Upcoming Events

  • Tuesday, March 26 at 5:30 pm

    Join us in Essex on Tuesday, March 26th for Turning Pages Live!
    We will be discussing The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride with Mary of Star 92.9's Mike and Mary. Come prepared for spoilers--we're going to talk about the whole book!  Light refreshments and fabulous reading recommendations will be provided. 

    You can join the Turning Pages with Mary Facebook group here.



  • Wednesday, March 27 at 7:00 pm

    Join us on Zoom to read and/or to listen. Those interested in reading can sign up at the beginning of the meeting, via the Zoom Chat Box feature. 

    ABOUT THE EVENT HOST:  Bianca Amira Zanella is a cis queer Vermont-based performance poet, artist, and advocate living on traditionally Abenaki land. She is the Poet-in-Residence at Phoenix Books Rutland, hosting an international monthly open mic. Her poems have most recently appeared in The Artful Mind, The Rutland Herald, The Mountain Troubadour, and The Reverie. Their poem films, sculptural poems, and poem paintings have also been on exhibit with PoemCity Montpelier, Merwin Gallery, Stone Valley Arts, SPACE: a Pop Up Art Gallery, and Surdam Gallery.

    They received the Corrine Eastman Davis Memorial Award for their poem, "A prayer –before the soup– for the suicidal son" (2018). In 2019, Bianca acted as Wellness Coordinator for the Feminine Empowerment Movement Slam (FEMS) tournament based...



  • Thursday, March 28 at 6:00 pm

    Join our book buyer Laurel each month to discuss a paperback title.  March's selection is Mouth to Mouth by Antoine Wilson.  Grab your copy at the Essex store or online, and come prepared for a lively discussion (including spoilers)!  

    About the book:  A successful art dealer confesses the story of his meteoric rise in this “powerful, intoxicating, and shocking” (The New York Timesnovel that’s a “slow burn à la Patricia Highsmith” (Oprah Daily). “You’ll struggle not to rip through in one sitting” (Vogue).

    In a first-class lounge at JFK airport, our narrator listens as Jeff Cook, a former classmate he only vaguely remembers, shares the uncanny story of his adult life—a life that changed course years before, the moment he resuscitated a drowning man.

    Jeff reveals that after that traumatic, galvanizing morning on the beach, he was...



  • Saturday, March 30 at 11:00 am to at 1:00 pm

    Please join us as we welcome Vermont author Eric Rickstad to Phoenix Books in Essex for a book signing and author meet-and-greet. We will be celebrating the release of Eric's latest book, Lilith, an incendiary powerhouse of a novel that strikes straight at the wounded heart of America.

    About the book:

    Mother. Hero. Villain. Killer.

    After her son, Lydan, suffers traumatic injuries in a school shooting, single mom Elisabeth Ross grows enraged at men in power. If they won't do anything to help end this epidemic of violence, she will. Believing it's her destiny, she sets out to awaken the world to the cowards these men are and commits her own shocking act of violence.

    Going by the name Lilith--the first wife of Adam who fled Eden rather than serve a man--she posts a video of her crime that reverberates throughout society. Praised by some, demonized by others, and hunted by the FBI and vigilantes...



  • Tuesday, April 02 at 7:00 pm

    Join us to kick off National Poetry Month with Vermont poets Stephen Cramer and Neil Shepard!

    In City Full of Fireworks & Blues Stephen Cramer collects a series of lyric poems that explore both love and loss with a taut musicality that enters the reader's very musculature. Though the book often features the emotional or intellectual skirmishes that are common to all, it is far more of a celebration than a dirge. "Let us learn," one of the poems offers, "the way cries inherit our breath, the way 1,000 facets of song can inhabit the mouth."

    Amid the tensions of family and community and the struggles with desire and disappointment out of which art is made, there is all this profusion: an unstoppable spring, the orange flash of a fox, figs and honey in a Greek harbor town, and a pianist conjuring lost love in his figured solos-our ravenous lives teetering on the edge of today's sadness. In his ninth...



  • Thursday, April 04 at 6:30 pm

    Please join us to celebrate the launch of Vermont poet Amy Allen's debut collection of poetry, Mountain Offerings, at Phoenix Books Rutland.

    Through interactions with and the examination of the natural world, poems in Mountain Offerings move from a youthful voice to a more experienced one, showing a coming-of-age in partnership, parenthood, loss, and the development of independence and self-awareness. The simplicity, beauty, and peace of the outdoors provides an ideal vehicle through which this poet explores complex human emotions. From the poem “January in Vermont”:

    The stars always shine brightest
    on the coldest of days,
    a reward just for making it.

    Mountain Offerings is accessible, honest, poignant, and—rooted in nature and the natural world—earthly.

    Amy Allen studied English literature and creative writing at Skidmore College and at Drew University. Her work has been published in a variety of...



  • Sunday, April 14 at 2:00 pm

    Join us for an afternoon of poetry hosted by Phoenix Books Rutland’s own Bianca Amira Zanella.  Come to read, come to listen, or come for both!  Those interested in reading can sign up at the door.

    ABOUT THE EVENT HOST:  Bianca Amira Zanella is a cis queer Vermont-based performance poet, artist, and advocate living on traditionally Abenaki land. She is the Poet-in-Residence at Phoenix Books Rutland, hosting an international monthly open mic. Her poems have most recently appeared in The Artful Mind, The Rutland Herald, The Mountain Troubadour, and The Reverie. Their poem films, sculptural poems, and poem paintings have also been on exhibit with PoemCity Montpelier, Merwin Gallery, Stone Valley Arts, SPACE: a Pop Up Art Gallery, and Surdam Gallery.

    They received the Corrine Eastman Davis Memorial Award for their poem, "A prayer –before the soup– for the suicidal son" (2018). In 2019, Bianca acted as Wellness Coordinator for the...



  • Sunday, April 14 at 4:00 pm to at 6:00 pm

    Join poet Greg Delanty for a reading from his latest collection of poetry, The Professor of Forgetting at The Whiskey Room, 173 College Street, in downtown, Burlington.

    The Professor of Forgetting, a new collection from the acclaimed Irish poet Greg Delanty, swings back and forth on the fulcrum of what we call "now" and confronts our notion of how time passes. From the very first poem, "Going Nowhere Fast," which ponders whether we are now here or going nowhere, to the final selection, from which the book takes its self-reflective title, these exuberant poems chronicle what it means to be human with joy, pathos, honesty, despair, sorrow, celebration, and wit. Structurally diverse in form, the poems also explore a range of poignant topics, including childhood, family, love, racism, the natural world, immigration, and the unavoidability of death. Often humorous, Delanty's poetry finds ways of coping with the...



  • Monday, April 15 at 7:00 pm

    Check back soon for more details!



  • Book launch celebration presented with Onion River Press

    Tuesday, April 16 at 6:30 pm

    Check back soon for more details!



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