Local Literary Reminder: In the Footsteps of Robert Frost

Frost Place to host event featuring North Country anthology writers

FRANCONIA--The Monadnock Institute at Franklin Pierce University and The Frost Place in Franconia will co-host a reading this month featuring Franconia area writers whose essays appear in the new publication, Beyond the Notches: Stories of Place in New Hampshire’s North Country. The event, the first to feature local authors reading essays, will be held at the Frost Place on Sunday, June 19, from 3:30 to 5 p.m.

Maudelle Driskell, executive director at The Frost Place said, “We are delighted to bring this program to The Frost Place as it represents one of the ways that we can highlight the connection of The Frost Place to the local community. We look forward to welcoming residents of the area to this event, which is free and open to the public.” 

Franconia and Sugar Hill writers Rebecca Brown, Jack McEnany and Meghan McCarthy McPhaul will be featured, along with writers whose essays connect to the Franconia area. These will include Suzanne Moberly and Fran Lavoie of Littleton and Jeff Woodburn of Dalton.  Kay Morgan, first project director at The Frost Place and co-editor of Beyond the Notches, will also share excerpts from the anthology and her essay about the Town of Franconia’s purchase of The Frost Place as a bicentennial project in 1976.

This event will also highlight the participation of local high school students in the anthology. Profile High student Allie Baker and graduates Cory Snyder and Maggie North have been invited to read their essays, which were selected by anthology editors Mike Dickerman, John Harris and Kay Morgan. “I am particularly pleased that we were able to include high school writers in the volume,” Morgan said, “because student writers don’t often have a chance to be published in a book like this.”

In addition to the writers, anthology cover artist Amy Delventhal, who paints in her studio in Bethlehem, will be present to show the paintings she did for the book, as well as some of her other work.

Copies of the anthology, which will be available for purchase, will be presented to the Abbie Greenleaf Library, the Franconia Heritage Museum and to Profile High School in recognition of the role that each institution plays in the preservation of the heritage and culture of the region.