Book of the Week (5/27/2024)

A House of Her Own: Women Writers of New England and Their Homes by Beth Luey (McFarland, 2023)

Since the founding of the United States, women have picked up their pens to write and express their ideas, affording them independence and self-sufficiency in days when they had little. By way of their poetry, essays, advice columns, investigative journalism and more, women like Helen Keller, Louisa May Alcott, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Shirley Jackson wrote not only to entertain and inform, but often to simply keep a roof over their heads.

This text offers a unique examination of female New England writers, focusing on their homes. The women wrote in many genres and became literary entrepreneurs, bargaining with editors for higher fees and royalties, participating in marketing campaigns, and seeking advice and help. The homes women bought with their earnings included cottages, suburban houses, farms, and an occasional mansion. Whether modest or luxurious, these houses provided the "room of her own" that Virginia Woolf said every woman needs in order to write. Sometimes that room was an elegant study, and sometimes a corner of the kitchen. --Publisher's blurb

Book of the Week (3/18/2024)

Northern Voices: Forty Years on the Poetry Beat by Mike Pride (Bauhan Publishing, 2024)

Northern Voices: Forty Years on the Poetry Beat, tells the story of journalist, Mike Pride’s relationships with several poets who lived and worked in New Hampshire, Maine, and Vermont from the 1970s through the present. Mike transformed the New Hampshire newspaper The Concord Monitor into a prizewinning paragon of regional journalism, mentoring generations of reporters and editors, defying the trope about the dying small-town newspaper and exerting an outsize impact on his profession. He carved out for himself, “The Poetry Beat,” befriending poets including Charles Simic, Jane Kenyon, Donald Hall, Maxine Kumin, Hayden Carruth, Wes McNair, and Sharon Olds, among many others, whom he wrote about with regularity. Sadly Mike died before his “poetry memoir” Northern Voices was published. But in true Mike-style, he completed the manuscript and readied it for press.-- Publisher's blurb

 

Upcoming Local Author Events!

"BOOKport" Local Author Celebration in Newport

The Richards Free Library is having a local author celebration this Saturday, March 16th, 2024 from 10-2:00 pm. They will be hosting 11 authors from around the Newport, NH area and throughout NH. The featured authors write everything from poetry to children's books, and more!

Derry Author Fest
1 2 3 Grow!

Saturday, April 6, 2024 from 10 am to 4 pm at the Derry Public Library 

Derry Author Fest is a day of writing workshops, panels and networking for aspiring authors, dreamers and dabblers alike. As an attendee, you can stay all day, half day, or just drop in for a session. Book sales and signings are interspersed in between workshops, so you will have time to buy books, support local artists and get some face time with teachers.

This year’s keynote speaker is Virginia Macgregor: Virginia was brought up in Germany, France, and England by a mother who never stopped telling stories. Her early years were those of a story-scribbling, rain-loving child. Her debut novel What Milo Saw was published to great acclaim and has so far been translated into 12 languages. She is also the author of The Astonishing Return of Norah Wells, Before I Was Yours, Wishbones, You Found Me, As Far As the Stars, and The Children’s Secret.

See the schedule and register to attend at: www.derryauthorfest.wordpress.com

Book of the Week (10/5/2020)

Covid Spring: Granite State Pandemic Poems edited by Alexandria Peary (Concord, N.H.: Hobblebush Books, 2020).

"When the COVID-19 pandemic hit New Hampshire in March, it became clear that April—National Poetry Month—would not be celebrated with live poetry readings and writers’ workshops as in past years. In an effort to provide a channel for creatively navigating our common experiences, New Hampshire Poet Laureate Alexandria Peary set out to host two virtual poetry writing groups each week in April. At the end of the month, New Hampshire residents were invited to submit their work for consideration in an anthology of poems addressing the COVID-19 pandemic. More than 100 writers submitted their work—each with a unique voice and a fresh perspective on the pandemic’s impact in New Hampshire.

In her introduction, Alexandria writes, “Fifty-four of the state’s poets are represented in this anthology, writing of job loss, loneliness and love, masks, social distancing, surreal visitors, uncertainty, graduations deferred, grief, neighborly and less-than-neighborly acts, observing the beginning of the pandemic and making projections about the future, recalibrating or confirming what it means to be human, to be a resident of this region. In a remarkable range of poetic form and style, these writers provide a thirty-day snapshot of what life was like in the Granite State in April of 2020." --Publisher's blurb

To help support New Hampshire residents impacted by COVID-19, Hobblebush Books will donate $2 to the New Hampshire Food Bank for every copy of COVID Spring sold. 

Click here to order your copy from Hobblebush Books: https://www.hobblebush.com/product-page/covid-spring

NH Poetry: Mary's Lamb

Photograph by Felicia Martin

Sarah Josepha Hale (1788-1879) was born in Newport, NH. The Hale Award is named for her.

Today's poem is "Mary's Lamb" (which is not just the 4 lines you already know)

NH Poetry: A Minor Bird

Photograph by Felicia Martin

Robert Frost (1874–1963) lived in various places throughout his life, but is strongly associated with the Granite State. Two of his residences provide homes for poetry in our state: The Frost Place and Frost Farm. 

Today's poem is "A Minor Bird"

Book of the Week (8/19/2019)

Except for Love: New England Poets Inspired by Donald Hall edited by Cynthia Brackett-Vincent (New Sharon, ME : Encircle Publications, 2019).

The anthology "Except for Love" includes poetry from thirty-five New England poets inspired by literary giant Donald Hall, former Poet Laureate of New Hampshire and of the United States.

The following poets are included in this anthology: Sherry Barker Abaldo, Mary Anker, L.R. Berger, Edward Bruce Bynum, David Cappella, Jenny Doughty, Max Roland Ekstrom, Matt Forrest Esenwine, Elizabeth Brule’ Farrell, Monica Flegg, James Fowler, David Giannini, Patricia Gomes, Kathleen McKinley Harris, Scott T. Hutchison, Elizabeth Knies, Tricia Knoll, Katherine Leigh, Jim Mello, Mark Melnicove, Andrew Periale, Dawn Potter, Kyle Potvin, Jessica Purdy, Gary Rainford, Steven Ratiner, Dave Read, Russell Rowland, Clemens Carl Schoenebeck, John Surowiecki, Wally Swist, Jeri Theriault, Irene Willis, Warren Woessner, Jane Yolen.

Praise for Except for Love:

"Cynthia Brackett Vincent writes in her preface to Except for Love, a tribute to the late, acclaimed poet Donald Hall, that Hall had an undying love for so many things, among them, Jane Kenyon, baseball, and New Hampshire (with all its warts and beauty). She speaks of his amorous reverence for the past, present, and the future, or, as Longfellow wrote in his poem, “A Psalm of Life”: “Still achieving, still pursuing,/Learn to labor and to wait.” As we all know, love is infectious, and Hall’s poetry and persona have touched so many poets and readers alike. Through their poetry, the contributors to this stunning anthology show their love for the poet and the man.
Hall gives gravitas to the most arcane rituals of the everyday, and so do the poets here. L.R. Berger writes in the poem, “First Acts”: “Filling the teapot at the tap,/turning on the burner—//praise be for the first acts/requiring no imagination,/no choices of consequence.//You can be half asleep/and already a success at life,//draw encouragement/mastering the rituals of morning—.” I think Berger has raised my first pot of morning coffee to the high holy!
The poems in this collection celebrate the primal, the unaffected beauty of the world. They celebrate nature, and all the poems bloom like a flower, enriched by metaphor. The poems have so much to say and with originality. You will learn to say, “I love you like an apple,” the title of one poem here by Jenny Doughty. On these pages, a rose can be a totem for where you have been and where you are now.
The sensibility of Hall is deeply embedded in this collection, and continues the tradition of highly-crafted work for which Encircle Publications is known."
—Doug Holder/Founder, Ibbetson Street Press/Lecturer in Creative Writing, Endicott College

Join some of the poets from this anthology on Thursday, September 5th, 2019 at 6 p.m. at Gibson's Bookstore in Concord, NH where they will be presenting their work.

Book of the Week #3

MacDowell by E. Douglas Bomberger, part of The Master Musicians Series (NY: Oxford University Press, 2013)

 "Edward MacDowell was born on the eve of the Civil War into a Quaker family in lower Manhattan, where music was a forbidden pleasure. With the help of Latin-American émigré teachers, he became a formidable pianist and composer, spending twelve years in France and Germany establishing his career. Upon his return to the United States in 1888 he conquered American audiences with his dramatic Second Piano Concerto and won his way into their hearts with his poetic Woodland Sketches. Columbia University tapped him as their first professor of music in 1896, but a scandalous row with powerful university president Nicholas Murray Butler spelled the end of his career. MacDowell died a broken man four years later, but his widow Marian kept his spirit alive through the MacDowell Colony, which she founded in 1907 in their New Hampshire home, and which is today the oldest and one of the most influential, thriving artist colonies in the the United States. Drawing on private letters that were sealed for fifty years after his death, this biography traces MacDowell's compelling life story, with new revelations about his Quaker childhood, his efforts to succeed in the insular German music world, his mysterious death, and his lifelong struggle with Seasonal Affective Disorder. Edward MacDowell's story is a timeless tale of human strength and weakness set in one of the most vibrant periods of American musical history, when optimism about the country's artistic future made anything seem possible." --Publisher's description.

Alice Fogel named NH Poet Laureate

This week New Hampshire’s Executive Council confirmed Governor Maggie Hassan’s nomination of Alice B. Fogel of Acworth, N.H., as the next New Hampshire Poet Laureate. 

Fogel will serve a five-year term beginning January 2014. The state’s poet laureate serves as an ambassador for all poets in New Hampshire and works to heighten the visibility and value of poetry in the state.

For the first time in its history, the New Hampshire Poet Laureate position includes an honorarium of $500 for each year of the five-year term to help the next poet laureate achieve his or her stated mission. Funding comes from contributions made to the Walter Butts’ New Hampshire Poet Laureate Fund, created in memory of the most recent New Hampshire Poet Laureate, and coordinated through the Poetry Society of New Hampshire.

Fogel is an award-winning poet, author, teacher and well-respected figure in the New Hampshire poetry community.  Her third book, Be That Empty, was a national poetry bestseller in 2008, and Strange Terrain (on how to appreciate poetry without “getting” it) was published in 2009. Her poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies, including The Best American Poetry 1993, guest edited by Louise Gluck. Fogel's newest book, Interval: Poems Based upon Bach’s Goldberg Variations, won the Nicholas Schaffner Award for Music in Literature, and is forthcoming from Schaffner Press.
Fogel was the 2012 Poet in Residence at the Carl Sandburg Historical Site National Park and has received an Individual Artist Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, among other awards. She has provided professional development and served as a judge for the N.H. Poetry Out Loud high school competition and currently teaches writing at both Keene State College and Landmark College in Putney, Vt. 

“I am deeply pleased, honored and grateful for the opportunity to give back to our wonderfully art-nurturing state,” said Fogel.“I believe that poetry – along with other arts – is life-enhancing, opening us to necessary reflection and empathy. As Poet Laureate, I hope to bring more readers to the personal and communal experiences of poetry, through the many works available to us by poets here in New Hampshire and beyond.” 

 Seventeen nominations were received from across the state and reviewed by a committee comprised of representatives from the Poetry Society of New Hampshire, the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts and the New Hampshire Writers’ Project as well as other select members from the New Hampshire literary community. 

“Alice is a nationally recognized poet and teacher with a gift for making poetry accessible, inclusive and relevant to a wide audience and we know she will draw on these talents to promote poetry in New Hampshire as our next state poet laureate,” said Kyle Potvin, president of the Poetry Society of New Hampshire, the organization charged with submitting a recommendation to the Governor.

Established by the state legislature in 1967, New Hampshire’s poet laureate is an honorary five-year position held by an individual who has made outstanding contributions to the field of poetry. The impressive list of former New Hampshire poets laureate includes Walter Butts, Patricia Fargnoli, Marie Harris, Donald Hall, Cynthia Huntington, Jane Kenyon and Maxine Kumin.

In 2006 there was a special edition of Book Notes (in the print incarnation) on the NH Poets Laureate.

Book Events Sampler

Wednesday, 1/18/2012

• Barbara Brown Taylor, author of An Alter in the World will be speaking at Red River Theatre at 6pm, hosted by Gibson's and St. Paul's School. 
• Poetry Society of New Hampshire, will meet at 7pm at Gibson's.
  Strictly Open Mic: so bring your villanelles, your sonatelles, sonnets, triolets, haiku or couplets, anything 19 lines or less. Bring a number of poems to share, yours or someone else’s.

Thursday, 1/19/2012

• Tom Fiztgerald, author of Poor Richard's Lament will be at Gibson's at 7pm
• Toadstool Bookshop, Keene will host Local Authors Night beginning at 7pm.
  Featuring some of the areas best writers sharing their latest books. Scheduled to appear are Linda French, author of The Lilac Room, Karren Hoyt, author of Prayers From the Heart, Prayers from the Mind: A Collection of Modern Prayers, D.C. Legendre, author of Clams in Cups: Legends of the Heart, and Melissa Mannon, author of The Unofficial Family Archivist. They will read from and discuss their books and take questions from the audience. Come support local authors and find out about great new books written in our region.

Saturday, 1/21/2012

• Jane Roy Brown will be autographing and discussing One Writer's Garden: Eudora Welty's Home Place at Toadstool Bookshop, Peterborough at 11am.

Calling all teenagers!

The Flume Award committee is looking for nominees and the deadline is January 13, 2012.

 If you are a New Hampshire teenager in grades 9-12 you can nominate books for the 2013 Flume Award with the online nomination form. Nominated titles can be fiction or nonfiction books, with appeal to teens. They must have a publication date within the last two years. If the book is part of a series, it must be able to stand alone, meaning a reader doesn't have to read the other books in the series to understand what's going on.

The 2011 Flume winner was Paper Towns by John Green. The list of 2012 nominees has 13 great books on it if you are looking for something to read.

And the winners are...

The New Hampshire Literary Awards were held this evening at the NH Institute of Art in Manchester. It was a wonderful night for NH's literati and I am very glad that I didn't have to choose the winners from among all the wonderful nominees!

• Outstanding Children's Literature Award -- Joseph Monninger for Wish
• Outstanding Book of Poetry Award -- Deborah Brown for Walking the Dog's Shadow
• Outstanding Work of Nonfiction Award -- Beyond the Notches: Stories of Place in New Hampshire's North Country, edited by John R. Harris, Kay Morgan, and Mike Dickerman
• Donald M. Murray Award for Outstanding Journalism -- Meg Heckman, "Living with Hepatitis C," Concord Monitor
• Outstanding Book of Fiction Award -- Ann Joslin Williams for Down from Cascom Mountain
• Charles Simic was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award
• Readers' Choice Awards
  Katherine Towler, Island Light (fiction)
  Mary Carroll Moore, Your Book Starts Here (nonfiction)
  Liz Ahl, Luck (poetry)
  David S. Rawding, Lucas the Traveling Crab (children's literature)
  
  
  
  
  
  

NH Literary Awards 2011

The New Hampshire Literary Awards will be presented Friday evening, November 4, 2011 at the New Hampshire Institute of Art in Manchester. You can buy tickets for the award ceremony from the NH Writers' Project (NHWP). Tickets cost $25 and include the reception, hors d'oeuvres and libations. WZID Radio personality Mike Morin will emcee.

The NH Literary Awards recognize Outstanding Children's Literature, an Outstanding Book of Nonfiction, an Outstanding Book of Fiction, an Outstanding Book of Poetry. The Donald M. Murray Award for Outstanding Journalism and a Lifetime Achievement award (given to someone selected by the NHWP Board of Trustees) will also be announced at the event. These award winners will be selected from the list of 2011 finalists.

This year, for the first time, NHWP will also give a Readers' Choice Award. Members of the public are invited to vote for their favorite book from among the titles nominated in each category.

Readings in Warner

The Tory Hill Readers Series kicks off the 2011 season on Saturday, July 16 with Christina Shea and Brian Bouldrey. The roster for this summer includes M.T. Anderson and Patricia Fargnoli (July 30); Edie Clark and Rebecca Rule (August 13); and Tom Wessels (August 27). Admission is $7.00 or $20.00 for a Series Pass. Readings are at 7:00 PM at the Warner Town Hall and are followed by a dessert buffet and live music.

Some poetry news

Here is the latest on the Frost Farm’s Hyla Brook Reading Series:

June 28, 2011, DERRY, NH – On Thursday, July 14, 2011, the Frost Farm’s Hyla Brook Reading Series features Lee Briccetti, poet and executive director of Poets House in New York City, a poetry library and meeting place for poets and readers. Also appearing is Hyla Brook Poet Marla Landers-Renouf. The reading takes place on from 6:30-8:30pm. Held at the Frost Farm at 122 Rockingham Rd (Rt 28), the Reading Series is free and open to the public.

In addition to her long-held position at Poets House, Ms. Briccetti has received a New York Foundation for the Arts Award for Poetry and has been a Poetry Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. Her first book of poems, Day Mark, was published in 2005 by Four Way Books.

Ms. Landers-Renouf is from Yarmouth, Nova Scotia and has lived in New Hampshire since 2007. She has a degree in English from Acadia University and a diploma in Scriptwriting from Algonquin College. She has been published in several online and print periodicals as well as on a coffee can label and had a personal essay featured on the CBC radio program "First Person Singular." She dabbles in children's writing and short fiction and in May began a blog on which she is attempting to post one haiku per day for a year. She also writes poems for everything from product labels to weddings as part of a small business called Short-Order Verse. She and her husband were married at Frost Farm in 2007 and live in Derry with their 2-year-old daughter.

An Open Mic will follow the readings and all audience members are invited to share their work.

The group’s monthly writing workshop meets on the third Saturday of the month at 10am. The next workshop takes place on Saturday, July 16, at the Frost Farm.

David Ferry, recent Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize Winner, Lifetime Achievement, will appear as part of the Hyla Brook Reading Series on Thursday, August 11.

For questions, please visit http://www.facebook.com/HylaBrookPoets.

2011 Meetinghouse Readings - Frontiers of Love, Language, and American History

Canaan Town Library is presenting the 22nd year of thir Meetinghouse Readings series. Here's the announcement:

 Four Evenings Of Storytelling and Poetry By Great Authors!

This year's edition of the Meetinghouse Readings features outstanding poets Major Jackson and Carol Westberg, the go-for-broke short stories of Creston Lea and the deep family drama of Katharine Britton's debut novel, Her Sister's Shadow. Groundbreaking narrative histories by Neil Goodwin and Tom Powers retell, respectively, the Revolutionary War raid on Royalton, Vermont and the end of effective Native American resistance in the far West with the killing of Crazy Horse. Cultural historian Howard Mansfield looks at how time and place are coming undone in our ultra-mobile Internet era, and Sally Brady's memoir, A Box of Darkness: The Story of a Marriage looks at ties that bind even when trust is broken.

It's going to be a great season of readings at this unique, grassroots literary festival. Join us!

July 7, 2011

MAJOR JACKSON Holding Company: Poems

HOWARD MANSFIELD Turn and Jump: How Time & Place Fell Apart

July 14, 2011

CRESTON LEA Wild Punch

NEIL GOODWIN We Go As Captives: The Royalton Raid and the Shadow War on the Revolutionary Frontier

July 21, 2011

KATHARINE BRITTON Her Sister's Shadow

SALLY BRADY A Box of Darkness: The Story of a Marriage

JULY 28, 2011

TOM POWERS The Killing of Crazy Horse

CAROL WESTBERG Slipstream


In The 1793 Meetinghouse In Canaan, N.H.'s Historic District, Opposite The Beach On Canaan Street Lake. SUPERB ENTERTAINMENT BY SOME OF THE NATION'S FINEST WRITERS.
FREE ADMISSION AND REFRESHMENTS.

Sponsors include James Laffan, Esq., Timothy J. Caldwell Estate Planning!!!

Authors' Books For Sale, courtesy of the Norwich Bookstore

Hosted By William Craig

ALL READINGS BEGIN AT 7:30 P.M..

Please, No Infants, Toddlers or Squirmers!

Directions: Route 4 to the blinking light in Canaan; 2 miles up Canaan Street to the Old Meetinghouse

Book Events this Week

Tuesday, 6/21/2011

• Courtney Sullivan will read from her new novel Maine at River Run at 7pm

Wednesday, 6/22/2011

• Water Street Bookstore will host Ann Joslin Williams at 7pm talking about Down from Cascom Mountain
• Neil Gaiman will be the guest for Writers on a New England Stage at The Music Hall at 7:30pm. This event is sold out, but is typically broadcast on NHPR. (If you have a ticket you don't plan to use let me know immediately -- Gaiman is one of my favorite authors and an amazing reader to listen to.)

Thursday, 6/23/2011

• Michael Sims, author of the new E.B. White biography The Story of Charlotte's Web will be speaking at River Run at 7pm
• Maxine Kumin and Deborah Brown will be at Gibson's at 7pm

Friday, 6/24/2011

• Gary Braver will be signing his new thriller Tunnel Vision at Barnes & Noble, Manchester at 5pm

Sunday, 6/26/2011

• Maxine Kumin and Deborah Brown will be at MainStreet BookEnds of Warner at 1pm
• Toadstool Bookshop, Milford will host Paul Doiron reading from his new mystery featuring Maine game warden Mike Bowditch, Trespasser at 2pm

Looking for NH's best books

In recognition of the rich and varied literary talent in the Granite State, the New Hampshire Writers’ Project will present the tenth New Hampshire Literary Awards at a special reception and ceremony on November 4, 2011 in Manchester. Nominations will be accepted until June 15, 2011

Awards will be given in the following categories:

•  Award for OUTSTANDING CHILDREN'S LITERATURE
• Award for OUTSTANDING BOOK OF FICTION  
• THE DONALD M. MURRAY OUTSTANDING JOURNALISM AWARD  
• OUTSTANDING BOOK OF POETRY 
• Award for OUTSTANDING BOOK OF NONFICTION
• Award for LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT

 Nominations are encouraged and welcome from everyone, including writers, publishers, organizations, and the general public. Self-nominations are also welcome. Guidelines for each award and the required nomination form are available on the NH Writers' project website. 

Katherine Paterson is coming to NH!

Acclaimed author Katherine Paterson will be in New Hampshire on Tuesday, May 17, 2011 as part of the New Hampshire Humanities Council's Connections literacy program. Paterson will offer a talk on her work at 7 p.m. at the Palace Theatre in Manchester. This event is free and open to the public but preregistration is suggested. Contact the NH Humanities Council to reserve your seats.



Katherine Paterson received the Newbery Medal for Bridge to Terabithia (one of the best and saddest books of all time!) and Jacob Have I Loved. She won National Book Awards for The Master Puppeteer and The Great Gilly Hopkins. Her most recent novel, The Day of the Pelican, tells the story of a refugee family from Kosovo. Paterson has spoken at the National Book Festival and is the current Ambassador for Young People's Literature. This promises to be a great event!

LAL 2011 New Hampshire Winners

New Hampshire's 2011 LAL winners have been selected from the 47 wonderful letters that were chosen as our state semi-finalists.


Drew L. Stetson, a fifth grader at Stratham Memorial School, wrote a letter to Robert Frost about his nature poems, which was the Granite State’s first place winner in the level I competition for students in grades 4 through 6. “When sunshine glistens through the green leaves of trees and white fluffy clouds hang in the sky,” Stetson wrote, “I feel upbeat. When the sky is a sheet of gray and it is cold, bleak, and desolate, I feel down and lazy. This must happen to you too, because your poems describe this feeling quite well.”

Erin Angel Choate, a seventh grader at Lisbon Regional, wrote to David Pelzer about A Child Called It. In her letter, Ms. Choate recounted a difficult time in her life similar to the situation depicted in Pelzer’s book, and thanked Pelzer for helping her to realize she wasn’t alone. “By writing this letter, I am chancing the public realizing that I have been abused, even though most people probably already know. I don’t care. Your book has made that possible.” Ms. Choate’s letter was the Granite State’s first place winner in the level II competition for students in grades 7 and 8.

Jake Tinkham, a twelfth grader at Gilford High School, wrote his letter, which was the Granite State’s level III first place winner, to Brian Jacques. “The Redwall Series inspired me to think imaginatively and also to express my creative side to others,” wrote Mr. Tinkham, who expressed a strong desire to follow in Jacques’s footsteps. “Some day I hope to write fantasy novels capable of capturing the reader in the same way that your work once captivated me.”

Many excellent letters were entered in Letters About Literature 2011 and the judges at each competition level had tough choices to make as they read and carefully considered each letter. The New Hampshire winning letters have been sent on as entries in the National Letters About Literature Competition.

The 2011 New Hampshire Letters About Literature judges were:

• Ann Hoey, Youth Services Coordinator, NH State Library
• Author Marty Kelley
• Poet, and NH Center for the Book Advisory Board member, Betsy Snider
• Maureen Brown, an English teacher at Goffstown High School
• Andrew L. Fersch, 8th Grade Language Arts Teacher, Epping Middle School
• Lesley Kimball, Library Director, Wiggin Memorial Library