Roxana Robinson in conversation with Caitlin Shetterly
This event is free and open to the public. Registration is not required. Barnswallow Books will have copies of Robinson's work for sale. A Q+A and book signing will follow the conversation. Refreshments and light bites provided.
ROXANA ROBINSON is the author of eleven books—seven novels, three collections of short stories, and the biography of Georgia O’Keefe. Four of there were chosen as New York Times Notable Books, two as New York Times Editors’ Choices.
Her fiction has appeared in the New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s, Best American Short Stories, The Southampton Review, Ep!phany, and elsewhere. Her work has been widely anthologized and broadcast on NPR. Her books have been published in England, France, Germany, Holland and Spain.
Roxanna has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation and the MacDowell Colony, and she was named a Literary Lion by the New York Public Library. Robinson has served on the Boards of PEN and the Authors Guild, and was the president of the Authors Guild. She has received the Barnes and Noble “Writers for Writers Award”, given by Poets and Writers, and the Award for Distinguished Service to the Literary Community from the Authors Guild. She teaches in the MFA Program at Hunter College. She lives in New York City and northwestern Connecticut.
Robinson will be interviewed by novelist and Maine native, Caitlin Shetterly.
Roxanna will interview Susan Choi as a part of the 2026 Pascal Hall Authors Series on July 9th from 5-7PM. This series is free and open to the public. If interest in attending, you can register here.
Susan Choi in conversation with Roxana Robinson
Our Pascal Hall Authors Series welcomes its second author for Summer 2026! Cocktails from 5-5:30, conversation from 5:30-6:30. A book signing and reception will follow. All events in this series are free and open to the public but registration is required. Click here for tickets!
SUSAN CHOI is the author of Trust Exercise, which received the National Book Award for fiction, as well as the novels The Foreign Student, American Woman, A Person of Interest, and My Education. She is a recipient of the Asian-American Literary Award for fiction, the PEN/W. G Sebald Award, a Lambda Literary award, The Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. She teaches in the writing seminars in John Hopkins University and live in Brooklyn, New York.
Susan will be interviewed by Roxana Robinson.
Barnswallow Books will have copies of her work for sale after the event.
Christina Baker Kline
This event is free and open to the public. Registration is not required. Barnswallow Books will have copies of Kline’s work for sale. A Q+A and book signing will follow the conversation. Refreshments and light bites provided.
CHRISTINA BAKER KLINE is a #1 New York Times bestselling author of ten novels, including Orphan Train, The Exiles, Please Don’t Lie (co-authored with Anne Burt), and the forthcoming The Foursome (May 2026), Christina Baker Kline is published in more than 40 countries. Her novels have received the New England Prize for Fiction, the Maine Literary Award, and a Barnes & Noble Discover Award, among other prizes, and have been chosen by hundreds of communities, universities, and schools as “One Book, One Read” selections. Her essays, articles, and reviews have appeared in publications such as The New York Times and The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and The San Francisco Chronicle.Kline was born in Cambridge, England, and raised there as well as in the American South and Maine. She is a graduate of Yale, Cambridge, and the University of Virginia, where she was a Henry Hoyns Fellow in Fiction Writing. She has taught at Yale, NYU, UVA, Drew, and Fordham, where she served as Writer-in-Residence. The author or editor of five nonfiction books, she is a recipient of numerous Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and Writer-in-Residence Fellowships. A resident of New York City and Southwest Harbor, Maine, Kline is married to David Kline and has three sons: Hayden, Will, and Eli.
Caitlin Shetterly in conversation with Elise Juska
This event is free and open to the public. Registration is not required. Barnswallow Books will have copies of Shetterly’s work for sale. A Q+A and book signing will follow the conversation. Refreshments and light bites provided.
CAITLIN SHETTERLY is the author of two sequential novels, The Gulf of Lions (Harper Books, 2026) and Pete and Alice in Maine(Harper Books, 2023). Pete and Alice was widely acclaimed, with interviews on NPR’s Weekend Edition, reviews in the LA Times, the Star Tribune, Chicago Review of Books, Booklist, Publisher’s Weekly, Library Journal and more. Allegra Goodman’s review for The New York Times said it best: “Shetterly’s debut achieves a subtle grace, a quality of light and shadow worthy of a Bergman film.”
Shetterly is also the author of three previous books: Modified,Made for You and Me, and the bestselling Fault Lines: Stories of Divorce. Modified won the Maine Literary Award in 2017 and was named one of the “Best Books of 2016” by both Publisher’s Weekly and Goop. Made for You and Me was based on a series of audio diaries that were featured on Weekend Edition on NPR and went viral. Fault Lines was an Indie Next pick and became a bestseller after being featured by Scott Simon on Weekend Edition. Shetterly’s work has been featured in the The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, Orion, Elle, Self, The Boston Globe, LitHub, Romper, and on Oprah.com, as well as on This American Life, Hidden Brain, Studio 360, NPR’s Weekend Edition, and various other public radio shows.
She is an editor at large for Frenchly, a French arts and culture online news magazine, for which she created the popular Le Weekend newsletter.
For a detailed list of more publications and audio stories, please visit the “Etc.” section to find a digital archive.
A Maine native, she graduated with Honors from Brown University and lives with her two sons and husband in her home state. She and her family travel to France regularly, where Shetterly reports for The New York Times,Frenchly and radio.Caitlin enjoys running in the woods and swimming in the ocean. She is passionately committed to helping preserve, in every way she can, the peace of wild things.
For a detailed list of more publications and audio stories, please visit the “Etc.” section to find a digital archive.
Shetterly will be interviewed by Elise Juska.
Isaac Fitzgerald, author of America Rambler: Walking the Trail of Johnny Appleseed
This event is free and open to the public. Registration is not required. Barnswallow Books will have copies of his work for sale. A Q+A and book signing will follow the conversation. Refreshments and light bites provided.
ISAAC FITZGERALD is the New York Times bestselling author of Dirtbag, Massachusetts (winner of the New England Book Award). He is also the author of the bestselling children’s book How to Be a Pirate, as well as the co-author of Pen & Ink: Tattoos and the Stories Behind Them and Knives & Ink: Chefs and the Stories Behind Their Tattoos (winner of an IACP Award). He appears frequently on The Today Show, and his writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Esquire, GQ, The Guardian, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, and numerous other publications. He lives with his wife and their two dogs on the North Fork of Long Island.
Isaac will interview Hernan Diaz as a part of the 2026 Pascal Hall Authors Series on August 20th from 5-7PM. This series is free and open to the public. If interest in attending, you can register here.
Hernan Diaz in conversation with Isaac Fitzgerald
Our Pascal Hall Authors Series welcomes its third author for Summer 2026! Cocktails from 5-5:30, conversation from 5:30-6:30. A book signing and reception will follow. All events in this series are free and open to the public but registration is required. Click here for tickets!
HERNAN DIAZ is the Pulitzer Prize-winning and New York Times bestselling author of four books published in thirty-seven languages. He is the recipient of the John Updike award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, given to “a writer whose contributions to American literature have demonstrated consistent excellence.”
His first novel, In the Distance, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award, and it was the winner of the Saroyan International Prize, the Cabell Award, the Prix Page America, and the New American Voices Award, among other distinctions. It was also a Publishers Weekly Top 10 Book of the Year and one of Lit Hub’s 20 Best Novels of the Decade.
Trust, his second novel, received the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and was a New York Times Bestseller, the winner of the Kirkus Prize, and longlisted for the Booker Prize, among other nominations. It was listed as a best book of the year by over thirty publications and named one of the 10 Best Books of the Year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, and Time magazine, and it was one of The New Yorker’s 12 Essential Reads of the Year. One of Barack Obama’s Favorite Books of 2022, Trust is currently being developed as a limited series for HBO, and it has been named one of the New York Times’s Best 100 Books of the 21st Century.
His stories and essays have appeared in The Paris Review,Harper’s, The New York Times, The Atlantic, Granta, The Yale Review, Playboy, McSweeney’s, and elsewhere. He has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award, and a fellowship from the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. He holds a PhD from NYU and is also the author ofBorges, between History and Eternity.
Ply, his latest novel, will be released by Riverhead on September 29 of this year.
Diaz will be interviewed by Isaac Fitzgerald.
Barnswallow Books will have copies of his work for sale after the event.
Caroline Bicks, author of Monsters in the Archives: A Year of Fear with Stephen King
This event is free and open to the public. Registration is not required. Barnswallow Books will have copies of Bicks’s work for sale. A Q+A and book signing will follow the conversation. Refreshments and light bites provided.
CAROLINE BICKS is an internationally-recognized Shakespeare scholar who has published widely on early modern drama, gender, and the history of science. She studied Renaissance poetry at Harvard University as an undergraduate and received her Phd in English Literature from Stanford University. She was tenured at Boston College in 2008, the same year that she began summer teaching at the Bread Loaf School of English. In 2017, she became the inaugural Stephen E. King Chair in Literature at the University of Maine. The endowed Chair’s mission is to support the public humanities, a challenge that Bicks has embraced by giving talks around the state to a wide variety of audiences, and bringing award-winning fiction writers, journalists, educators, and activists to speak and work with different Maine communities. The position also allowed her to develop a working relationship with Stephen King that led to him granting her access to his personal papers and to her writing a book about what she discovered, Monsters in the Archives: My Year of Fear with Stephen King.
Caroline will be interviewing Stephen Greenblatt as a part of the 2026 Pascal Hall Authors Series on August 27th from 5-7PM. This series is free and open to the public. If interest in attending, you can register here.
Stephen Greenblatt in conversation with Caroline Bicks
Our Pascal Hall Authors Series welcomes its fourth and final author for Summer 2026! Cocktails from 5-5:30, conversation from 5:30-6:30. A book signing and reception will follow. All events in this series are free and open to the public but registration is required. Click here for tickets!
STEPHEN GREENBLATT is Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University. He is the author of fifteen books, including Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics; The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve; The Swerve: How the World Became Modern (winner of the 2011 National Book Award and the 2012 Pulitzer Prize) and Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare. He is General Editor of The Norton Anthology of English Literature and of The Norton Shakespeare, has edited seven collections of criticism, and is a founding coeditor of the journal Representations. He was named the 2016 Holberg Prize Laureate. His honors include the MLA’s James Russell Lowell Prize, the William Shakespeare Award for Classical Theatre, two Guggenheim Fellowships, and the Distinguished Humanist Award from the Mellon Foundation. He was president of the Modern Language Association of America and has been elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the American Philosophical Society, the Italian literary academy Accademia degli Arcadi, and is a fellow of the British Academy.
Stephen will be interviewed by Caroline Bicks.
Barnswallow Books will have copies of his work for sale after the event.
Elissa Altman, author of Permission
This event is free and open to the public. Registration is not required. Barnswallow Books will have copies of Altman’s work for sale. A Q+A and book signing will follow the conversation. Refreshments and light bites provided.
ELISSA ALTMAN is an award-winning author of literary memoir, essay, and food narrative, who writes from the place where sustenance, the power of the human spirit, and the promise of renewal converge.
Born and raised in New York City in the 1970s, Elissa grew up a voracious reader and writer, a guitarist from the age of four trained under Eddie Simon, graduated from Boston University (CGS ‘83, CAS ‘85) and attended Cambridge University and the Institute for Culinary Education. A longtime, award-winning executive editor for major publishing houses including Clarkson Potter, Rodale Books, and HarperCollins, she acquired and edited sixteen New York Timesbestsellers before devoting herself to writing full-time, and launching her James Beard Award-winning narrative food blog, Poor Man’s Feast, in 2008. Her first book, Poor Man’s Feast: A Love Story of Comfort, Desire, and the Art of Simple Cooking, was published in 2013 by Chronicle Books and declared by the New York Times Book Review “the finest food memoir of recent years.” Its critically-acclaimed prequel, Treyf: My Life as an Unorthodox Outlaw, was published by Berkley Books in 2016. Motherland: A Memoir of Love, Loathing, and Longing, was published in hardcover by Ballantine Books in 2019, will be released in paperback in 2020, and was a 2020 Lambda Award finalist. The Penguin Random House Audio edition, produced and directed by Scott Sherratt, was released with the author narrating, in 2019.
Altman’s work appears in publications including O: The Oprah Magazine, Narrative,Tin House, the Wall Street Journal, Krista Tippett’s On Being, The Guardian, the New York Times, the Washington Post (where her column, Feeding My Mother, ran for a year), Lion’s Roar (where her column on food, sustenance, and meditation is running weekly), and has been widely anthologized. She has been the recipient of a Vermont Studio Centerresidency, twice attended the Tin House Writer’s Workshop, and was a finalist for the Frank McCourt Memoir Prize, awarded by The Southampton Review.
An avid gardener, cook, and musician, Elissa lives with her wife, book designer Susan Turner, and their small herd of animals, in southwestern Connecticut.
Maine ACLU/Banned Books Week
This event is free and open to the public. Registration is not required. Barnswallow Books will have copies of Aviv’s work for sale. A Q+A and book signing will follow the conversation. Refreshments and light bites provided.
Event details to follow.
Heather McGhee in conversation with Cate Blackford
Our Pascal Hall Authors Series kickoff for Summer 2026! Cocktails from 5-5:30, conversation from 5:30-6:30. A book signing and reception will follow. All events in this series are free and open to the public but registration is required. Click here for tickets!
HEATHER MCGHEE designs and promotes solutions to inequality in America. Her first book, The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together spent 10 weeks on the NYT bestseller list and was long-listed for the National Boo Award and Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, among numerous other awards. In the summer of 2022, The Sum of Us was adapted into a Spotify podcast by Higher Ground, the production company of Barack and Michelle Obama. The Sum of Us was adapted into a young adult readers’ version by Random House Children’s in February 2023. The adaptation for middle and high-school students received starred reviews from School Library Journal and Booklist, and Kirkus named it a Best Young Adult Book of the Year.
Heather’s 202 TED talk, “Racism Has a Cost for Everyone” reached 1 million views in just two months online.
Heather has tested in Congress, drafter legislation, and developed strategies for organizations and campaigns that won changes to improve the lives of millions. For nearly two decades, she helped build the non-partisan “think and do” tank Demos, serving four years as president. Through her regular media appearances, she elevates the concerns of working families on programs including NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Heather is the chair of the board of Color of Change, the country’s largest online racial justice organization, and volunteers for numerous other boards in the fields of philanthropy and social justice. Heather graduated from Yale University and the University of CA Berkeley School of Law, and has honorary degrees from Muhlenberg College, Niagara University and CUNY School of Public Health. She lives in Brooklyn with her urbanist husband and chatty preschooler.
Heather will be interviewed by Cate Blackford.
Barnswallow Books will have copies of her work for sale after the event.
Rachel Aviv in Conversation with Jessica Goldstein
This event is free and open to the public. Registration is not required. Barnswallow Books will have copies of Aviv’s work for sale. A Q+A and book signing will follow the conversation. Refreshments and light bites provided.
RACHEL AVIV joined The New Yorker as a staff writer in 2013. Her subjects have included the writer Alice Munro and her daughter’s experience trying to break the silence surrounding her sexual abuse, in a report that received a 2024 George Polk Award; Lucy Letby, a neonatal nurse who may have been wrongfully convicted of murder, in a piece that helped spark an international movement for justice; a German experiment that placed foster children with pedophiles; and the psychologist Elizabeth Loftus, in a Profile that received a National Magazine Award in 2022.
Aviv often writes about psychology, medical ethics, mental illness, criminal justice, and education. She received the 2015 Scripps Howard Award for her investigation of police shootings in Albuquerque, and her writing on mental health has been honored with the American Psychoanalytic Association Award for Excellence in Journalism. She has twice been a finalist for the National Magazine Award for Public Interest, as well as the National Magazine Award for Feature Writing, and she was a 2019 national fellow at New America. Aviv’s 2022 book, “Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us” was a Times best-seller and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She lives in Brooklyn.
Aviv’s second book You Won’t Get Free of It: Stories of Mothers and Daughters is set to be released in July of this year.
Rachel Aviv will be interviewed by Jessica Goldstein. Goldstein is an award-winning journalist who traveled the world covering stories for NPR, then went on to build the network's live events platform. She currently runs Flying Mountain Productions, a consultancy focused on bringing together leaders and thinkers to explore the ideas shaping our world.
Poetry Reading with Dave Morrison
This event is free and open to the public. Registration is not required. Barnswallow Books will have copies of Morrison’s work for sale. A Q+A and book signing will follow the conversation. Refreshments and light bites provided.
DAVE MORRISON is like a carpenter missing fingers – do you worry about his ability or applaud his devotion? Hailed as 'A hearty weed in the garden of American poetry' (Dispatch Magazine) Morrison's poems have been published in literary magazines and anthologies, and featured on Writer’s Almanac, Take Heart, and Poems from Here. Morrison has published nineteen books of poetry including Clubland(poems about rock & roll bars in verse and meter, Fighting Cock Press 2011) and Cancer Poems (JukeBooks 2015). Already Home (JukeBooks 2026) is his most recent collection. After years of playing in rock bands in Boston and NYC, Dave now lives on the coast of Maine with his wife Susan.
Sam Sussman, "Boy from the North Country"
SAM SUSSMAN is the author of the debut novel Boy From the North Country, to be released in September, 2025. Sam previously won the BAFTA New Writing Award and wrote the Harper’s Magazine memoir, “The Silent Type: On (Possibly) Being Bob Dylan’s Son.” He will be joining BSB to talk about his upcoming, debut release.
Originally from the Hudson Valley, Sam has lived in Jerusalem, Berlin, and the U.K. He graduated with a B.A from Swarthmore and M.Phil from Oxford. Sam has taught writing and literature seminars in the U.K, India, and Chile and participated in the PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature three times. He lives in the Yorkville neighborhood of Manhattan and his native Hudson Valley.
This event is free and open to the public. Registration is not required. Sam’s talk will be followed by a Q+A segment. Refreshments and light bites will be served.
Amitav Ghosh in Conversation with Palak Tenaja
Our 2025 Pascal Hall Authors Series concludes with author, Amitav Ghosh. Cocktails from 5-5:30, conversation from 5:30-6:30. A book signing and reception will follow. All events in this series are free and open to the public but registration is required. Click here for tickets.
AMITAV GHOSH was born in Calcutta, and grew up in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka; he studied in Delhi, Oxford and Alexandria. He is the author of several acclaimed works of fiction and non-fiction including the Booker-shortlisted Sea of Poppies, the first novel in the Ibis trilogy, The Glass Palace and The Hungry Tide. His non-fiction writing includes The Great Derangement, The Nutmeg’s Curse and Smoke and Ashes: Opium’s Hidden Histories, which was shortlisted for the Cundill History Prize.
Amitav Ghosh’s work has been translated into more than thirty languages. He was a finalist of the Man Booker International Prize and was the first English-language writer to be the recipient of the Jnanpith Award, India’s highest literary honour. In 2024 Amitav Ghosh was awarded the Erasmus Prize.
Amitav will be interviewed by Palak Tenaja, faculty of literature and writing at the College of the Atlantic.
Barnswallow will have copies of his work for sale after the event.
Zoë Schlanger in Conversation with Jacinda Martinez
ZOË SCHLANGER is a staff writer at The Atlantic. She is the author of The Light Eaters, about the world of plant-behavior-and-intelligence research. She previously covered the environment at Quartz and Newsweek. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Time, NPR, and elsewhere. She was the recipient of a 2017 National Association of Science Writers reporting award for coverage of air pollution in Detroit, and a finalist for the 2019 Livingston Award for a series on water politics at the Texas-Mexico border. At The Atlantic, she covers climate change.
Zoë will be interviewed by Jacinda Martinez.
This event is free and open to the public. Registration is not required. Zoë’s talk will be followed by a Q+A segment as well as a book signing. Barnswallow will have copies of her work for sale.
Caleb Gayle, Author of "Black Moses" in conversation with Ben Lisle
CALEB GAYLE is an award-winning journalist and the author of We Refuse to Forget: A True Story of Black Creeks, American Identity, and Power. A professor at Northeastern University, he is a contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine, and his work also has appeared in The Atlantic, TIME, The Guardian, Guernica, The New Republic, and The Boston Globe. Caleb will discuss his body of work and his upcoming book, Black Moses.
“In Black Moses, Gayle brings to vivid life the world of Edward McCabe: the Black people who believed in his dream of a Black state, the white politicians who didn’t, and the larger challenges of confronting the racism and exclusion that bedeviled Black people’s attempts to carve a place in America for themselves. Gayle draws from extraordinary research and reporting to reveal an America that almost was.”
Caleb will be interviewed by Ben Lisle, associate professor of American Studies at Colby College.
This event is free and open to the public. Registration is not required. Caleb’s talk will be followed by a Q+A segment as well as a book signing. Barnswallow will have copies of his work for sale.
Patrick Radden Keefe in Conversation with Lynn Boulger
Our 2025 Pascal Hall Authors Series welcomes its third author, Patrick Redden Keefe. Cocktails from 5-5:30, conversation from 5:30-6:30. A book signing and reception will follow. All events in this series are free and open to the public but registration is required. Click here for tickets.
PATRICK RADDEN KEEFE is an award-winning staff writer at The New Yorker magazine and author of the New York Times bestsellers Rogues, Empire of Pain and Say Nothing, as well as two earlier nonfiction books: The Snakehead and Chatter.
Patrick started contributing to The New Yorker in 2006. He received the National Magazine Award for Feature Writing in 2014. Say Nothing received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, as well as the Orwell Prize for Political Writing, and was selected by the New York Times as one of the “20 Best Books of the 21st Century.” Empire of Pain was awarded the Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction and was a finalist for the FT Business Book of the Year.
Patrick grew up in Dorchester, Massachusetts and went to college at Columbia. He received masters degrees from Cambridge University and the London School of Economics, and a law degree from Yale. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, and fellowships from the New America Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. He lives in New York.
Patrick will be interviewed by Lynn Boulger, former executive director of the Authors Guild Foundation.
Barnswallow Books will have copies of his work for sale after the event.
Merryspring Nature Center presents “Medium and Massive Maine Mammals”
We’re welcoming MERRYSPRING NATURE CENTER for our second children’s programming event at Barnswallow Books.
John Fromer, Merryspring’s programming director will present an education and interactive talk on Massive and Medium Maine Mammals.
This event is free and open to the public, children and families welcome. Registration is not required.
Sarah Perry in Conversation with Patty O'Toole
SARAH PERRY (she/they) is a memoirist and essayist who writes about love, food culture, body image, trauma, gender-based violence, queerness, and the power dynamics that influence those concerns. She is the author of the memoir After the Eclipse: A Mother’s Murder, a Daughter’s Search, which was named a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, a Poets & Writers Notable Nonfiction Debut, and a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers pick; and Sweet Nothings: Confessions of a Candy Lover, a memoir in 100 short essays that came out in February 2025 from Mariner/HarperCollins.
Sarah will be interviewed by local, acclaimed biographer, Patty O’Toole.
This event is free and open to the public. Registration is not required. Sarah’s talk will be followed by a Q+A segment as well as a book signing. Barnswallow will have copies of her/their work for sale after the event.
Emily Wilson in Conversation with Barbara Weiden Boyd
Our 2025 Pascal Hall Authors Series welcomes their second author, Emily Wilson. Cocktails from 5-5:30, conversation from 5:30-6:30. A book signing and reception will follow. All events in this series are free and open to the public but registration is required. Click here for tickets.
EMILY WILSON is Department Chair and Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, holding the College for Women Class of 1963 Term Professor in the Humanities.Wilson attended Oxford University (Balliol College B.A. in Classics and Corpus Christi College M.Phil. in Renaissance English Literature) and Yale University (Ph.D. in Classics and Comparative Literature). She has been named a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome in Renaissance & Early Modern scholarship, a MacArthur Fellow, and a Guggenheim Fellow.
Emily will be interviewed by Barbara Weiden Boyd.
Barnswallow will have copies of her work for sale after the event.
Midcoast Habitat for Humanity: Help Us Build a Home Auction
Join us as we prepare for Midcoast Habitat’s first affordable housing project in Rockport—a 10-home pocket neighborhood providing safe, stable housing for local families.
At our Build-a-Home Auction, guests will symbolically “build” a home by bidding on essential components, with every donation directly funding real materials and construction.
Help us build the first house! Eat, Drink, Bid… and Build!
Where: Pascal Hall
When: Saturday, June 21 from 5- 8:30 pm
Tickets: $100 individual/ $150 couple
For more information about the event and to purchase tickets visit Midcoast Habitat’s for Humanity’s website here.
Karla Cornejo Villavicencio in conversation with Caitlin Shetterly
Our Pascal Hall Authors Series kickoff for Summer 2025! Cocktails from 5-5:30, conversation from 5:30-6:30. A book signing and reception will follow. All events in this series are free and open to the public but registration is required. Click here for tickets!
Born in Ecuador and raised undocumented in New York City, author Karla Cornejo Villavicencio writes with candor and clarity about mental health, beauty, music, and the experiences of immigrants who live in this country without citizenship. A 2011 graduate of Harvard, her work has been published by the likes of The New York Times, Vogue and many other publications. Her first book, The Undocumented Americans (2020), a collection of essays that are part memoir, part reporting, has been greeted with enormous acclaim. Not only was it a finalist for the National Book Award, but the book was listed among Barack Obama’s favorite books of 2020 and was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in American Studies at Yale University.
Karla will be interviewed by Caitlin Shetterly, a Maine native and author of Pete and Alice in Maine, Modified, Made for You and Me, and Faultlines: Stories of Divorce.
Barn Talk with Chris Van Dusen
Join us as we host beloved local children’s author Chris Van Dusen on Thursday, June 12th from 5-7PM. Chris will read some of his work, show his illustration process and sign books on the front porch.
This event is free and open to the public, children and families welcome.. Registration is not required.
"Bad Press" Film Screening
When the Muscogee Nation in Oklahoma abruptly repealed its landmark Free Press Act to muzzle the tribe’s hard-hitting news outlet, defiant and foul-mouthed journalist Angel Ellis charged headfirst into a historic battle to restore her tribe’s press freedoms.
When: Saturday, May 17, 2025 at 5:30pm
Where: Strand Theater, Rockland
After the film, join Angel Ellis, director Joe Peeler and Villager Publisher Aaron Britt to discuss what we can learn from this timely story about a lone journalist fighting a corrupt system for her fellow citizens.
View the trailer here and purchase tickets here.
This is a Midcoast Villager event, sponsored by Points North, Strand Theatre, and the Lesher Family Foundation.
Midlife Conference
No longer young, but not yet “old”, middle aged adults face enormous responsibility and pressures. Some of us are coping with aging parents and the seemingly impossible task of saving for a child’s college tuition. Others are going through a divorce or wondering how to sustain a long-term partnership. Nearly all of us are asking ourselves existential questions like, “Will I ever achieve my dreams?” or “Is it too late to start over?”
It’s fair to say that life satisfaction is a wobbly notion for many middle agers. But, does it have to be this way? What if we could be more open, honest, and vulnerable about the common challenges inherent in midlife? What value could the knowledge of shared experience do for you as you consider current and future challenges? Could we instead shift to celebrating these middle years in a richer community of our peers?
This conference aims to ground us in an understanding of how to navigate relationships, finances, physical and mental health, and career throughout midlife. Over the course of 2.5 days, experts and practitioners will offer insights that can support our efforts to harness the hardships of getting older to shape a midlife that feels more meaningful and connected to your community.
For a second year Annemarie Ahearn, Nathan Perkins and Erin Cochran will host the Midlife Conference at Pascal Hall. Tickets can be purchased here.
Celebrate Haitian Culture and Give Back with Fonkoze
Fonkoze is a 501(c)3 organization dedicated to providing microfinance services, literacy training, health education, and business skills development to women in rural communities across Haiti. Through these programs, they aim to create sustainable change and promote economic independence among some of Haiti’s most vulnerable populations.
Fonkoze will celebrate 30 years of giving back to Haiti by hosting a screening of the documentary Kite Zo A, winner of the 2024 Canadian Screen Award for Best Documentary Cinematography. The screening will be followed by a Q+A with the Film’s Producer Zach Niles, live music by Lakou Mizik and traditional Haitian food by Chef Alain Lemaire.
Admittance is free although donation is suggested, all proceeds will go to benefit Fonkoze’s continued work in Haiti. You can register by following this link.
Haitian Culture for Children
Coming to Barnswallow Books this Fall is a celebration of Haitian culture through children’s literature, art and music. In celebration of 30 years of empowering women in rural Haiti, Fonkoze brings this celebration of Haitian culture to the community of Rockport, Maine.
Haitian Storytime: Immerse your children in captivating tales that bring Haiti’s culture to life.
Creative Coloring Activities: Kids can express their creativity while learning about Haitian traditions.
Rara and Carnival Instrument Fun: Not only will your little ones learn how to pronounce the names of traditional instruments like a true Jacmel native, but they’ll also have the chance to play them.
This unforgettable celebration of Haiti’s spirit and traditions is designed to educate and inspire our future leaders. Bring the whole family for a morning of learning, laughter, and cultural discovery.
Reserve your and your child’s spot here.
The Good Trouble featuring Dave Morrison
On Saturday September 28 The Good Trouble Project will host a benefit concert for the Knox Clinic. The show will be hosted by singer-songwriters John and Rachel Nicholas with featured performer, poet and musician Dave Morrison. The Good Trouble Project was founded by the singer-songwriter duo as a means to ‘do something’ for their community by hosting intimate, fundraising concerts to benefit local organizations. The music series was named to honor the legacy of congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis.
The Knox Clinic has been providing free medical, dental, and mental health services to uninsured and underinsured neighbors in Knox County for 25 years. Now, in an exciting transition to a full community health center, the Clinic is expanding its services to reach even more people in need. A representative from the Clinic will be present to discuss its mission, these exciting changes, and the vital role it plays in supporting the health of the local community.
Many people know Dave Morrison as the manager of the Camden Opera House and as a local poet. Dave bought his first guitar at age 16, started playing clubs at 17, and for the next 20 years played clubs and concerts in Boston, New England, and New York. After a stint as a 40-year-old freshman at the New School Creative Writing program, he began to write poetry – his poems have been published in literary magazines and anthologies, and featured on Writer’s Almanac, Take Heart, and Poems From Here. His seventeenth collection, We Are Here and It Is Now was published in 2024 by Soul Finger Press. For the Good Trouble show, Dave will be performing his signature looped guitar/poetry mashup.
The venue for the show is the barn attached to Barnswallow Books in Rockport Village which is generously donated by The Lesher Family Foundation, owners of the shop. The shop is located at 166 Russell Ave, across the street from the Library. Also, it should be mentioned that Tom O’Donovan at Harbor Square Gallery sponsors an honorarium for the featured performer. 85% of the proceeds go to the beneficiary organization.
Show starts at 7pm and admission is $15. Doors open at 6:30. Seats can be reserved by calling or texting John at 508-314-1506. If the weather is cool bring an extra layer - the barn has minimal heating.
Slow Traditional Music Jam
Summer Hours: Every Tuesday from 6-8 pm @ Barnswallow Books, June 18th- September 17th
Fall/Winter Hours: Every Tuesday from 6-8 pm @ Pascal Hall, September 17th- TBD
Barnswallow Books is pleased to host a weekly slow traditional music jam every Tuesday from 6-8 pm starting June 18. The slow jam is geared towards advanced beginner/early intermediate players who would like to improve their playing skills and play music in a safe and comfortable environment. All or most traditional instruments are welcome including but not limited to: fiddle, guitar, accordion, mandolin, cello, whistle, banjo, bouzouki, and bass.
The slow jam will focus on traditional tunes from New England, Appalachia, Quebec, Ireland & Great Britain. A tune list and downloadable sheet music is available upon request, you can also scan the QR code at the bottom left hand corner of the graphic to access.
Jams are free and open to the public and will take place at Barnswallow books, 166 Russell Ave. Rockport through Sept 17 and will move indoors to Pascal Hall, 86 Pascal Ave. on Sept 17 for the fall/winter.
For more information, contact Resa Randolph ResaSings@gmail.com
Jia Tolentino in conversation with Morgan Lavoie
Our Pascal Hall Authors Series comes to a close for Summer 2024! Cocktails from 5-5:30, conversation from 5:30-6:30. A book signing and reception will follow. All events in this series are free and open to the public but registration is required. Click here for tickets!
Jia Tolentino (August 27) is a staff writer at The New Yorker. Previously, she was the deputy editor of Jezebel and a contributing editor at the Hairpin. In 2023, she won a National Magazine Award for Columns and Essays. Her first book, the essay collection Trick Mirror, was published in 2019.
Tolentino will be in conversation with Morgan Lavoie, the C.O.O. and Editor in Chief of The Money News Network, where she is responsible for producing the network’s slate of content. Before MNN, she was at iHeartMedia, working on some of the company’s most popular podcasts. She is a Webby honoree.
Goodnight Moonshine Concert in the Barn
Goodnight Moonshine is a guitar and vocal duet, and a musical marriage in all senses. The Duo combines the evocative voice and songwriting of Molly Venter, with Eben Pariser’s adventurous guitar playing. The result is folk music with a depth of improvisation and tonal subtlety usually reserved for jazz.
While Molly and Eben have been successful musicians separately, their combined talents leave nothing more to be desired. Their relaxed harmonies and obvious chemistry leave the listener impressed by the vulnerability of the artists and hopeful that such honest communication becomes the norm and not the exception – both for musicians and marriages.
Join us in the barn on Friday, August 16th from 7:30- 9:30. Tickets available for purchase here.
Rhodri Lewis in conversation with Donna Denizé | Talk & Book Signing
After spending 23 years at the University of Oxford as a student, faculty member, and ultimately full professor — where he was also Head of Graduate Studies for the Humanities Division and Director of Ertegun House — Rhodri Lewis moved permanently to Princeton in 2018. His interests lie principally in the literary, cultural, and intellectual histories of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. (He is uncertain when this period begins and ends, but sometimes feels sure that it must run from at least as early as 1453 to at least late as 1761.) Related preoccupations include bibliography and textual criticism; the status of drama as an idea and a series of practices, both theatrical and literary; the status of early modern English as a language informed by Latin and by other European vernaculars; the diffusion and decline of humanism as a cultural and educational ideology; the history of science, the history of religion, and the history of political thought; the frequently contested lines of demarcation between human and animal forms of life; the no less frequently contested status of “poetic” (and/or “literary”) language; the history of literary criticism.
In 2017, he published Hamlet and the Vision of Darkness, a critical re-evaluation of the most famous play of all. It was a Choice “Outstanding Academic Title” for 2018. His new book, Shakespeare’s Tragic Art, builds on his account of Hamlet to offer a powerfully original reassessment of Shakespearean tragedy in the round—of what drew Shakespeare toward tragic drama, what makes his tragedies distinctive, and why they matter. At the moment, he is at work on a life of the great literary critic Frank Kermode, whose papers are now housed in the Firestone Library; once done with that, he’ll be returning to the early modern world. His research has been supported by grants and fellowships from institutions including the Leverhulme Trust, the Mellon Foundation, the British Academy, the Huntington Library, and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Outside the academy, he writes for publications including The Times Literary Supplement, Prospect, The Literary Review, and The Los Angeles Review of Books.
Lewis will be interviewed by Donna Denizé,
Of Haitian American descent, Donna Denizé holds a B.A. from Stonehill College and an M.A in Renaissance drama from Howard University, where she was also a student of poet Robert Hayden, while he served as Consultant to the Library of Congress. She is currently earning her second Master’s, this time an MFA in poetry. She has contributed to scholarly books and journals, most recently an article on the sonnet and Claude McKay in the anthology, The American Sonnet(University of Iowa Press, 2022), and she is the author of a chapbook, The Lover’s Voice (1997) and a book, Broken Like Job (2005). She currently Chairs the English Department at St. Albans School for boys, where she teaches Freshman English, a junior/senior elective in Shakespeare, and Crossroads in American Identity, a course she designed years ago and which affords her the opportunity to do what she most enjoys—exploring not only the cultural and inter-textual crossroads of literary works but also their points of human unity.
Rhodri’s talk will be followed by a Q+A segment as well as a book signing. Barnswallow will have copies of his work for sale.
Emily St. John Mandel in conversation with Gibson Fay-LeBlanc
Our Pascal Hall Authors Series is in full swing for Summer 2024 with our third event! Cocktails from 5-5:30, conversation from 5:30-6:30. A book signing and reception will follow. All events in this series are free and open to the public but registration is required. Click here for tickets!
Emily St. John Mandel (August 6) is the author of six novels, most recently Sea of Tranquility, which has been translated into 25 languages and was selected by President Barack Obama as one of his favorite books of 2022. Her previous novels include The Glass Hotel, which was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and has been translated into 26 languages; and Station Eleven, which was a finalist for a National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award, won the 2015 Arthur C. Clarke Award among other honors, has been translated into 36 languages, and aired as a limited series on HBO Max.
Mandel’s interviewer is Gibson Fay-LeBlanc, whose books of poetry are Death of a Ventriloquist and Deke Dangle Dive. He served as the City of Portland’s fifth Poet Laureate, ending a three-year term in 2018. He currently serves as executive director of the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance.
Andrew Sean Greer in conversation with Michael Chabon + Ayelet Waldman
Our Pascal Hall Authors Series is in full swing for Summer 2024 with our second event! Cocktails from 5-5:30, conversation from 5:30-6:30. A book signing and reception will follow. All events in this series are free and open to the public but registration is required. Click here for tickets!
Andrew Sean Greer (July 23) won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel Less, published in 2018. Its sequel, Less is Lost, was published in 2022. He is also the author of the bestseller The Confessions of Max Tivoli. Greer has taught at numerousuniversities, including Stanford and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, been a TODAY Show pick, a New York Public Library Cullman Center Fellow, a judge for the National Book Award, and a winner of the California Book Award and the New York Public Library Young Lions Award.
Greer’s interviewers are Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman. Among Chabon’s prize-winning books are The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Wonder Boys, and The Yiddish Policemen’s Union. Recently he has worked as the showrunner for the Star Trek spin-off Picard with Patrick Stewart. Ayelet Waldman is the bestselling author of A Really Good Day: How Microdosing Made a Mega Difference in My Mood, My Marriage, and My Life; the novels Love and Treasure, Red Hook Road, Love and Other Impossible Pursuits, and Daughter's Keeper; as well as of the essay collection Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes.
Everyman Repertory Theatre reading of "It Can't Happen Here- Again"
In 1936 “It Can’t Happen Here,” a play by Sinclair Lewis, opened simultaneously on 21 stages in 17 states on October 27, one week before that year’s presidential election as a warning against the rise of facism in America.
Barnswallow Books is happy to donate space to The Everyman Repertory Theatre as they present a reading of “It Can’t Happen Here-Again” in the Barn as homage to the 1936 production and a call to action, now, in 2024.
This event is free and open to the public, no registration is required.
The Maine House II, Kathleen Hackett in conversation with Lynn Boulger
The Maine House II moves beyond the authors’ cri de coeur; they’re on a mission. Through 25 homes—inshore, inland, and on islands— McEvoy, Burwell, and Hackett highlight the beauty and importance of preservation, restoration, thoughtful renovation, and low-impact living in the place they love the most.
From visionaries who saw home in a decommissioned lighthouse, a former hotel, and a boat shed to families resolutely leaving gen- erational homes largely untouched (some continuing to live off the grid) and still others honoring vernacular architecture by living with it in surprising ways, The Maine House II captures the myriad ways one can live in this singular place—in the present—while preserving the past and ensuring its future.
Kathleen Hackett spends her summers on the Midcoast. She has written more than two dozen books, including At the Artisan’s Table and Brooklyn Interiors, and contributes to Elle Decor, Architectural Digest, The World of Interiors, and Frederic magazine. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, and Rockport Village, Maine.
Kathleen will be interviewed by Lynn Boulger, former executive director of the Authors Guild Foundation.
Elliot Ackerman in conversation with Alicia Anstead
Our Pascal Hall Authors Series kickoff for Summer 2024! Cocktails from 5-5:30, conversation from 5:30-6:30. A book signing and reception will follow. All events in this series are free and open to the public but registration is required. Click here for tickets!
Elliot Ackerman (June 25) is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels 2054, Halcyon, 2034, Red Dress In Black and White, Waiting for Eden, Dark at the Crossing, and Green on Blue, as well as the memoir The Fifth Act: America’s End in Afghanistan, and Places and Names: On War, Revolution and Returning. His books have been nominated for the National Book Award, the Andrew Carnegie Medal in both fiction and nonfiction, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize,among others. He is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and a Marine veteran who served five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he received the Silver Star, the Bronze Star for Valor, and the Purple Heart.
Ackerman’s interviewer is Alicia Anstead, a writer, editor, producer, and educator. She was previously executive editor of Inside Arts and of The Writer magazine. As an arts reporter at the Bangor Daily News in Maine, she won many awards for her writing. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Boston Globe, Scientific American, and Art New England.