Frenchtown Literary Fest Attracting Prominent Authors

Frenchtown Bookshop’s first-ever Frenchtown Literary Festival kicked off with two events in June and continues on July 9.

The bookshop was awarded a $20,000 grant from American Express Shop Small, initially launched with a $5 million contribution to support 250 small businesses in honor of America’s 250th anniversary.

The festival, which is a series of author talks, presents “An evening with Ian Frazier” on July 9. A New Yorker essayist and humorist, he will speak in conversation with bookshop co-owner Barbara de Wilde.

He writes books of travel and history (Travels in Siberia and Great Plains) and hundreds of New Yorker pieces on topics that range from friendship, parenthood, and New York City to nature, human oddities, and the secret life of maraschino cherries. Ian Frazier is “one of the last inheritors of the great tradition of the New Yorker,” says editor Jonathan Galassi. He has twice won the prestigious Thurber Prize for American Humor.

A film adaptation of his article “Coyote vs. Acme” will be released this summer.

Tickets for his talk are $22.

This event, as well as the rest of events will be held in the Frenchtown School auditorium at 6:30 p.m., and the price of admission includes a signed copy of the featured book.

For more information, visit: https://www.frenchtownbookshop.com/literary-festival or call the Bookshop at 908-628-9297.

On Tuesday, Sept. 29, Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert, will be launching the paperback edition of All the Way to the River: Love, Loss and Liberation, a harrowing and redemptive story of incandescent love, unspeakable tragedy and gradual return to health. Elizabeth calls Frenchtown “a wonderful, special community that has a Brigadoon-like feeling. It just doesn’t move at the pace of the outside world. It’s a special place.”

On Thursday, Oct. 1, Pádraig Ó Tuama, host of the podcast Poetry Unbound, will discuss his latest book of poems, Love Between Men.