BRATTLEBORO-Credit Royall Tyler or Lucy Terry Prince or even Rudyard Kipling, but Windham County is still full of poets and writers.
Tyler, by the way, who lived in both Guilford and Brattleboro, was, in 1787, the writer of the first American theatrical comedy. It played in New York City. Prince, kidnapped in Africa and sold into slavery before she was freed, settled in Guilford and was the first known African American poet in the United States.
And Kipling, well, we all know about him. He built a house in Dummerston to write in. His house is still a tourist attraction which can be rented out for weekends and celebrations.
There's even a book about Brattleboro and its long and distinguished history with the printed word - Print Town: Brattleboro's Legacy of Words - which tells these and many other literary tales about the largely bygone era when the town was a nationally recognized hub for industrial book typesetting, printing, and manufacturing. The multi-year WORDS Project, which published the book, has documented this history with other multimedia projects, including the WORDS Trail, a self-guided tour through this legacy.
Every fall we have the Brattleboro Literary Festival, which was founded in 2002 and has brought more than 900 authors to Brattleboro to speak to its devoted audience. Maybe there are so many writers in Windham County because there are so many devoted readers?
Write Action, a Windham County membership group for writers published and unpublished (yet), was founded in 2000 and has 450 members. Brattleboro's Green Writers Press, founded by Dede Cummings in 2014, publishes books about environmental awareness and social justice.
In this digital age, Brattleboro has six bookstores.
It is hard to know exactly how many writers and poets are living in Windham County today, but even a cursory inspection of the shelves at ByWay Books on Canal Street in Brattleboro indicates that the answer is: a lot.
A banner year, a huge bookshelf
Just look at 2025.
In poetry, Steve Minkin of Brattleboro published Moral Oblivion, Toni Ortner of Putney published The Vincent Van Gogh Notebooks, Terry Hauptman of Westminster published Shattered, Joanne McNeil Hayes of Brattleboro published I Am the Prairie, and Gregg Orifici of Halifax published Rattle of the Sun.
In terms of fiction - and again, this is cursory - this year Tim Weed of Putney published The Afterlife Project; the wildly popular Ann Braden published her fourth children's novel, Into the Rapids; Matt Spencer of Brattleboro published the dark fantasy short-story collection Chapel of the Falcon, and Jessie Haas of Westminster, who has written more than 40 books, published a meticulously researched book of historical fiction, Dearest Blood.
Then there's memoir. We've gotten Reviving Artemis by Deborah Lee Luskin of Newfane and The Wanderings of Isaac Andre Gedalia by Sylvie Weil of Marlboro. In the social sciences we have Bullock: Chronicles of Deprivation and Despair in an American Prison by Matthew Vernon Whalan of Brattleboro and Burned by Billionaires: How Concentrated Wealth and Power Are Ruining Our Lives and Planet, by Chuck Collins of Guilford. And in the spiritual, there is Peace Within: How I Developed a Relationship with Nature, by John Cole of Brattleboro.
And that's just this year!
Mystery writer Lynne Kennedy of Brattleboro has published seven books and is coming out with another soon based around Van Gogh. Gail Grycel of Westminster West published a memoir, Dancing Unabashedly to Mariachi Music: A Woman's Year-Long Journey into Living True, in 2024, and the word is that she will be publishing another memoir soon.
Castle Freeman Jr. of Newfane has published seven novels and two short story collections, as well as writing a column for The Old Farmer's Almanac from 1982 to 2011 and contributing to magazines like Vermont Life and Harrowsmith.
And with the holiday season coming around, how can we forget Archer Mayor of Newfane, who from 1988 to 2022 (minus 1989) gave us a new Joe Gunther mystery book for Christmas every year?
An entertaining speaker, Mayor would make the rounds of bookshops and libraries, talking and signing the books that would become Christmas presents for his loyal admirers and their friends.
That's 33 books written in Newfane about a law enforcement officer who lives in Brattleboro. You can't get more local than that.
The Commons started wondering: We know Windham County is a haven for painters, sculptors, potters, weavers, and woodworkers, but why are there so many writers here?
So we made some calls.
Community draws people with like interests
Let's start with Write Action and its 450 members. The writers' group began as a fundraiser when a local writer had her computer stolen. Poet Arlene Distler was one of the founding members.
"Our thing is giving the opportunity to people to read their work and to get feedback," Distler said. "They may eventually publish, if that's what they want. But you know, unlike the Literary Festival, we're not all about publishing. Our desire has always been to have the group be very open and supportive and democratic. And we've had some wonderful success."
Distler believes Windham County's literary history "does infuse the atmosphere here," but she feels that one writer draws another writer until there is a community.
"When a particular geographic area has a lot of people from China, say, and if it is welcoming, they bring family and friends. In the case of writers, it would be bringing friends who are also writers. There's a whole bunch of independent bookstores. Writers like that. There's enough interest to have a literary festival.
"But I'll tell you, I'm here in large part because my husband came," Distler continues. "He rented a cabin in the 1950s somewhere near Norwich, Vermont. And when he left, he just always wanted to come back here to Vermont. First we went to Readsboro, and that was so isolated.
"We wanted people with like interests, and felt like Brattleboro was the place. So we moved to Brattleboro."
A multigenerational literary tradition
Writer Nancy Olson of Putney, the retired head of the English Department at Brattleboro Union High School, points out a multigenerational literary tradition here.
"I also think this area has a tradition of acceptance," Olson said. "Live and let live as long as you're not hurting anybody else. So people can have a contemplative life here. People will leave you alone, or you can be involved. It's really a personal choice."
Putney itself has a tradition of scholarship, Olson said.
"We've got Carmelita Hinton founding The Putney School," she said. "You've got the Greenwood School, you've got Landmark College taking over the Windham College campus [after] Windham folded."
Norman Mailer lived in Jamaica in 1949, fresh off the publication of his acclaimed novel, The Naked and the Dead, and in 1950–51, he briefly lived in Putney while working on a second novel, Barbary Shore.
"And of course, John Irving was in Putney when he was teaching at Windham," says Olson.
She adds that writers support each other here.
"I've just always found people really encouraging of each other," Olson said. "And the beauty of the place is really helpful. People can take long walks in the woods or in a field or look at things. It depends on the individual, how much of a stimulus a person finds in the environment here. I, personally, would not like to live anywhere else. Having lived other places, I much prefer to live here."
Writing 'in connection with other people'
Ann Braden, author of young-adult novels, grew up in Connecticut but always wanted to live in Brattleboro.
"Brattleboro felt like the antithesis of Connecticut," she says. "Connecticut had a more material, focused, competitive vibe that I was trying to get away from. I just really like how it's human-based here. We're just regular people being regular people, and there's not a competition for whose lawn looks the best."
For similar reasons, that is why she writes here.
"I chose to write where I really like that connection with other people, sometimes in the abstract, sometimes more concretely," Braden says.
"I think Vermont is a place where you would go if you could work anywhere. And writers can generally work anywhere. I think also Brattleboro and Windham County have a bent towards the arts and creativity. Windham County has sort of this human-to-human connection. That's part of small-town communities, and I feel like books are often an extension of that human-to-human connection."
Creative energy abounds
Poet and writer Diana Whitney has been in Brattleboro for 20 years. Her latest book of poems, Girl Trouble, is coming out next year. She praises Brooks Memorial Library, the town's many bookstores, and the Brattleboro Literary Festival for creating a sense of community around books.
"Our literary festival has loyal local readers and audience members and also people who come from a long ways around to see the wonderful writers that are at the festival," Whitney said. "We've got great bookstores here."
She said her mentor, former Vermont Poet Laureate Sydney Lea, once told her that Vermont has more poets per capita than any other state.
"Vermont is a wonderful place to write, [...] for the solitude, the natural beauty and communities that are close-knit and value the arts," Whitney said. "I lived in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom for six years, and that's actually how I came to Vermont and where I wrote a good deal of the poems that were in my first book.
"But the Brattleboro area of Windham County is really rich with artists and cultural events. There is a sense of creative energy here in our corner of southern Vermont that is really special.
"So I think the combination of both a quiet and peaceful life and the natural inspiration of natural beauty that's all around us gives us a thriving community of artists and writers," she says. "I was at two book events at the Brattleboro library just last week."
Writers supported by a community of readers
Writer Deborah Lee Luskin moved from New York City after she decided she could not face another summer in the city. She chose Newfane because she knew people there.
"I came to Windham County because I knew people here, and I was coming up as a single woman, and I wanted some infrastructure, as it were, some support," she said. "I wanted to go to a beautiful place and write. And I thought that summer I would write both my dissertation and a novel. And I wrote a novel that will probably never be published anyway, water under the bridge, and I've continued to write. But I would write anywhere. I am physically incapable of not writing, or emotionally incapable of not writing. Even my grocery lists are organized."
Luskin said writing is how she makes sense of the world.
"And I write all the time, but being grounded or rooted is really important to me," Luskin said. "It's just about living locally. I love that I can say hello to people in the post office or in the grocery store, and if I want to, I can extend the relationship, and if I don't, I still have these wonderful casual relationships."
Luskin believes that Windham County's community of readers is a big part of the supports for writers here. Libraries help create and support this community.
"Vermont has more public libraries per capita than any other state," Luskin said. "There are somewhere between 180 and 190 public libraries in Vermont."
Like-minded writers form a deep bond
Eileen Christelow has written and illustrated 32 children's books in her long and illustrious career. She recently moved from her longtime home in Dummerston to Brattleboro.
Last week, she and two long-time friends did a book signing at ByWay Books. All three women have been in the same writers group for decades.
Joining Christelow was Brattleboro's Karen Hesse, who has won both a Newbery Medal and a MacArthur Fellowship for her children's and young adult books. The other is Liza Ketchum, who now lives in Massachusetts and who has published 17 children's and young adult books. The reunion-cum-book signing had an eye towards Christmas.
Christelow and her husband, sculptor Ahren Ahrenholz, came to southern Vermont "40 odd-years ago" after living in California for seven years.
"Vermont seems like a good calm spot to move to after being in California," she says. "But also, my family goes way back from various parts of Vermont. I was very familiar with the state because we would visit my grandparents up in Windsor a lot."
It was hard to find a place to stay or to rent, she says.
"We finally found one in Marlboro and we stayed for five years, and then finally found some land in Dummerston, where we built our place, which we recently sold," Christelow says. "And in the process of all that moving around, I met other people doing kids' books, and we started the writing group, which was Liza Ketchum and Karen Hesse. I'm not sure how we met, but anyhow, we did."
Having a long-standing community of like-minded writers helped Christelow's creativity, she said.
"For me, the Children's Book Group was a pretty interesting way to go," she said. "We were looking at each other's illustrations and also reading each other's stories. I've learned a lot, so that was a perfect pairing for me."
'It's my craft'
If the choice is New York City or Windham County, then Windham County is a good place to live and write, said writer David Blistein.
"Here we can do what we want to do, and we aren't subject to the pressure or budget as much as we would be in the city," he said.
Blistein owned an ad agency, wrote some books, and wrote many scripts for Ken Burns films. Now he is publishing a novel, The Man Who Woke Up the Buddha, in podcast form online on Substack.
"It's so brutal to make a living as a writer," Blistein said. "I can't speak for other people, but It's been great for me. I do a lot of writing at Amy's Bakery in Brattleboro - a lot of writing. I was at Amy's this morning. And I've been saying that I want my table at Amy's to be on our Words Trail."
Blistein said he writes "because I'm good at it."
"It's my craft," he said. "Why is someone a woodworker? I'm a writer for the same reason."
Community is important to Blistein.
"Community is a good word for me," he said. "My wife, Wendy O'Connell, does a local show on BCTV, and we've been here for a long time. I raised our daughter here. I'm not sure that's why I came here, but community is why I stayed. I think maybe a lot of people would say that. It's not the writing community, it's the community in general."
Tranquility, plus a 'little urban core'
P.J. Melton of Brattleboro is a freelance writer who writes mainly about the green building world. She believes that the tranquility of Windham County allows the mind to access "the writing part of you."
"You need to be able to find space and peace in your mind to access the writing part of you, to let it flourish," Melton says. "So I think that's part of it. There are other beautiful places, but you have to compare how many writers per capita there are to others in other rural areas."
And yes, Windham County is rural, she says, "but also there's this little urban core."
"Brattleboro doesn't really feel like a small town," she says. "It feels like a small city more, even though we're only 12,000 people."
This News item by Joyce Marcel was written for The Commons.