos’ work focuses on creating meaningful platonic relationships and fostering a stronger community dynamic. This evening with Vellos is something we could all use to live in a more civil, connected community.”
On May 30 at 7:00 pm, the Brattleboro Literary Festival, Brooks Memorial Library and the Words Trail will celebrate live the newly released collection of short stories by Brattleboro author Mary E. Wilkins Freeman with her initially intended title Green Mountain Stories.
Published originally in 1887 as A Humble Romance and Other Stories, this new edition features an introduction and critical commentary by Freeman scholar Brent Kendrick, who will talk about Mary and the book. Mary was inspired to become a writer in high school…she would go to her father’s dry goods shop in downtown Brattleboro every day after school, which was fortuitously located next door to a bookstore. She graduated from high school in Brattleboro and later moved away after her father died, but she maintained her connection to Vermont.
Celebrate Asian American Heritage Month with us! On Friday, May 12, the Brattleboro Literary Festival’s A Literary Cocktail Hour will present award-winning author Kathryn Ma and her book The Chinese Groove. This event is online and free…you can register at https://bit.ly/LitCocktail30
One of their 12 Books to Read Right Now, the New York Times says of The Chinese Groove: “A comedic take on the trials of immigration, Ma’s latest novel follows a Chinese man who is woefully unprepared for his move to America…” Eighteen-year-old Shelley, born into a much-despised branch of the Zheng family in Yunnan Province and living in the shadow of his widowed father’s grief, dreams of bigger things. Buoyed by an exuberant heart and his cousin Deng’s tall tales about the United States, Shelley heads to San Francisco to claim his destiny, confident that any hurdles will be easily overcome by the awesome powers of the “Chinese groove,” a belief in the unspoken bonds between countrymen that transcend time and borders.
On Friday, April 14 at 5:00 pm, join us for the fun when A Literary Cocktail Hour presents Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author David Maraniss and his new book Path Lit By Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe. Jim Thorpe rose to world fame as a mythic talent who excelled at every sport.He won gold medals in the decathlon and pentathlon at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics, was an All-American football player at the Carlisle Indian School, the star of the first class of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and played major league baseball for John McGraw’s New York Giants.
