The Peru Gazette

SARANAC LAKE, NY — The Adirondack Center for Writing is set to host the Center’s 2024 Writers Festival, June 7-8 in Saranac Lake.

The biennial festival features writers, poets, comedians, and other creatives from across the country. It celebrates how writing and storytelling—in all of their forms—are essential to art, entertainment, and social change and includes readings, workshops, publishing programs, special performances, a book fair, a stand-up show, and more.

“We’re bringing writers from all over the country together with the diverse Adirondack writing community that we’ve been fostering for 25 years,” said executive director Nathalie Thill. “Ask any of the hundreds of people who joined us in 2022; this weekend is a chance for everyone — from our special guests to local authors to writers-to-be just dipping their toes in for the first time — to grow and learn from one another. We’re always sure to choose guests and design events that will entertain, intrigue, inspire and underscore all the possibilities of writing. We’ve even got the poet laureate of New York State, Patricia Spears Jones, blessing us with her presence. It’s a powerful thing to be a part of and we hope anyone who loves to write, read or laugh will join us for another kick-ass weekend.”

The two-day event will kick off Friday, June 7, at 7 p.m. at the Harrietstown Town Hall with a reading by two New Yorkers dedicated to building community through poetry: Patricia Spears-Jones, the 2024 NY State Poet Laureate, and Denice Frohman, a former Women of the World Poetry Slam Champion. This event is free and open to the public.

On Saturday, June 8, the day will start with an optional guided forest bathing experience with Adirondack Riverwalking. Events throughout the day include attendee “speed dating,” a quick, fun and non-romantic way for fellow writers to meet one another, as well as writing workshops, a book fair featuring dozens of local and regional authors and presses, an open mic, manuscript consultations, a publishing panel, a drop-in beginners writing workshop and a regional author showcase.

Saturday evening’s events will include keynote talks and readings by GennaRose Nethercott, author of Thistlefoot, and Megan Mayhew Bergman, author of How Strange a Season and director of the Breadloaf Environmental Writers’ Conference. The keynote will take place at 5:30 p.m. in the Great Room at Hotel Saranac. The public is welcome to attend; tickets cost $10. The festival will conclude at 8 p.m. at the Waterhole with a stand-up show by Greg Edwards, opened by Tracy Dolan and hosted by Nathan Hartswick of Vermont Comedy Club; cost to attend is $15.

Many festival events are free at the First Draft registration level. Festival goers can register at the Paperback level (Hardcover and Rare Book levels are sold out) to gain access to additional events and programs. View the full event schedule and line-up, register for the festival and buy tickets for individual events at adirondackcenterforwriting.org/kickassregister.

“With this year’s festival, we’re highlighting the unique ways that writing brings us closer to the natural world,” said Tyler Barton, ACW’s program manager. “Whether it’s the long-dead thistle in GennaRose Nethercott’s novel symbolizing history as it tumbles across landscapes and scatters its seeds, or Denice Frohman grappling with the Adirondacks as a ‘city kid thick in the woods of ferns & fungus’ as she listens to ‘the loons and coyotes exchanging hot verses over the lake,’ our line-up is full of writers enchanted by and in conversation with flora, fauna and the land that connects us all.”

The 2024 Writers Festival is sponsored by Adirondack Health, Cape Air, Hotel Saranac, Northern Power & Light, Long Run Wealth Advisors, The Wild Center, National Endowment for the Arts, Origin Coffee Co., Publishing Genius Press, SL Book Nook, NCPR and the Saranac Lake Free Library. To become a sponsor of this year’s festival, visit adirondackcenterforwriting.org/kickass-sponsor.