Virtually appear 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 Vermont-based performance poet, paper artist, and events coordinator, as well as the Poet-in-Residence at Phoenix Books Rutland. Zanella’s poems have most recently appeared in The Rutland Herald, The Mountain Troubadour, and The Reverie. In 2019, Bianca acted as Wellness Coordinator for the Feminine Empowerment Movement Slam (FEMS) tournament based in Cambridge, MA, and founded “Infinite Lit: a night of spoken word poetry,” co-producing this series alongside Michael Kingsbury around Rutland County. In 2020, Bianca founded and is the owner of The Paper Poet, offering healing poetic experiences. 

Join us for a virtual celebration for the release of Our Basin of Relations:  The Art & Science of Living with Water!

Water does not lie. Here in the Champlain Basin--a flowing landscape of mountains and rivers, forests and farms, towns and cities--it is the water that whispers difficult truths. From erosion, pollution, and habitat loss, to the toxic algae blooms that close Champlain's beaches every summer, this once vital ecosystem is coming undone. And while there is no shortage of proposed technical and legislative solutions, it is clear that we also need distinct cultural responses to the problem--ways to see, hear, feel, and understand what the water is telling us. That is where this book comes in. Featuring the fine art photography of M.E. Sipe, the curating vision of Trevien Stanger, and over a dozen essays written by thinkers, academics, poets, farmers, and activists who call this region home, Our Basin of Relations presents new ways of thinking and old ways to remember, helping us chart a more honest path forward toward preservation and renewal. With open hearts, wild minds, and attentive bodies, these...

Phoenix Books and Vermont Italian Cultural Association are proud to present an evening with Vermont author and educator Jay Parini, featuring his lastest book Borges and Me:  An Encounter.

An apprentice writer has an entirely unexpected encounter with literary genius Jorge Luis Borges that will profoundly alter his life and work. A poignant and comic literary coming-of-age memoir.

"This is a jewel of a book." —Ian McEwan

In 1971 Jay Parini was an aspiring poet and graduate student of literature at University of St Andrews in Scotland; he was also in flight from being drafted into service in the Vietnam War. One day his friend and mentor, Alastair Reid, asked Jay if he could play host for a "visiting Latin American writer" while he attended to business in London. He agreed--and that "writer" turned out to be the blind and aged and eccentric master of literary compression and metaphysics, Jorge Luis Borges. About whom Jay Parini knew precisely nothing. What ensued was a seriocomic romp across the Scottish landscape that Borges insisted...