 I see that if you can, there should be enough for everyone. My name is Christopher Kaufman Nostrup. I am your emcee for the evening. You'll probably get sick of me before the end, but hopefully not. As many of you know, I'm also the executive director of Vermont Humanities, we are the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, as well as the Library of Congress. Delighted to welcome you to the festivities this evening, presented in partnership with the Vermont Department of Libraries and the Vermont College of Fine Arts. We're excited to be collaborating with them for a second year back from the pandemic. There are more people here this year than last year. Thank you for being here. I'm going to start just by taking care of a couple of kind of technical notes, and then we're going to welcome our co-hosts for the evening up to say a few words. This evening we are going to announce Vermont Reads 2023, and then of course we'll move on to announce the four winners of the 2022 Vermont Book Awards in the categories of Creative Nonfiction, Fiction, Poetry, and New This Year, Children's Literature. We're delighted that last year's nominees, plus a very special guest star, will join us on stage to help us present the awards later in the evening. For tonight's Vermont Book Awards, an independent panel of peer reviewers, including writers, publishers, and booksellers, read all of the nominated books in each category. They created the short list and they ultimately determined the winners. The judges are independent, and they are not employees, trustees, or otherwise affiliated with any of the three sponsoring organizations. For Vermont Reads, the process of choosing an annual book begins almost a year before the announcement, with a call for nominations going out far and wide to writers, librarians, teachers, and of course readers. Books on the long list must cover a broad range of themes of interest to Vermont communities. They must be accessible to everyone from middle school students to elders, and they must offer inspired opportunities for community engagement that go beyond simple book groups to include creative activities that help Vermonters engage with a test in meaningful, fun, and exciting ways. Once that list of 20 or so long list books is narrowed to a short list of four to five finalists, the finalists are read by a community advisory panel, including writers, librarians, and teachers, before a final decision is made by Vermont Humanities staff, including our high school interns that come to us from Montpelier High School. Now that those process questions are out of the way, we're gonna get to some of the good stuff. It is my distinct pleasure to welcome President Leslie Ward of the Vermont College of Fine Arts to say a few words of welcome. Welcome all. It is lovely to be here tonight, to gather, to acknowledge and celebrate the outstanding contributions of our Vermont writers. We have all chosen to be here tonight because we are book lovers, because we recognize how our own lives have been enriched and altered, expanded and nourished by books. We share the belief that books are essential to life. We've all had those moments when we have finished a book, closed the cover, sat back on the chair, and just knew we would never be the same again. That some perspective of our life had been unalterably changed. Or perhaps we closed that book, stepped back into our lives pretty much the way we were, but we knew life would be a little easier because someone out there understood what it feels like to walk around in our body. Or sometimes we closed that book and we know that we have a new set of friends to go to for comfort when our flesh and blood cows aren't showing up in the way we need. Books, excuse me, a book often seems to arrive at exactly the moment when you need that particular book most. There's a little magic out there. Books entertain, of course, but they also offer knowledge. They teach us, they give us insights. Books heal. And most importantly, they have the power to connect us to each other across our differences, across communities and generations and cultures. Well, most, excuse me, well much of what is written in social media, those words are meant to divide and destroy those who differ from us or disagree. But the words in books offer an invitation to understanding and connection. In a country that suffers from loneliness, books are often life-affirming companions. And so we gather tonight to celebrate the writers of our great state because we owe them our deepest gratitude for the work they do and the gifts they offer us. And because community is what sustains writers. At Vermont College of Fine Arts, we know the critical role a writer's community plays in their ability to sustain their craft. We are intimately aware of what goes into the act of creating a book, whether it is a collection of poems or essays, a picture book or a grade school novel, a YA fantasy adventure or a book of historical fiction, or any number of the infinite genres found in libraries and bookstores. The act of writing that book is 10% inspiration and 90% hard work. You writers out there, you know what I'm talking about. You write and rewrite. You edit and polish and edit again. Sometimes you put unfinished manuscripts aside for years and come back to them. Whether you start off on a flurry of inspiration or with just a quiet idea that you want to explore, the path to completing a book is never a straight line. It is a journey that should contain a warning message, not for the fate-hearted, because it is a journey that contains multitudes for it is both joyful and excruciating, exhilarating and mundane, maddening and life-affirming. For most writers, it is not a choice. To write is to breathe oxygen, but it is never easy. We know at VCFA that though much of writing is a solitary act, it is a pursuit dependent on the support of an artistic community, a community of mentors and peers, of supporters and cheerleaders, and of course of readers and libraries and bookstores. Vermont is a community that prides itself in nourishing and supporting and celebrating creative souls. We are thrilled to come together this evening as a community to recognize and express our support and our gratitude to our outstanding Vermont writers. Thank you, writers, for your inspiration. Thank you for your hard work. Thank you for the vulnerability and courage it takes to be a writer. And most of all, thank you for making our lives richer. And now I'd like to introduce, and I have the honor of introducing the State Librarian and Commissioner of Libraries, Katherine Delnaio. My name is Katherine Delnaio, and I'm the State Librarian. It is such a pleasure to be with you here this evening to celebrate Vermont's writers. I truly appreciate this ongoing opportunity that the Department of Libraries has to partner with the Vermont College of Fine Arts and Vermont Humanities on the Vermont Book Awards. The Vermont Book Awards celebrate and support a long tradition of the creation of literature in Vermont by honoring the words of outstanding literary merit by authors who live and work in our state. In recent months, I've been giving a lot of thought to the importance of the literary tradition in Vermont and to the importance of ensuring that Vermont continues to be a place where writing flourishes and where all Vermonters continue to be able to access the written work. Writing has one key way in which individuals share their ideas with the world. By putting ideas onto a page, writers crystallize and clarify their thoughts so that others can know them. Writing is a way for each of us to tell our own story, to speak for ourselves about our lived experiences and our ideas about what it means to be a human in the world. By reading, we engage directly with the ideas of the author, and by discussing what we've read with others, we give those ideas and our responses to them the opportunity to be even more alive. The school, public, and academic libraries across the state play an important role in collecting books and maintaining access to them. Libraries play an important role in making sure that ideas and information continue to circulate, that books continue to find readers, and that future thinkers can continue to build on the intellectual and creative work that precedes them. Today's writers can stand on the shoulders of giants because they've had access to the books and ideas written by the authors who came before them. It is vitally important that we celebrate the intellectual curiosity and encourage the development of diverse and varied voices and stories through books. It is also vitally important that we support cultural institutions that maintain and promote access to books and ideas in our state, and that we recognize the important role that institutions like libraries and schools and bookstores and Vermont Humanities play in the collective development of our society by making space for books, the ideas they contain, and the dialogue that they provoke in us as readers. In recent years, our country has seen an uptick in the number of challenges of books in library collections. Alarmingly, these challenges have increasingly focused on books written about and by people of color and people within the LGBTQI plus community. While raising concerns about materials in library collections is a right of individuals, when seen as a whole, it is undeniable that a concerning trend of trying to silence the stories of some members of our communities is emerging. These book challenges, when successful, result in the removal of perspectives of the people of color and the LGBTQI community who have written the books. Which results in a narrowing of the diversity of voices that people can hear about and learn about. The removal of books reflect the, excuse me, the removal of books that reflect the diversity of our community and our world of libraries and schools signals that some people, some ideas are unwelcome, of lesser importance or even dangerous. The practice of banning books runs counter to the very principles of librarianship that are the foundation of our work in libraries in this country, which support the right of each individual to learn and grow intellectually based on their interests and respects the privacy of each individual as they learn. You might be wondering why I'm saying all of this because tonight is a celebration of the writers and like the previous speaker, I am extremely grateful to all of the writers who have taken their time, their energy, but generously poured their creative thoughts and minds onto the page. Tonight we celebrate the dedication and commitment that they bring to us. We celebrate their varied voices in the many interesting and unique ways that they share their stories with us. In addition to considering this evening celebration of authors, I ask that you also consider tonight's celebration a call to support the sharing of books and by doing so to promote continued dialogue in our state around the ideas and concepts in those books because writing, reading and talking about the diverse stories in books is vitally important to our continued progress toward being a more informed and more inclusive society. Thank you. We're proud to live in a state that is committed to the freedom to read. At Vermont Humanities, we engage with that principle every day, believing that reading, as we all know by now, creates windows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors to see others clearly, examine our own experiences and empathize with the experiences of others. It is my distinct pleasure to present the first award of the evening, Vermont Reads 2023. This year, our team has chosen a book that joyfully celebrates many of the communities that are currently under siege in our nation as Kathy Soella pointed out. It is our hope that reading this book will strengthen Vermont's resolve to create just, vibrant, and resilient communities where everyone is encouraged to read with bravery and curiosity. As you know, Vermont Reads 2022, the most costly journey, will wrap up its program year next month. It is the most successful Vermont Reads project in our history with over 100 community projects completed and 5,500 copies distributed in English and in Spanish to Vermonters in every county. This book telling the stories of migrant farm workers in Vermont truly resonated in our communities and we are so delighted to have had a small part, a small part in making our migrant neighbors feel a bit more seen. This year, we are zooming out to explore world beyond our own orders and before our time, but with direct relevance to the world that we live in now. We're pleased to announce that Vermont Reads 2023 is Melinda Lowe's national book award winning young adult novel, The Last Night at the Telegraph Club. Immersed in the life and culture of San Francisco's Chinatown, home to Chinese immigrant families like hers. But as she comes of age in the 1950s, her passion for rockets and space exploration is matched by her curiosity about the Telegraph Club located in the neighboring part of the city that her parents have asked her to avoid it. Lily and her new friend, Kathleen, begin to sneak out at night to the club which hosts performances by Tommy Andrews, a woman who dresses and performs in a traditionally masculine style. Kath and Lily's interest in each other continues to grow despite the very real danger faced by two girls falling in love in 1954. At the same time, McCarthy-era fears about communism coupled with ongoing anti-Asian hate shaped the stability of the Chinese community and threatened to involve Lily's own father. For the 21st year of the Vermont Reads program, we invite the Montanaries to plant projects centered around The Last Night at the Telegraph Club and its themes of self-acceptance, familial and cultural ties, U.S.-China relations, LGBTQIA plus and feminist history, McCarthyism, xenophobia, and the Asian-Iran experience among others. Although Melinda Lowe could not be with us this evening, she will come to Vermont for a residency during her program year. And for tonight, she sent us this video postcard. Thank you so much for selecting Last Night at the Telegraph Club for Vermont Reads 2023. I am really so honored. You know, when I started writing this book, I definitely didn't sit down and think, oh, well, I hope that my book is selected at the state level. I certainly never thought it would win the awards as one, you know, it's really a huge, huge honor. I think that every time I sit down to write a book, what I want is for the reader to really experience the highs and lows of the character's world. So I know that Vermont is not San Francisco in the 1950s and Lily's Chinatown world and her experiences at the Telegraph Club are probably pretty different. Then your day-to-day experiences right now, but I really hope that when you read this book, you will be able to step into Lily's shoes and walk with her through the streets of San Francisco in September 1954 and go with her to the Telegraph Club and experience the excitement and the fear and the hopes that she has as well. I really think this book does have some universal themes. So even if you're not anything like Lily, I think you might enjoy or identify with the way she is trying to figure out who she is, both within her family and within her community. I think that those kinds of stories can speak to really everyone. So thank you again so much for selecting my book. Most of all, really hope that you enjoy it. I'm really very honored. 4,000 copies coming to start this off for your next month. You can go on our website and learn more about how to apply to get copies from your community. Before we move on to the rest of the evening, I want to acknowledge some special guests in the audience. Vermont's congressional delegation has been among the most stalwart supporters of education, the arts, the humanities and the freedom to read. Last year, our delegation, including Senator Lady, helped lead the charge for the largest appropriation, the largest appropriation for the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities in their history. We are pleased to have representatives from Senator Welch's office and Congresswoman Becca Baylent's office here in the room with us. Please stand and be recognized for the Arts and Humanities in Vermont. I would now like to welcome to the podium Michelle Gold, Communications and Outreach Representative for Senator Peter Welch, who will introduce a special message from the senator. I'm going to take a little page from Senator Lakey's book, which is Always Have Prepared Remarks and then deviate from them. So my deviation is to say that I am so excited that I'm going to live last night at the Telegraph Club. It's going to be a Vermont Reads book for next year because it has been on my to-read list for quite a while and I love her stuff. I've read some of her other books and I know we're all going to have a treat this year reading her book. So it's a pleasure for me to be here among so many people who love books and so many talented writers. And one of the things that I know Vermonters love is to talk about how special Vermont is. It's the thing we all agree on, right? And there are reasons for that. And one of them is that we have more libraries per capita than any other state in the country. The average Vermonter visiting a public library four times a year. So we also contribute more money to support our public libraries than other states. And we also, another thing that we have more of, we also have more libraries. So not everything is literary that we're great at. But one thing that I know no one has ever quantified is how many outstanding writers there are per state. But if someone were to do so based on tonight's nominees I am sure that Vermont would once again be number one. Arts for founding the Vermont Book Awards and for hosting us all this evening along with Vermont Humanities and the Vermont Department of Libraries for organizing the event. Senator Welch would have enjoyed being here in person tonight as his love of the arts, the humanities and the written work read as deep. But unfortunately his schedule didn't allow him to attend. However, he did record a few remarks to share with you all and so via the magic of technology, Senator Peter Welch. Hi there, it's Peter Welch. You know one of Vermont's great strengths is our love of arts, literature and knowledge. The 14 finalists nominated for the 2023 Vermont Book Award embody these qualities. Their work covers a wide breadth of subjects and approaches from picture books to engaging in innovative nonfiction to very insightful fiction into poetry that helps us think about what it means to be human. Those finalists were chosen from among 50 nominated works and I wanna thank the organizers of the Vermont Book Awards, the Vermont Humanities Council, the Vermont Arts Council and the Vermont Department of Libraries. I know this event takes a great deal of work. It's very important both to recognize those books and to bring those books to the attention of people who might not have discovered them. Congratulations to all of the nominees. What you do requires talent, discipline, and hard work. That work enriches us all. Thank you, that's staff, hopefully that's not a problem. Can we give just one more round of applause for our amazing, committed, and effective congressional delegation? And of course it's not just the three guys, it's all of the staff as well. Three guys listening to me. Two guys, one. All right, let's get to the awards. On behalf of the planning committee and all the partners I want to acknowledge as Senator Welch did, the tremendous achievement of all the finalists and indeed all the nominees. As he said, over 50 books published in Vermont by Vermont writers were nominated for the awards this year, showing a deep well of talent that exists in our small place. The juries for each of the awards were deeply impressed by the artistic excellence of the work submitted and each of the 2022 finalists have created important and lasting contributions to the world of letters. We thank them all for their commitment to excellence and we urge you to read all of their books. For 2022, we are going to start with our new book award, the Vermont Book Award for Children's Literature. Tonight's finalists include a twisty and twisted, successful, young, well-thrilled, and timeless fantasy, reality, and a masterfully wrapped case of teenage boys. A quirky, middle-grade novel about friendship, baking and mandating things, likewise in friendships, with the vivid, spunky, altogether irresistible heroine. A debut picture book, also sonnally illustrated by the author, about a dog's fantastical, newly-laid adventure and wild new friendships. And finally, another great book that's also a jubilant, evocative celebration of the transitions between seasons. Here tonight to help us present this award, we have the legendary resident of Calis, multiple prints on our award winner and national award winner for Young People's Literature, M.T. Anderson. Finalists, we would like to ask the authors to stand and be recognized. 2022, Vermont Book Award for Children's Literature goes to... The second award, tonight's finalists for creative nonfiction, included dazzling and in-depth exploration of the natural and supernatural wonders of Iceland's landscape and cultural beliefs. A hypnotic memoir about time and loss and death and self, told in the transcendent flashes and fragments. And finally, a collection of micro-essays on literature and life, a reluctant memoir in which the author is in dialogue with other books, with letters from the past, with family history, with time, past, memory and self. Again, joining me this evening is Vermont's former cartoon Laureate, MacArthur Fellow, and all-around amazing human, Alison Bechdel. The finalists in creative nonfiction are Nancy Marie Browne, from Davis, for Aurelia, Aurelia, creating nonfiction in Catherine Davis. So, it feels weird to be writing this, as if something that hasn't happened has happened. But if it has, how happy it makes me to win this prize of all prizes and for a book that feels like it sprang from my life in Vermont with my family, with my husband and daughter, who is reading this right now. With the thing living in Vermont has always made possible for me the sense of being totally unfettered, free to make whatever I want to make in whatever way I want to make it. The course of the transit, to quote myself, herself, via the remarkable apparatus of association. And for this, I send you all my heartfelt thanks. Thank you, Alison, and thank you, Catherine. Well, Catherine's promising. Thank you, Catherine. You're also here representing Louise's book tonight, I believe. The third award is for fiction. Tonight's finalists for fiction include a novel that uses fantastical and absurdist elements to satirize familial trauma, chronic illness, academic labor, and contemporary art. A family saga set in Puerto Rico that Ms. Magazine calls Mystical Masterful Storytelling. The first fiction by a Nobel Prize-winning poet, a book which has been called a fairy tale, a symphony, a miracle, and an incandescent act of autobiography. And finally, a meditation on grief, fame, and community that follows a famous keener hired to mourn funerals who trains a prodigy in the cart of lamentation. Joining me to present the 2022 Book Award for Fiction is the 2021 honorary Melanie Fett. So the nominees for this year's Vermont Book Award in Fiction are Karen Bailen and self-deprecating experimental writer to write a redemptive arc. But in real life, I found it actually quite incredible and possibly redemptive to get to use these things that are difficult as a base from which to laugh and to also get access to all of these desserts. Here, I've been absolutely glowing to run into a remand of the scapegoat at several Vermont bookstores, including everyone's books in Brattle Grove, Barleby's, in Wilmington, Northshire Bookstore, in Manchester, and the Norwich Bookstore. Sometimes it has even been face-out. An incredible feeling to be living in this state and seeing my book being supported and recommended in these, to me, holiest of places. So thank you to all who collaborate on this prize and particularly to the booksellers who have let me camp out for a while on your shelves and for sharing independent literature with your customers. I should say, before we get to the last question, all of you winners, you have to come find me afterwards so I can give you the rest of your prize. So don't leave without seeing me. All right, we're at the end. Tonight's finalists for the 2022 Book Award in Poetry include a collection of stunning visceral poems and word witchery about bodily autonomy, desire, longing, and fertility. A collection that's all mischief, memory, dream, and lusty desire by Tern's lyrical, passionate, and funny. And finally, an unflinching, illuminating poetry collection about religion, climate change, psychology, motherhood, and existential plonks in which the ordinary becomes the extraordinary. Finally, you might see a pattern here. Please welcome from Brattle Row, the 2021 Vermont Book Award winner for poetry, Shanta Lee, to present the final award of the evening. And congratulations for the finalists. Rage Hezekiah for your 2022 Book Award. Those two, oh my goodness. Bianca Stone. Thank you so much. Thank you so much to my fellow nominees. I'm Rage and Carol. I'm so honored to be nominated with you. I wanted to say that to be a poet is learning to speak of our own lives and of reality and to have it mean something. People say I don't understand poetry. Ah, but either does the poet. And they can never hope to understand everything. It's hard to surrender to the strangeness of reality. Every book I am lucky enough to make and to share is an attempt to speak and listen to this world and to my own life and have it speak and listen to another person's life. How we do this in poetry is its mysterious power. That the poem is created by the poet and the readers is respective consciousnesses. To be a poet is to desperately want this phenomenon to happen. To have it work and to be given awards for it. Sharon Holt said, I don't want to do laundry. I want to be great. Bruce Stone said, I want to tell you something with my hands. And Lorca said, the poet wants. We all want. But that is his sin to want. The poet must love. Well, I want to tell you all here tonight that poetry wants and I want and we want. And that is our good sin. Because in brief moments we fall out of wanting and if we're lucky we get to love and listen and share and say thank you. And that is when the poems are made. Thank you. You inspire us and educate us and spans our world. Thank you so much for all you do with your accomplishments are magnificent. To close us out tonight and get us back to the bar it's not closing and the desserts are not gone. So please keep eating and drinking but only in a responsible way. To close us out I want to again thank our host at the Vermont College of Fine Arts and all the members of the judging panels who helped to make this evening so special. I'd also like to offer a special shout out to the planning committee for the 2022 Vermont Boards, I have a vault. Please make sure to stop at the registration table and pick up a token of our gratitude for your support of Vermont's writing community. And for those of you who supported the Vermont Boards with an additional contribution, if you have special passages and packages awaiting you at the registration table, please make sure to pick them up. Thank you everybody for coming. Congratulations again to all the finalists, all the winners, all the writers and all the readers.