Here at The Mount…
…we’re in the midst of planning an exciting, celebratory, conversation-provoking, luminary-studded Berkshire WordFest 2012!
Mark your calendars now for September 12-14, 2012. And stay tuned. We’ll share all the details as they unfold.
Announcing Berkshire WordFest 2012!
Following the rousing success of the inaugural Berkshire WordFest in 2010, The Mount has announced the next dates for the biennial gathering of acclaimed writers and passionate readers:
September 14-16, 2012
Mark your calendars and stay tuned for more news and details in the coming months.
Worth a Thousand Words
WordFest pictures are here!
On Flickr: Browse a selection of photos from the weekend’s daytime events. All photos courtesy of Sarah Edwards.
On Pictage: View and purchase photos from our evening events. (Please note: you must create a free account to access images.) Courtesy of John Seakwood Photography.
On Rural Intelligence: Party pics from Saturday’s cocktail hour in the Stables.
Enjoy! And thanks so much again to all who took part.
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Looking for book recommendations? Our Writers in Wartime panelists have provided excellent lists of war-themed literature.
Gearing up for next year? Stay tuned! Berkshire WordFest 2011 dates will be announced soon. Bookmark this site and check back for news & updates.
Looking for
a Good (War) Read?
Check out these recommendations, generously provided by last weekend’s Writers in Wartime panelists.
From Peabody and Emmy Award-winning journalist John Hockenberry:
- Sebastian Junger, War
- Norman Mailer, The Naked and the Dead
- Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls
- Michael Herr, Dispatches
- Neil Sheehan, A Bright Shining Lie
- Graham Greene, The Quiet American
- Philipp Blom, The Vertigo Years
- Barbara Tuchman, The Guns of August
- Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front
- Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
- George Packer, Assassin’s Gate
- Dexter Filkins, The Forever War
- Tim O’Brien, Going After Cacciato
- Michael Gordon, Cobra II
- Thomas Ricks, Fiasco
- Evan Wright, Generation Kill
- Anthony Swofford, Jarhead
- Walt Whitman
- Wilfred Owen
- Tony Judt, Postwar
- Evelyn Waugh, The Sword of Honour Trilogy
- Andrew Bacevich, The New American Military
- Colby Buzzell, My War
- Matt Gallagher, Kaboom: embracing the suck in a savage little war
- Anthony Shadid, Night Draws Near
- Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa 1942-1943
- Craig Mullaney, The Unforgiving Minute
From West Point literature professor Elizabeth Samet:
- U. S. Grant, Personal Memoirs
- Tobias Wolff, In Pharaoh’s Army
- Edmund Blunden, Undertones of War
- Evelyn Waugh, Sword of Honour
- A film: Life and Nothing But, directed by Bertrand Tavernier
From novelist Tatjana Soli:
- Tim O’Brien: The Things They Carried; Going After Cacciato; In the Lake of the Woods
- Michael Herr, Dispatches
- Duong Van Mai Elliott, The Sacred Willow
- Perry Deane Young, Two of the Missing
Moderator Frank Delaney read from and recommended Edith Wharton’s own fine collection of war reporting, Fighting France: From Dunkerque To Belport (1915).
To which we at WordFest add the works of each of our wartime panelists: Hockenberry’s Moving Violations; Samet’s Soldier’s Heart; Soli’s The Lotus Eaters; and Delaney’s own lyrical series, which explores the sweep of Irish history: Ireland, Tipperary, Shannon and, most recently, Venetia Kelly’s Traveling Show.
Many thanks to all who took part! For thoughtful coverage of this panel and other events, read Kate Abbott’s reflections in Thursday’s Berkshires Week.
First Annual
Berkshire WordFest
a Thrilling Success!
UPDATE, July 28: Get a flavor of the festival! Check out our Saturday cocktail hour “party pics,” now up at Rural Intelligence.
Berkshire WordFest came to a dreamy close on Sunday. Susan Orlean spoke in the Glen, framed by masses of rue and cleome and nicotiana and the small, darting figure of her son. She described how and why her famously offbeat subjects come to her.
“My subjects are stories and conduits,” she said (or words to that effect). She’s interested in the peculiar, the surprising, the absurd—not as ends to themselves, but as routes into larger truths about the human condition. What is the nature of passion and obsession? Why are human beings compelled to collect things? How do we make connections and forge community?
She was thoughtful, vivid, articulate and extremely funny: all the pleasures of a Susan Orlean story, plus the warmth and charm of the writer herself.
Our popular Poetry on the Terrace series provided the close-out: Hannah Fries, poetry editor of Orion, and Tess Taylor, the current Amy Clampitt Resident in Lenox, read from their work. Fries drew from the material of myth, Taylor from the earth and the person of her grandmother. Rain fell softly on the Terrace awning and mist drifted through the garden.
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A few dispatches from WordFest:
- Declaring the festival a “huge success,” Berkshire Living’s Lesley Ann Beck offers her lovely “top ten list of moments” from the weekend.
- WGBH’s Daily Dish writer Cathy Huyghe dishes on Ruth Reichl’s talk of craft and “food-first” experience of the world.
- Susan Orlean tweets on The Mount: Wow — Edith Wharton’s house, The Mount, is extraordinary. Worth a trip to Lenox MA just to see it…
- Martha McPhee in a similar vein: I loved being at Wharton’s house and look forward to more. Rainy though gorgeous.
- And Ruth Reichl: The Mount this morning; so beautiful, even in steamy weather. Thoughtful audience. Amanda Hesser wandering gardens with her adorable twins.
The Mount is deeply grateful to all twenty-nine of this year’s smart, generous and thought-provoking speakers, plus our interviewers and intoducers extraordinaire! And thank you, so much, to all who came and took part. Photos and videos from the weekend to come.
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Check back soon for information on next year’s festival! Dates to be announced shortly.
