Burlington

Join bestselling local author Ben Hewitt for a discussion of how he quit worrying about money and became the richest guy in the world.

When Ben Hewitt met Erik Gillard, he was amazed. Here was a real-life rebel living happily and comfortably in small-town Vermont on less than $10,000 per year. Gillard’s no bum. He has a job, a girlfriend, good friends, and strong ties to the community. But how he lives his life—and why—launches Hewitt on a quest to understand the true role of money and mindless consumerism in our lives. By meeting and befriending people like Erik Gillard, Hewitt realized that their happiness was real. What was he—and the rest of a deeply unhappy population—missing?

Saved is the humorous, surprising, and ultimately life-changing result of Hewitt’s quest, a narrative that challenges everything we know about the meaning of money. Hewitt uses his sharp eye for story, exhaustive reporting, and his own experience living below his means to bring what he learned into an even larger context. How does money really work? How can a bankrupt society move forward? The answers are not what you think, and Hewitt has written an important book for our times.

Ben Hewitt is the bestselling author of The Town That Food Saved and Making Supper Safe. His work has appeared in Wired, The New York Times Magazine, Men’s Journal, Bicycling, and others. He lives in Cabot, VT.

You're invited to the kick-off event for Riding My Guitar: The Rick Norcross Story! Join Stephen and Rick for a most entertaining evening during which Stephen will talk about the book, and Rick will sing some of his famous (infamous?!) original folk songs. Don't miss this event celebrating Rick's 50th anniversary as a professional musician.

After nearly three years of global research, Riding My Guitar will be off the presses in time for to coincide with Rick’s 50th Anniversary Concert Tour. "Writing this book has been an extraordinary journey," says Stephen, "I thank Rick for the hundreds of hours he’s ‘suffered’ through recalling his intriguing life and, believe it or not, we’re still good friends! Many fellow musicians, friends and fans from all over the world have generously shared their stories about Rick. I think it is all adding up to a fascinating tale."

“Rick Norcross is a true Vermont original, a kind of musical Jack Kerouac. Stephen Russell Payne’s new book, Riding My Guitar - The Rick Norcross Story perfectly captures his talent, his history and his good heart.”
-- Howard Frank Mosher, award-winning author

“Being a flatlander often means missing out on some of the real Vermont stories. In his new book, Riding My Guitar - The Rick Norcross Story, author Stephen Russell Payne tells an engaging tale of an authentic Vermont talent who might otherwise have remained below the national radar. Rick Norcross’s gifts as a songwriter, performer and photographer are eclipsed only by his generosity and warmth.”
-- George Thomas, legendary VPR radio host

“Riding My Guitar is the entertaining story of a true Vermont original. Rick Norcross’s amazing journey has taken him throughout the US and to Europe, but at heart he remains a friendly, modest and very talented Vermonter. In telling this story of the irrepressible Norcross, Stephen Payne also gives us a vivid picture of rural Vermont in the 1950’s and ‘60’s. It’s a fun read!”
-- Tom Slayton, Editor Emeritus, Vermont Life Magazine

“Rick Norcross is a self made man hewn out of all that makes Vermont so unique. Somehow over the decades he has carved out a music career which stays close to its roots in the music he composes, sings and plays. So often his work provides a sense of where he’s from and what he has picked up traveling his own path, always bringing it back to the home place. You hear it whether on a recording, or a concert or just a kitchen tunk over at the neighbors. Good on yah’ Rick, Good on yah.”
-- Ken Squier, owner, Radio Vermont Group

“What I respect most about Rick is his strong sense of community and music’s role in bringing people together. He cares deeply about his fellow musicians and about each and every person sitting in the audience. I’ve taken many a ride in Rick’s bus to gigs, and he’s full of stories, which fi nd their way into his songs. Anyone who listens to our new CD will immediately appreciate how Rick can tell a funny story about a place like Hardwick, while at the same time expressing his true love for the town and its people.”
-- Charlie MacFadyen, Rambler Arranger & Piano Player

Rick Norcross is the longtime leader of Vermont's premier western swing band, Rick and the Ramblers.

Stephen Russell Payne is a fourth-generation Vermonter from the Northeast Kingdom town of St. Johnsbury. A lifelong writer, he has published fiction, non-fiction and poetry in a number of publications including Vermont Life magazine, the Tufts Review, The Vermont Literary Review, Livin’ the Vermont Way magazine and Route 7- Vermont Literary Journal. He's also the author of the novel Cliff Walking.

Join Bill Mares for a discussion of his latest book, a heartwarming story of his experience running the Boston Marathon. The Bach Road to Boston tells the story of a weekend ten years ago when Bill sang Bach's "St. Matthew Passion" on Easter Sunday and then ran the Boston Marathon the next day. More broadly, this book is about the interweaving of two hobbies of singing and running.

Raised in Texas, educated at Harvard, Bill Mares has been a journalist, high school teacher and member of the Vermont House of Representatives. He has authored or co-authored 13 books on subjects ranging from the Marine Corps to workplace democracy to desert travel to Presidential fishing. His hobbies include running, beekeeping, singing and fly-fishing. His latest book, co-authored with Rick Peyser, was Brewing Change: Behind the Bean at Green Mountain Coffee Roasters. He lives in Burlington, Vermont with his wife of 41 years, Chris Hadsel.  He is a frequent commentator on VPR.

Celebrate all the delicious flavors that Vermont has to offer at this event with Tracey Medeiros!  Meet Tracey and enjoy samples from her new book The Vermont Farm Table Cookbook.  (Might we suggest, too, that a signed copy of The Vermont Farm Table Cookbook makes a perfect Mother's Day gift?)

When Tracey Medeiros wrote Dishing Up Vermont in 2008, she wanted to showcase the chefs and restaurateurs who were dazzling taste buds with their fresh, whole‐food creations. With The Vermont Farm Table Cookbook, Medeiros has traversed the Green Mountain State once again, in search of not only those celebrated chefs but the hard‐working farmers who provide them with their fresh and wholesome ingredients as well. Collecting their stories and some 125 of their delicious, rustic‐yet‐refined, Vermont inspired recipes, Medeiros presents an irresistible gastronomic portrait of this singular state.

Tracey Medeiros is a freelance food writer, food stylist, and recipe developer and tester. She writes a weekly food column for the Essex Reporter and the Colchester Sun and writes the Edible Farm column for Edible Green Mountains Magazine. Medeiros is also the author of Dishing Up Vermont. She lives in Essex Junction, VT.

Judith Klein, food blogger for Fooditka interviewed Tracey Medeiros at New York City's Union Square Greenmarket. Tracey had a cooking demonstration and a Dishing Up Vermont (Storey Publishing, 2008) cookbook signing event at the farmers' market.

Join members of the Poetry Society of Vermont for a celebration of National Poetry Month!

Founded in 1947, PSOV is an association of poets and supporters who join in promoting an interest in poetry through meetings, workshops, readings, contests, and contributions to the society's chapbook, The Mountain Troubadour. Anyone may join the society including high school and college students and non-residents of Vermont. Visit http://www.poetrysocietyofvermont.org/poetryeventsinvt.html for more information.

Discover the Civil War in today's Vermont with Howard Coffin.

Today, throughout Vermont, it is possible to identify hundreds and hundreds of Civil War-related sites. Throughout Vermont are soldier homes, halls where war meetings encouraged enlistments, churches where soldier funerals were held and abolitionists spoke, monuments to those who served, hospital sites, and homes where women gathered to make items for the soldiers. The Vermont State House is a virtual Civil War museum. A building survives in Woodstock where the war was administered. Cemeteries hold the gravestones of many of the 34,000 who fought. A field even exists where in 1803 a Quaker preacher heard a voice from above fortell a bloody war over slavery. With the help of this book, Civil War sites can be located as in no other state, taking the reader through the beautiful Vermont landscape of hill farms and small towns that looks more like the Civil War era than that of any other state.

A seventh‐generation Vermonter with six ancestors who served in Vermont regiments, Howard Coffin lectures extensively on the Civil War. He is also the author of Full Duty: Vermont in the Civil War; Nine Months to Gettysburg; and The Battered Stars. A former press secretary to U.S. Senator James Jeffords, Coffin and his wife, Sue, live in Montpelier, Vermont.

Join us for a book launch for James Tabor's latest novel, Frozen Solid - a chilling tale of suspense set against the forbidding backdrop of the South Pole.

Join us in welcoming local author Kim MacQueen to Phoenix Books Burlington!

About the Book: Deb Solomon is a new mom suffering a spate of postpartum depression, a listless marriage and a career in free-fall. So she jumps at the chance to go to work in another world: a university laboratory housing language-competent apes and the humans who study and care for them, led by brilliant primatologist Soraya Baldwin-Ruhl. But Soraya’s star is already falling, even as the people at the lab act more apelike even as the apes start to seem more human. Deb’s own life soon spirals into a science soap opera as she follows Soraya further and further into near-madness.

"MacQueen keeps the tension building as Deb falls deeper and deeper under the spell of the driven, perplexing Soraya, who perilously walks a fine line between studying the apes and becoming a central part of their world. With compelling characters and a suspenseful plot, MacQueen puts both apes and humans under the microscope." --Kathryn Livingston for IndieReader

Kim MacQueen moved to Vermont in June 2012 and teaches writing at Champlain College. She has been a fiction and nonfiction writer and editor for research, legal and general interest newspapers, magazines, websites and books since 1993, as part of a varied career also that includes stints as a research lab administrator, political/education/crime reporter and grant proposal writer. Out, Out is her first novel.

Join Nancy as she introduces Brain in a Jar to the world from her home bookstore in Burlington, Vermont. Nancy will read a chapter from the book and sign copies. Cake included!

About the Book: Brain in a Jar is a memoir of family obsession and Alzheimer’s disease. In this unflinchingly honest memoir, Bercaw recounts her life with her father, Dr. Beauregard Lee Bercaw, or “Beau,” who became a neurologist in response to watching his own father deteriorate and die with Alzheimer’s. For many years Beau kept an autopsied brain in a jar on the desk in his office as a constant reminder of the struggle that he waged against the disease first with his patients, and then ultimately for himself. This is also the story of Nancy Bercaw’s own struggle to establish her identity and life and to navigate the treacherous and ever-changing emotional terrain of her relationship with her father, as she literally traveled the world in her quest to make sense of both of their lives.

“An American-gothic tale of love, grief, genetics, obsession, adventure, fear and courage. The Bercaws might break your heart, but they’ll also remind you why Alzheimer’s disease must take center stage in politics, medicine and art.”
—former US Senator Bob Kerrey and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, co-chairs of the Alzheimer’s Study Group

“Surprisingly, given these dark themes, this is often a very funny book, tragicomic in the manner of real life that fiction can never equal. Beau is such a vivid, complex and often infuriating character that if you were to encounter him in a novel you might dismiss him as too unlikely to be real; while Nancy’s own travels and adventures can seem almost too much to have been crammed into a single, still very much ongoing life.”
—Larry W. Moore, Publisher, Broadstone Books

“My friend, classmate and colleague, neurologist Beauregard Bercaw MD, watched his father deteriorate with Alzheimer’s disease and thus knew what may be in store for him. Whereas the stoic philosopher Seneca wrote, “Fore-knowledge is fore-sorrow,” this knowledge about his father’s demise helped motivate Beau to spend his life helping other people with neurological diseases. When he developed the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, Beau did not succumb without a valiant battle. This wonderful book written by his daughter describes her relationship with her adoring father, his work as a neurologist and his fight with this terrible disease.”
—Kenneth M. Heilman MD, The James E. Rooks Jr. Distinguished Professor, 
 Department of Neurology, University of Florida College of Medicine

Nancy Stearns Bercaw lives with her son David and husband Allan Nicholls in Burlington, Vermont. Her work has appeared in newspapers around the world from the Korea Herald to the New York Times. She is a frequent contributor to Seven Days, Vermont’s alternative news weekly. Nancy has written extensively about Alzheimer's disease for a wide variety of publications. She also speaks frequently on issues of Alzheimer's and identity, among other topics surrounding the disease. Nancy co-authored Cradle Will Rock: The Movie and The Moment (HarperCollins 1999) with director/actor Tim Robbins about the making of his film, “Cradle Will Rock.” Bercaw is also a national championship swimmer. She was inducted into the University of South Florida’s inaugural athletic Hall of Fame in 2009.

Join us in welcoming graphic memoirist Nicole Georges and special guest Cassie J. Sneider to Burlington!

A heartfelt, funny, and beautiful memoir comic in the tradition of Fun Home, Calling Dr. Laura heralds the arrival of a winning new voice in graphic literature. The hip and quirky Calling Dr. Laura opens when up-and-coming artist Nicole Georges discovers that her presumed-dead father is actually alive, something her entire family had kept from her for years. But Nicole’s been keeping something from her family, too: she’s gay. With a supporting cast of friends, girlfriends, rescued dogs, pet chickens, and the occasional curmudgeonly radio host (yes, that Dr. Laura), Nicole figures out how to confront—and come out to—a mother she no longer trusts.

Recently named a “New Queer Voice to Watch Out For” by the Lambda Literary Foundation, Nicole is a passionate, frank, and utterly charming narrator. She shares her triumphs and foibles alike with sweet illustrations and a relatable voice. Watch her unbelievable story unfold in words and pictures in this must-read mainstream debut!

Nicole J. Georges has been creating autobiographical art for many years. She’s a ’zinester, illustrator, and pet-portrait artist whose work has appeared in magazines and anthologies nationwide. She teaches self-publishing and autobiographical-comic workshops to seniors and children, and her independent comics have been collected in the anthology Invisible Summer.

Cassie J Sneider is the author of the life-changingly hilarious memoir Fine Fine Music, a memoir about growing up on Long Island, getting into rockandroll, and having many minimum-wage jobs along the way. She has been touring and performing around the country with comics and zines since 2008, and she hosts a monthly storytelling series called THE WORST! in Brooklyn and San Francisco.