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BEACON LITFEST 2024
BEACON LITFEST IS PLEASED TO WELCOME
THESE DISTINGUISHED WRITERS

JUNE 8th - MAIN PROGRAM

JENNIFER EGAN - FICTION

Jennifer Egan is the author of multiple award-winning novels and a collection of short stories. The Candy House, her most recent novel, is a 2022 NYT bestseller and is companion to A Visit From the Goon Squad, winner of both the 2011 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her novel, Manhattan Beach, won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. Ms. Egan has served as President of PEN America, is currently Artist-in-Residence in the English Department at the University of Pennsylvania and in Sept 2023 published an investigative report on homelessness and supportive housing in New York City in The New Yorker. Photo by Pieter M Van Hattam

JODE MILLMAN, ESQ - FICTION

Jodé Millman, Esq is an author and attorney. THE EMPTY KAYAK is her most recent installment of the "Queen City Thriller Series." Her debut novel, “The Midnight Call” won the 2021 Independent Press Award for Legal Thriller, the 2020 Bronze IPPY Award, the 2020 American Fiction Award for Legal Thriller, and her second, “Hooker Avenue” won the 2022 Independent Press Award for Crime Fiction. Ms. Millman is a member of The Authors Guild, New York State Bar Association, Mystery Writers of America, International Thriller Writers, and Women Fiction Writers Association among others. Photo by Evangeline Gala

ABIGAIL THOMAS - MEMOIR

Abigail Thomas, is the author of multiple works of fiction, memoir, and more. When a freshman at Bryn Mawr in 1959, she got pregnant and was asked to leave. She never looked back. Her first three books “Getting Over Tom,” “An Actual Life,” and “Herb’s Pajamas” were works of fiction. Her memoir, “A Three Dog Life,” was a best book of 2006 by the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post and won the 2006 Inspirational Memoir Award given by Books for A Better Life. She is also author of “Safekeeping,” “Thinking About Memoir,” “A Three Dog Life,” “What Comes Next and How to Like It,” and "Still Life At Eighty: The Next Interesting" to be published fall of 2024 by Scribner's. She is eighty-two years old and proud of it.) Photo by AMAZONAT

AMITAVA KUMAR - NOVELIST

Amitava Kumar is the author of several works of nonfiction and four novels. His novel Immigrant, Montana was on the best of the year lists at The New Yorker, The New York Times, and President Obama’s list of favorite books of 2018. His 2021 novel A Time Outside This Time was described by the New Yorker magazine as “a shimmering assault on the Zeitgeist.” Kumar’s latest novel is My Beloved Life published in February this year. Kumar's nonfiction has appeared in Granta, The New York Times, Harper’s, BRICK, Guernica, The Nation and several other publications. His essay "Pyre" was chosen by Jonathan Franzen for Best American Essays. He has been awarded a Guggenheim fellowship and is currently a Cullman Center Fellow at the New York Public Library.

TIMOTHY LIU - POETRY

TIMOTHY LIU's latest book of poems is Down Low and Lowdown: Bedside Bottom-Feeder Blues. His poems have been translated into over a dozen languages, and his journals and papers are archived in the Berg Collection at the New York Public Library. A reader of occult esoterica, he teaches at SUNY New Paltz and Vassar College and lives in the Hudson Valley.)

EDWIN TORRES - POETRY

Edwin Torres is the author of 15 poetry collections including; Quanundrum: i will be your many angled thing (Roof Books, awarded a 2022 American Book Award), Xoeteox: the infinite word object (Wave Books), Ameriscopia (University of Arizona Press) and editor of The Body In Language: An Anthology (Counterpath Press). Fellowships include; 2024 NYSCA Individual Artist Commission, Arts Mid-Hudson, The Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and The DIA Foundation. Anthologies include; The Difference Is Spreading: 50 Contemporary Poets on Fifty Poems, New Weathers: Poetics from the Naropa Archives, Poets In The 21st Century: Poetics of Social Engagement, and Aloud: Voices from The Nuyorican Poets Cafe. He teaches poetry at Columbia University and is currently living in Beacon, NY. Photo by F. Deschamps

TINA CANE - POETRY

Tina Cane is author of The Fifth Thought, Dear Elena: Letters for Elena Ferrante, poems with art by Esther Solondz , Once More With Feeling , Body of Work, and Year of the Murder Hornet. She was 2020 Poet Laureate Fellow with the Academy of American Poets. Her debut novel-in-verse, Alma Presses Play, was released in September 2021 and her second, Are You Nobody Too? is forthcoming in 2024. Cane is also the creator/ curator of the distance reading series, Poetry is Bread, and the editor of Poetry is Bread: The Anthology. Photo by Cormac Crump

DAVID HERSKOVITS - DRAMA

David Herskovits is the Founding Artistic Director of Target Margin Theater and has directed a broad range of work, classics and neglected older work, new opera and music-theater, and adaptations of history and literature for the stage both nationally and internationally. His Target Margin works have won multiple OBIEs and been presented nationally and internationally. Most recently, Herskovits directed Remember This Trick, a company-created work drawing on the Book of Esther, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and myriad contemporary sources. David’s 5 years of work on oral storytelling and stories from the 1001 Nights tradition, culminated in the company’s durational 9-hour performance, ONE NIGHT in 2022. He will direct Target Margin’s new production of Show Boat, presented by The NYU Skirball Center in January, 2025. He has taught and lectured at The American Repertory Theatre Institute, The Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard, The Mellon School of Theater and Performance Research at Harvard, Yale, NYU, Columbia, Wesleyan, and many other Universities and drama schools worldwide. He has written for The New York Times, American Theatre, Theatre Magazine, and Performing Arts Journal, among others, and his work has appeared in book form in the collections “Epic Plays,” “Imagination First,” and “Innovation in Five Acts.” 

Produced and Curated by BLF Committee: Hannah Brooks, Ruth Danon, and Shane Killoran

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