Dan Chiasson is a poet, critic and journalist and teaches at Wellesley College. He is the author of five books of poetry: The Math Campers (Knopf, 2020), Bicentennial (Knopf, 2014), Where’s the Moon, There’s the Moon (Knopf, 2010), Natural History (Knopf, 2005) and The Afterlife of Objects (University of Chicago Press, 2002). A widely published literary critic, Chiasson was the poetry editor of The Paris Review and is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books. His next non-fiction project is Bernie for Burlington: A Biography of his Rise in a Changing Vermont, 1968-1991 (Pantheon, 2025.)
Toussaint St. Negritude is the former Poet Laureate of Belfast, Maine. Originally from San Francisco, he has lived broadly across the African Diaspora, from the sacred mountains of Haiti to the Coltrane District of North Philadelphia. A self-taught bass clarinetist, he is the leader of the band Jaguar Stereo, a free-form ensemble of his own poetry and improvisational jazz. Toussaint St. Negritude’s poetry was described by Gwendolyn Brooks as “Full of Sweet Sounds and Surprises.” His works, poetry and performances, have been widely published & recorded for over 40 years.
Bianca Stone is a poet, visual artist and small press publisher. Her poetry collections include: The Mobius Strip Club of Grief (Tin House, 2018), and Someone Else’s Wedding Vows (Octopus Books / Tin House, 2014). Her illustrations appeared in the children’s book A Little Called Pauline, with text by Gertrude Stein, (Penny Candy Books, 2020) and in a special edition of Anne Carson’s Antigonick. Her latest poetry collection is What is Otherwise Infinite (Tin House, 2022) She teaches poetry and hosts a podcast as Creative Director at the Ruth Stone House in Goshen, Vermont.
Sharon Olds is the author of twelve books of poetry, including Arias (Knopf, 2019), Odes (Knopf, 2016) and Stag’s Leap (Knopf, 2012), winner of the Pulitzer Prize and England’s T. S. Eliot Prize, and The Father (Knopf,1992). The Unswept Room (Knopf, 2002,) was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her newest collection, Balladz (Knopf) is forthcoming in 2022. Sharon Olds received the Wallace Stevens Award for outstanding and proven mastery in the art of poetry from the Academy of American Poets in 2016, and in 2022, the Poetry Society of America awarded her the Frost Medal for distinguished lifetime achievement in poetry.
Brad Kessler is a critically acclaimed novelist whose early work includes a novel, Lick Creek, (Scribners, 2000), The Woodcutter’s Christmas (Council Oak Books, 2001),and several award-winning children’s books. He won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize in Fiction for his 2006 novel, Birds in Fall (Scribners), a Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, an NEA Fellowship, as well as a Whiting Writers Award. He is an educator and farmer and the author of a memoir, Goat Song: A Seasonal Life, A Short History of Herding, and the Art of Making Cheese (Scribners, 2009.) His most recent novel is North (Overlook Press), published in 2021.
Jay Parini is a poet, novelist, critic and biographer who teaches at Middlebury College. His numerous books, include New and Collected Poems 1975 – 2015 (Beacon Press, 2016), The Way of Jesus: Living a Spiritual and Ethical Life (Beacon, 2018), The Damascus Road: A Novel of Saint Paul (Doubleday, 2019) and biographies of Frost, Faulkner, Steinbeck and Vidal. Borges and Me: An Encounter (Doubleday, 2020) is his memoir of a trip in 1970 through the Highlands of Scotland with Jorge Luis Borges, the Argentine literary fabulist. His novel about Leo Tolstoy, The Last Station (Henry Holt, 1990), was made into an Academy Award-nominated film with Helen Mirren and Christopher Plummer in 2010.
backroadsreadings.org 