When she isn’t writing or covered in dirt from Olympic yard work, her natural habitat includes
one or more of the following: roller skates, dogs, mountains, chickadees, music, and really excellent food.
This author is scheduled to appear at the NH Book Festival which will be held at the Capitol Center for the Arts & NHBF Festival Village on South Main Street in Concord, NH on October 3-4, 2025.
For a link to the author lineup of more than 90 authors at the festival, click here.
The Center for the Book at the New Hampshire State Library has selected the book, Pitch Perfect and Persistent!: The Musical Debut of Amy Cheney Beach by Caitlin DeLems as our 2025 selection for Young Readers.
Amy Marcy Cheney was born in Henniker, New Hampshire on September 5, 1867. By the age of four, Amy had composed three waltzes, despite the absence of a piano. Amy began formal piano lessons with her mother at age six, and by age eight the family had moved to Chelsea, Massachusetts to further her musical education. During the course of her lifetime, Amy accomplished many musical firsts, including being the first American woman to compose and publish a symphony. In 1944, Amy Cheney Beach died and is buried with her husband, Dr. Henry Harris Aubrey Beach outside of Boston, Massachusetts.
Elizabeth Eaton “Connie” Converse was born in Laconia, New Hampshire on August 3, 1924, and raised in Concord, New Hampshire. She attended Concord High School, where she was valedictorian. Converse attended Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts for two years before moving to New York City where she began writing songs. In August 1974, Converse left her family home in search of a new life and was not seen or heard from again. Despite some small success early on in her music career, Connie’s music was not recognized until the 21st century with the release of a song compilation and the publication of this biography.
Melissa lives in New York City with her husband and three daughters, with whom she especially likes to share books, spend time outside, eat ice cream, and travel.
This author is scheduled to appear at the NH Book Festival which will be held at the Capitol Center for the Arts & NHBF Festival Village on South Main Street in Concord, NH on October 3-4, 2025.
Franklin lives in Brooklyn, New York, and teaches writing at the School of Visual Arts.
Great Black Hope is a "gripping, elegant debut novel about a young black man caught between worlds of race and class, glamor and tragedy, a friend's mysterious death and his own arrest."
This author is scheduled to appear at the NH Book Festival which will be held at the Capitol Center for the Arts & NHBF Festival Village on South Main Street in Concord, NH on October 3-4, 2025.
The Sleeping Dogs of Lubec is a collection of poetry and short prose pieces built around the sometimes subtle at other times quite public influence dogs generate as they integrate themselves into our culture. --Publisher's blurb
"Rodger's sleeping dogs don't lie. They know their canine ancestors, their legends in ancient caves, and we learn of ourselves in our relation to them. Rodger deftly moves across history, at each stop showing where we fit, an existence we neglect at peril. This volume, a kind of "collected" through his career, engages at every turn, with sensuous, heartfelt lines, perfectly executed (some prose, a few cats, and several silly pups!). Open wherever you wish and be rewarded."- B. Eugene McCarthy
About the author:
Rodger Martin is the managing editor of The Worcester Review and teaches journalism at Keene State College. This is his fourth volume of poetry. He is an artist for the New Hampshire State Arts in Education roster and a touring artist for the New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA). He has been awarded an Appalachia Award for poetry and a New Hampshire State Council on the Arts award for fiction. He was born in the amish country of Pennsylvania, lived in England as a child, served as a combat engineer in Vietnam, and spent many years teaching both in Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
Join Rodger Martin and Linda Warren at The Toadstool Bookshop in Keene, NH on Saturday, August 16, 2025 at 11 am as they discuss and read Rodger's poetry.
Her story collection, Rise (Sarabande), received the Mary McCarthy Prize, and her novel, The Vanishing Sky (Bloomsbury), was a New York Times Book Review Selection for Summer. Her memoir, Child of Earth and Starry Heaven (Wandering Aengus Press), is about her mother’s struggle with dementia. It looks to mythology, poetry, science and history to try to find meaning and beauty as her mother’s cognition declines. Kirkus Reviews calls it “an illuminating and moving meditation on dementia.”
Annette lives in Lyme, New Hampshire, with her family.
This author is scheduled to appear at the NH Book Festival which will be held at the Capitol Center for the Arts & NHBF Festival Village on South Main Street in Concord, NH on October 3-4, 2025.
Images of America: The Boats and Ports of Lake Winnipesaukee by Bruce D. Heald
The Webster Lake Picture Book by Bill Cain
Islands of Southern Lake Winnipesaukee by Stephanie A. Erickson
