Sunken Garden Poetry Festival opens with Claudia Rankine
Opening night for the 27th season of the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival on the grounds of Hill-Stead Museum, 35 Mountain Road, Farmington, will be June 19.
Renowned poet Claudia Rankine will headline the first of this year’s five poetry reading and music events at the National Historic Landmark, which is home to an impressive collection of Impressionist art and beautiful gardens and trails.
Rankine is the author of five poetry collections, including the best-selling “Citizen: An American Lyric,” which won many honors, including the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, as well as two plays. She also has edited several anthologies. Rankine is a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and Frederick Iseman Professor of Poetry at Yale University.
Admission to festival events is $15 in advance, $20 at the gate and free for those under 18. Parking is free. Patrons provide their own seating and may bring or buy food and wine there.
Opening day will include a Poetry Q&A/ Conversation on Craft with Rankine from 2 to 4:30 p.m., for which tickets are $70. A Prelude interview follows at 5 p.m., poet Emily Skilling reads at 6 p.m., the Jeff Barnhart Duo plays jazz at 6:30 p.m. and Rankine reads at 7 p.m.
The Sunken Garden festival also will present Terrance Hayes on July 10; a celebration of Indian Poetry and Culture with Rajiv Mohabir and Aimee Nezhukumatathil on July 21; Poetry of Our World with Chris Abani and Mai Der Vang on
July 31; and Young Poets Day with Elizabeth Acevedo on Aug. 11.
Information and tickets: hillstead.org. racy Ends. She is president and co-founder of The New Agenda, an organization that works on economic independence and advancement, gender representation and bias, sexual assault, domestic violence and other issues.
Information and tickets: marktwainhouse.org or 860-247-0998.
Geoffrey Douglas, author of New England-based stories that have appeared in Yankee magazine over the past two decades, will appear June 16 at 1 p.m. at Barnes & Noble at Blue Back Square, 60 Isham Road, West Hartford.
“The Grifter, The Poet, and The Runaway Train: Stories From a Yankee Writer’s Notebook” is a collection of 17 of his nonfiction pieces on subjects personal and public, from immigration and school shootings to a poet’s love affair with his town and a New Hampshire man’s troubled path toward suicide.
Douglas’ books include two highly regarded memoirs, “Class” and “The Classmates,” as well as “The Game of Their Lives,” about the 1950 U.S. World Cup soccer team’s impossible upset victory.
On June 22 at 2 p.m., the bookstore will present the last installment of its free Poet Laureate Connect Series. The new State Poet Laureate Margaret Gibson, the new Hartford Poet Laureate Frederick-Douglass Knowles II, the current Canton Poet Laureate David K. Leff and emeritus Poet Laureate of Canton Joan Hoffman will read.
Information: 860-236-9900 or geoffreydouglasauthor.com.
On June 17 at 7 p.m., three local authors will speak at a Beach Reads program. Dana Buckmir will discuss her debut comical memoir, “Plenty Of Laughs,” about a woman from New England who gets involved in online dating when she moves to South Florida. L.M. Pampuro will talk about her third Zach Brady and Maxi Malone novel, “Maximum Trouble,” a suspense story set in Aruba. Pampuro has published six novels. J.R. McCabe, a former TV reporter, filmmaker and campaign advisor, will discuss “Here I Am,” in which a woman newly back in the dating game gets involved with an Israeli in a transcendental cult.
On June 18 at 7 p.m., Ruth Hanford Morhard will talk about her book, the true story of how her mother-in-law, Josephine Morhard of Ohio, founded a boys’ baseball league in the 1940s that may have inspired the creation of Little League.
On June 19 at 7 p.m., Abi Maxwell will discuss “The Den,” about two young women in the same New England town, separated by 150 years, who are shunned after their sisters disappear.
On June 20 at 7 p.m., Catherine Chung, author of “The Tenth Muse,” and Mary Beth Keane, author of “Ask Again, Yes,” will speak. Chung’s novel is about a brilliant female mathematician whose research leads her to shocking secrets about her family. Chung has a mathematics degree and is a fiction editor at Guernica Magazine. Keane’s novel is about suburban neighbors, their children, a tragedy and forgiveness. Keane was named one of the National Book Foundation’s “5 under 35” writers.
On June 22 at 4 p.m., best-selling author Sarah Blake, whose latest novel is “The Guest Book,” will speak. It is about three generations of a once-wealthy family, its changing fortunes and what happens when family history is revealed. Blake also wrote the novels “Grange House” and the bestseller “The Postmistress.”
Gail MacDonald, a UConn journalism professor, will give a free talk on her book, “Morton F. Plant and the Connecticut Shoreline,” on June 20 at noon at the Connecticut State Library, 231 Capitol Ave. Hartford.
Plant, a Gilded Age financier, inherited his father’s transportation empire, worked to improve the shoreline community and helped found Connecticut College. 860757-6668 or ctstatelibrary.org.
Mary Kay Andrews, who writes novels that are popular for beach reading, will give a free talk June 19 at 6:30 p.m. at Avon Free Public Library, 281 Country Club Road, Avon. She has published 24 novels, most recently “Sunset Beach.”
At 10:30 a.m. that day, the Wednesday Morning Book Club will discuss “The Wife” by Meg Wolitzer, in which a woman confronts what she gave up to get what she thought she wanted. Copies are available at the library.
Information: 860-673-9712, ext. 4, or avonctlibrary.info.
Manchester Public Library will present a free discussion on June 19 at 6:30 p.m. at Whiton Branch Library, 100 North Main St., Manchester, of the sixth and latest edition of “50 Hikes in Connecticut,” a guidebook to the best hiking area in the state, by Mary Anne Hardy, daughter of the original authors. 860-645-0821 or mdaiuto@manchesterct.gov.