Book of the Week (10/5/2026)

What Clever Friends: The Selected Letters of Jane Kenyon and Alice Mattison edited by Chad Wriglesworth (University of Michigan Press, 2026)

What Clever Friends, is a selection of engaging, frank letters between poet Jane Kenyon and fiction writer Alice Mattison. Ranging from their first meeting in 1979 to Kenyon’s death in 1995, this fifteen-year conversation between close friends reveals their experiences pursuing writing while living out the responsibilities of ordinary life. Writing to each other often, they help each other, confide in each other, and argue through the strains of rejection and acceptance, good reviews and bad, periods in which writing comes easily or when it does not. Over time, both writers emerged from obscurity to gain award-winning recognition as prominent voices in their respective genres.

Witty, tender, and aware; tempestuous and lyrical, these letters trace the evolution of a deep and largely unknown friendship that situates Kenyon’s work within a collaborative environment of other poets and novelists who were committed to the flourishing of contemporary women’s writing. With more than 500 edited and annotated letters, a retrospective foreword written by Alice Mattison, and a scholarly introduction written by Chad Wriglesworth, What Clever Friends conveys a compelling story that will interest readers and writers. --Publisher's blurb

About the authors:

Jane Kenyon, former New Hampshire Poet Laureate grew up in the Midwestern U.S. She earned a B.A. from the University of Michigan in 1970 and an M.A. in 1972. As a university student, Kenyon met poet Donald Hall (also a former NH Poet Laureate). In 1972, they married and moved to his ancestral home in Wilmot, New Hampshire. Kenyon died in 1995 from leukemia.

Alice Mattison was born in Brooklyn and attended Queens College and Harvard University, where she received a doctorate in literature. She has lived in New Haven, Connecticut since the 1970s and has taught fiction in the Low-Residency MFA Program in Writing at Bennington College since 1995. Mattison began her career as a poet, but also began writing short stories in the 1980s.

3 on a Theme: Brothers & Sisters

The Chicken Sisters by KJ Dell'Antonia

Blood Brother: Jonathan Daniels and His Sacrifice for Civil Rights by Rich Wallace and Sandra Neil Wallace

My Sister, the Freak: A Graphic Novel by Dani Jones

NHBF Author: Alexandra Villasante

Alexandra Villasante has always loved telling stories—though not always with words. She has a BFA in Painting and an MA in Combined Media (that’s art school speak for making work out of anything). Born in New Jersey to immigrant parents, Alex has the privilegio of dreaming in both English and Spanish.
Her latest novel, Fireblooms, received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and praise from Kirkus and Booklist. It was selected as one of NPR’s Books We Love 2025. Alex’s debut YA novel, The Grief Keeper, was a Fall 2019 Junior Library Guild Gold Selection and winner of the 2020 Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Children’s Literature/Young Adult Fiction. She's a contributor to several Young Adult short story anthologies including, Our Shadows Have Claws, Relit: 16 Latinx Remixes of Classic Stories and We Mostly Come Out at Night: 15 Queer Tales of Monsters Angels and Other Creatures. Alex is a co-founder of the Latinx Kidlit Book Festival and of the LKBF Latinx Storytellers Conference. When she’s not writing, planning or painting, Alex works for Boyds Mills, formerly known as the Highlights Foundation. 

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 2-3, 2026.  

NHBF Author: S. J. Taylor

S. J. Taylor writes stories steeped in folklore and magic, where young protagonists tackle big adventures and bigger questions. Although she grew up in Arizona's desert, her heart yearns for the Nordic lands. When she's not writing, she can often be found knitting yet another sweater (sweater weather is the best weather). She lives in Connecticut 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 2-3, 2026.

NHBF Author: Jacquelyn Stolos

Jacquelyn Stolos is the author of the novels Edendale and Asterwood. She holds an MFA in fiction from New York University where she was a Writers in the Public Schools Fellow. Jacquelyn has won fellowships from the New York State Summer Writers Institute and the Community of Writers. Her short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Bodega Magazine, No Tokens, Joyland and more. She is the co-founder of Los Angeles’s Something Something Reading Series.

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 2-3, 2026.

NHBF Author: Dan Simon

Dan Simon is the founder and editor-in-chief of Seven Stories Press. He is the co-author, with Jack Hoffman, of Run Run Run: The Lives of Abbie Hoffman and translator of Van Gogh: Self Portraits by Pascal Bonafoux. Ashland is his debut novel. He lives in New York and New Hampshire.

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 2-3, 2026.

NHBF Author: Elaine Sexton

Elaine Sexton is a poet, critic, and educator. Her latest work, The Post Office: An Opera in Poems, premiered at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and Spruce Peak Arts, Stowe, Vermont in 2026. The libretto was also published in book form in tandem with the opera. Her five previous books of poetry include: Site Specific: New & Selected Poems (2025), Drive (2022), Prospect/Refuge (2015), Causeway (2015), and Sleuth (2003). She is a 2026 NYSCA (New York State Council for the Arts) grantee for her work on the opera, as well as a 2025 Mellon Foundation funded Opera Fusion: New Works residency, and a 2023
Hermitage Artist Retreat residency. 

Her poems, art reviews, book reviews, and works in visual art have appeared in journals and anthologies, textbooks and websites including American Poetry Review, Art in America, Five Points, Poetry, Poetry International, Ploughshares, O! the Oprah Magazine, Poetry Daily, and the 50th Anniversary issues of Provincetown Arts. She teaches at the Sarah Lawrence College Writing Institute, and has been guest faculty at New York University and in the graduate writing program at City College (CUNY). She is regularly invited to teach poetry, bookmaking, and art writing at arts and writing programs and centers in the U.S. and abroad, among them Poets House, Hudson Valley Writers Center, and Arts Workshop International (Assisi). She teaches private workshops in her studio and online.

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 2-3, 2026.