BRATTLEBORO’S GREEN WRITERS PRESS
at the Brattleboro Literary Festival
COME JOIN US FOR SHORT READINGS, REFRESHMENTS, AND CELEBRATION OF VERMONT PUBLISHING!
@118 ELLIOT • BRATTLEBORO, VERMONT
SATURDAY OCTOBER 18th, FROM 5:00-6:30PM • Free & Open to All
The Green Writers Press Reading will include poetry, nonfiction, and fiction from a selection of our award-winning authors. The local publishing company will present a lively and diverse reading experience for the Brattleboro Literary Festival. We will have hors d’oeuvres and libations.
Green Writers Press, an independent, women-owned, Brattleboro-based publishing company, is dedicated to spreading environmental awareness and social justice by publishing authors who promulgate messages of hope and renewal through place-based writing, racial justice, and environmental activism. The press’ mission is to spread a message of hope and renewal through the words and images we publish. Throughout we adhere to our commitment to preserving and protecting the natural resources of the earth. Green Writers Press has published authors such as Julia Alvarez, Dr. M Jackson, Madeleine Kunin, Congresswoman Becca Balint, Keya Chatterjee, Ha Kite Chau, and Clarence Major. GWP was part of the Women’s Convention in 2017, was a finalist for AWP’s Publisher of the Year Award, and received The Vermont Literary Inspiration Award in 2019. In June 2023, founder Dede Cummings appeared on “The Innovation Station,” at the Secretary’s Office of Global Women’s Issues (S/GWI) at the U.S. Department of State. Themission of the press is to spread a message of hope and renewal through the words and images we publish. Throughout we adhere to our commitment to preserving and protecting the natural resources of the earth. To that end, a percentage of our proceeds isdonated to environmental activist groups and social justice organizations. Read more at www.greenwriterspress.com.
Authors who will be reading include:
Molly Johnsen is a Vermont-based writer and teacher. Her work has appeared in the Nashville Review, Indiana Review, Cider Press Review, and others. Everything Alive was selected as a semi-finalist for the Black Lawrence Press St. Lawrence Book Award. She holds an MFA from Syracuse University.
Keya Chatterjee is executive director of Free DC. She is an avid reader, an author, and an activist for climate justice and democracy. Keya is committed to imagining and creating a thriving and inclusive future full of joy and caring. She started her career at NASA and was Executive Director of the US Climate Action Network for almost a decade, where she was a key voice for strengthening the Paris Climate Agreement and the Inflation Reduction Act. Keya also served two terms as a hyper local elected official in Washington, DC, where she lives with her husband and son. She previously published a nonfiction book, The Zero Footprint Baby: How to Save the Planet While Raising a Healthy Baby, and op-eds in many outlets including Newsweek, Reuters, and Huffington.
A frequent Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, VA Smith’s work has appeared in several anthologies and in dozens of literary journals, among them: Southern Review, Calyx, Crab Creek Review, West Trade Review, Third Wednesday, After Happy Hour Review and SWIMM. Her first two books, Biking Through the Stone Age and American Daughters, were published by Kelsay Books in 2022 and 2023, respectively. A former Liberal Arts Teaching Excellence awardee at Penn State University as a former Professor of Teaching in the Department of English, VA later founded Chancellor Writing Services, leading as its chief writing coach for twelve years. Her chapbook about Philadelphia, Urbanity, is currently under review as she works on a new poetry project. Her bliss is traveling, cooking, hiking and loving on friends and family. VA Smith is thrilled to have GWP take Adaptations under their eco publishing wing! Visit her Instagram and YouTube @vasmithpoetry.
Green Writers Press will also honor the poetry of local poet, Diana Lischer, with her debut collection “In Winter I Burn Poems” available for purchase.
Diana Lischer is a farmer, published poet and writer, painter, knitter, and avid gardener who has lived in Southeastern Vermont since 1976. Her poetry has appeared in Vermont Life, The Larcom Review, and three times in the Anthology of New England Writers. Her reviews and essays have appeared on Vermont Public Radio, The Brattleboro Reformer, The Commons, Art New England, and in Emily Mason’s art book, The Fifth Element, published by George Braziller, New York. Her poem, “If Margaret Sanger Sang a Song” was set to music by composer Lawrence Siegel and performed by the a cappella group, Fem Amie. Her debut poetry collection, In Winter I Burn Poems, will come out October 2025 from Green Writers Press.
A lifelong naturalist and Yankee fan, Ted Levin follows a trail blazed by John Burroughs and John Muir, neither of whom paid baseball much attention. His work has appeared in Audubon, Sierra, Sports Illustrated, The New York Times, Newsday, The Boston Globe, The Guardian, andThe Daily Telegraph, among many other publications. He is the author of Backtracking: The Way of a Naturalist (1987), Blood Brook: A Naturalist’s Home Ground (1992), and Liquid Land: A Journey Through the Florida Everglades (2003), among other works of nonfiction. He won the Burroughs Medal in 2004, the highest literary honor awarded to an American nature writer. E. O. Wilson called America’s Snake: The Rise and Fall of the Timber Rattlesnake (2016) a beautifully written book [that] demonstrates just how good nature literature can be.Ted divides his time between the deck and the road.
