Burlington

Join Rosemary Gladstar for a talk and demonstration on herbs for winter health! She'll show us how to make Fire Cider, a delicious concoction that will keep you toasty and well throughout the cold winter months, as well as another immune-boosting recipe. Don't miss this chance to learn from the "godmother of modern herbalism"!

Rosemary Gladstar is a renowned herbal teacher and practitioner with more than 35 years of experience working with herbs. She’s the author of Rosemary Gladstar’s Herbal Recipes for Vibrant Health and Herbal Healing for Women, director of the International Herb Symposium and the annual Women’s Herbal Conference, cofounder of the Traditional Medicinal Tea Company (for which she formulated the original blends), and founding president of the nonprofit United Plant Savers.

Visit Rosemary's Sage Mountain Herbal Retreat Center online.

We've always loved working with educators at Phoenix Books Essex: Now we invite you to discover Phoenix Books Burlington! Teachers and librarians are invited to join us for giveaways, a special Skyped-in author event, and more!

The reception will start at 6:00pm, with light fare, giveaways, and time for shopping and socializing. At 7:00pm, Bobbie Ford of Random House will Skype in with some tips on educator resources, and then turn the "floor" over to N. D. Wilson.

N. D. WILSON is the bestselling author of the 100 Cupboards series and "Leepike Ridge." Once, in the fourth grade, he split his buddy's arrow while shooting at a mattress from twenty yards. Now he writes at the top of a tall, skinny house, where he lives with a blue-eyed girl he stole from the ocean, their five young explorers, two tortoises, and one snake. His latest book is The Drowned Vault: Ashtown Burials #2.

Join us for a discussion and booksigning with IndieReader Discovery Award Winner Jack Mayer.

Jack Mayer's new book, Life in a Jar, is a work of creative non-fiction, recounting the story of Irena Sendler, a Polish Catholic social worker during W.W. II, who knocked on doors in the Warsaw ghetto and asked Jewish mothers to give up their children in order to save them. She and her network rescued 2,500 Jewish children from certain death. After the war, her story, as well as those of countless other rescuers, was suppressed in communist Poland and forgotten. She lived in obscurity in Warsaw. Sixty years later, her extraordinary history was rescued by three teenage girls in Kansas, who began a history project about Irena Sendler and ended up elevating her to the status of Polish national hero and furthering dialogue and education for Poles to come to terms with their traumatic W.W. II history. Each of these teens also carried a traumatic personal burden; the project changed their lives. And it changed the world. Because of their efforts, Irena Sendler was nominated for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize by the Prime Minister of Israel and the President of Poland. Students of history became agents of history. Life in a Jar is based on Jack's interviews and research over six years in the U.S. and Poland.

Sixty percent (60%) of author royalties from the sale of Life in a Jar:The Irena Sendler Project are donated to the Irena Sendler/Life in a Jar Foundation. The foundation promotes Sendler’s legacy and encourages educators and students to emulate the project by focusing on unsung heroes in history to teach respect and understanding among all people, regardless of race, religion, or creed. Polish, Russian and Chinese translations will be published in 2012.

“Kansas teenagers rediscover a forgotten Holocaust heroine in this moving historical drama. . . Mayer’s superb novelization of her exploits elevates social work to the intensity of a spy thriller. . . Writing in vivid but restrained prose, Mayer describes this agonizing situation with understated pathos. . . his rendition of Irena’s story has an inspirational power of its own. A gripping real-life tale of extraordinary courage that had an enduring impact.” - Kirkus Review

“Jack Mayer has done a remarkable job in bringing to life the heroic figure of Irena Sendler, whose noble legacy seems to have reached into unlikely places with affecting and unpredictable results. Meticulously researched, this story has been told with grace and passion by Mayer, who brings a wealth of compassion to his book.” - Jay Parini, author of The Last Station

“A beautiful story, beautifully told . . at last.” - The US Review of Books

Jack Mayer began practicing pediatrics in 1976 in Enosburg Falls, Vermont, a small town in eastern Franklin County on the Canadian border. His was the first pediatric practice in that half of the county. He was a doctor there for ten years, often bartering medical care for eggs, firewood, and knitted afghans. From 1987 – 1991 Dr. Mayer was a National Cancer Institute Epidemiology Fellow at Columbia University School of Public Health in New York City, researching the molecular biology of childhood cancer. Most of his scientific writing was done during those four years. He was also a pediatrician with Columbia’s General Pediatric Group Practice. Dr. Mayer returned to Vermont in 1991 and established Rainbow Pediatrics in Middlebury, where he continues to practice primary care pediatrics. He is an Instructor in Pediatrics at the University of Vermont School of Medicine and a J-term adjunct faculty for Middlebury College pre-med students. Throughout his career, he has written short stories, poems, and essays about his years in pediatric practice and hiking the Long Trail in Vermont. He was a participant at Middlebury College’s Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in 2003 and 2005 for fiction, and in 2008 for poetry. He lives in Middlebury with his wife, Chip. They have a grown son, Alex.

Join us in welcoming local author Joshua Masters to Phoenix Books Burlington! His new book, American Psalms, "challenges Christian patriots to put aside personal agendas, prejudices and partisanship, and pray for our leaders as God commands," says Mike Huckabee, author of A Simple Government.

American Psalms takes the reader on a one-year journey of spiritual growth with weekly prayers for the nation, psalms for special days of prayers, relevant teachings to enhance your perspective and worksheets designed to promote prayer for America’s leaders. With prayers spanning subjects from our troops to the presidency, from NASA to the fishing industry, and from the economy to our children’s teachers, Masters has covered nearly every aspect of American society with scripture-based prayer while teaching the reader how to regularly pray for our nation without political bias.

Accredited by the Christian & Missionary Alliance, Joshua J. Masters is a Christian speaker, artist and author. He is a graduate of the Church Leadership Academy’s Ministerial Study Program and a Perspectives Alumnus. As a member of the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, he’s also comfortable working both in front of and behind the camera. Born in Littleton, New Hampshire, Joshua lives in Essex, Vermont with his wife, Gina Masters, and their dog, Franklin.

This events is a part of our Local Authors' Programs.

Join us in welcoming local author Steven Bredice!  In his debut novel, Snap, cryptozoology meets horror when old friends on a fishing expedition attract the wrath of a giant snapping turtle.
Or do they?

"There have been books about giant and out-of-place animals going amok, and rending and tearing their way through the human populations of a specific area for many years. Most of them are irritatingly formulaic, and can be dismissed fairly easily. This book takes the genre into exciting new realms... It is far more philosophical, and indeed deep, than most books of this genre..." --Jonathan Downes, Editor in Chief, Fortean Fiction

Steven Bredice is a Williston attorney who grew up in Montpelier and graduated from Middlebury College.  He lives in Jeffersonville with his wife and three small children.  Snap is his first novel.

When a good friend with a severe illness wrote, asking if he might have his "green burial" at Bernd Heinrich's hunting camp in Maine, it set the acclaimed biologist/author on a path that had long fascinated him. How exactly does the animal world deal with the flip side of the life cycle? And what are the lessons, ecological to spiritual, raised by a close look at how the animal world renews itself? Heinrich lends his wholly original gaze to the fascinating doings of creatures most of us would otherwise turn away from --carrion beetles burying a field mouse; the communication strategies ravens, "the premier northern undertakers," use to do their work; and the "inadvertent teamwork" among wolves and large cats, foxes and weasels, bald eagles and nuthatches in cold-weather dispersal of killed prey. Heinrich reveals, too, how and where humans still play our ancient and important role as scavengers, thereby turning--not dust to dust--but life to life.

Bernd Heinrich is an acclaimed scientist and the author of numerous award-winning books, including the bestselling Winter World, Mind of the Raven, and Why We Run. He also writes for Scientific American, Outside, American Scientist, and Audubon, and has published book reviews and op-eds for the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. He studied at the University of Maine and UCLA, and is professor emeritus of biology at the University of Vermont. Heinrich divides his time between Vermont and the forests of western Maine.

Join Tovar Cerulli for a discussion of the unlikely and provocative journey from vegan to hunter. A meditation on the ethics and ecology of food. An adventurous quest for dinner.

As a boy, Tovar Cerulli spent his summers fishing for trout and hunting bullfrogs. At twenty, moved by the compassionate words of Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh and concerned about the ecological impacts of meat, he became a vegetarian. Soon he went vegan.

A decade later, in the face of declining health, he returned to omnivory. Searching for ethical, ecologically responsible ways to come to terms with his food, he began to contemplate the unthinkable: hunting. Two years later, he took up a deer rifle.

In his deeply personal narrative Mindful Carnivore, Cerulli explored our most elemental relationship with nature: food. From a fateful encounter with a brook trout to a rekindled relationship with the only hunter in his family, he traced the evolution of his dietary philosophy. Contemplating vegetable gardens, farm fields, and deer woods with intellectual and emotional candor, he stalked both food and meaning.

Cerulli brings nuance to conversations often dominated by black-and-white thinking. He sets contemporary debates in context by looking back over centuries of history and delving into our changing natural and cultural landscapes. In place of moral certainties, he offers questions:

Can hunters and vegetarians be motivated by similar values and instincts? In this time of intensifying concern over ecological degradation and animal welfare, how do we make peace with the fact that, even in growing organic vegetables, life is sustained by death?  Explore these questions and more when Tovar Cerulli visits Phoenix Books Burlington.

Tovar Cerulli grew up in Vermont and New Hampshire.  He split his undergraduate years between Dartmouth College and the New School for Social Research in Manhattan, and has worked as a carpenter and freelance writer. An environmentalist, Tovar has also worked as a logger. In 2009, he was awarded a graduate school fellowship by UMass-Amherst, where he is currently enrolled as a Ph.D. student. His research is focused on food, hunting, and human relationships with nature.

Join us for a reading and booksigning with Nessa Flax, author of the new book Voices in the Hills.  This event is a wonderful opportunity to explore Vermont's culture and values.  As Bernie Sanders put it, "Any reader...will understand more about Vermont-who lives here, and what our values are, and why we love our state-after spending
some time with Nessa’s writing."

Nessa Flax, author of Voices in the Hills, though born a ‘flatlander’ has fully immersed herself in life in the North Country. She lives, loves, breathes and writes about it, in fact, she has become one of the locals. Nessa’s column, ‘Rambling Reflections’ has run for over 10 years in the local paper Journal Opinion, pithily capturing the essence of her surroundings. Her book compiles her greatest columns, somehow touching that magical place where it is easy to imagine ones-self sharing her amazing experiences.

Bernie Sanders sums it up perfectly, “Nessa Flax shows us, teaches us, how much we can understand if we only take the time to pay attention to the world we inhabit. Whether it is the changing colors of fall, or the dedication to work of an older Vermonter in ways that seem wondrous to us now, she focuses her attention on the events in the life going on around us.”

Nessa Flax has been a freelance journalist since 1993. Her features and book reviews have appeared in a variety of publications. She began writing for the Journal Opinion in 1994 and launched her “Rambling Reflections” weekly column the next year. Initially attending Riverside City College and SUNY at Stony Brook, she received her degree from Dartmouth College with the first graduating class of women in 1976. Her professional career has taken her from a secretarial desk to selling motorcycles, into a sixteen-year teaching career that included establishing and coaching the only varsity fencing program in Vermont and New Hampshire public high schools. From her home in Ryegate Corner, Vermont, Nessa writes, provides management consulting services for small businesses, and communes with the forest.

Where's Waldo? In Burlington, of course. He's turning twenty-five this year, and to celebrate, the famous fellow in the striped shirt has been visiting twenty different local businesses all through the month of July.  Visit phoenixbooks.biz to learn how you can find Waldo and enter to win prizes (like a complete six-volume set of Waldo books) - or just come and enjoy the party!  Attendees will get to enjoy free munchies, participate in Waldo-themed activities, and even meet Waldo and Wenda!

This party is the culmination of both Find Waldo in Burlington! and Find Waldo in Essex, Williston, and Jericho!

Richard Russo - the Pulitzer-prize winning author of Empire Falls - and his daughter Kate Russo will speak about their new book, Interventions, at Phoenix Books Burlington on Saturday, June 23rd at 7:00 pm. Richard Russo has been an unabashed supporter of independent bookstores and recently spoke at BookExpo America on “Why Indies Matter,” which is also the name of the American Booksellers Association's newly launched video campaign that captures unscripted testimonials about independent bookstores from authors, customers, and indie supporters around the country.  "I don't want independent bookstores to survive," Russo said in an interview with Publishers Weekly's Judith Rosen.  "I want them to thrive."

In what many perceive as a coldly relentless digital age, Richard Russo has teamed up with Kate Russo to create Interventions, their tribute to the printed book. What makes the book truly special is the unusual format: Each story is an individually soft-bound volume with a cover illustration by Kate. Framable prints of her paintings accompany each book and all are collected into a slipcase. Conceived by Kate's husband, designer Tom Butler, the format is an integral part of Interventions. The Russos' intention is for the reader to experience the work in the tangible, tactile way only a printed book can provide.

Richard Russo is the author of several novels, a collection of short stories, and several produced screenplays. His novel Empire Falls won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. He lives in coastal Maine and Boston. Kate Russo was born in Altoona, Pennsylvania, in 1982. She moved to Maine with her family at the age of nine. She has a B.A. from Colby College and an M.F.A. from the Slade School of Fine Art in London, England. She currently lives in Rockland, Maine, with her husband, Tom. She has exhibited all over England and recently at Susan Maasch Fine Art in Portland, Maine.

Read Russo's New York Times op ed Amazon's Jungle Logic.
Read the New York Times article, Russo's Family Battles Amazon on Two Fronts.
Read the Boston Phoenix's article, Richard Russo pairs with his artist daughter.
Richard and Kate discussed Interventions on Maine Public Broadcasting Network.
Breitbart review of Interventions: Russo Clings to the Power of the Printed Page.
Visit Richard Russo on Facebook.