Exeter’s Literary Community Gathers for LitFest
By ERIN HAN and ISHAAN SINGH
On Saturday, April 6, the town of Exeter hosted the annual Exeter LitFest at the Town Hall. Over the course of the day, LitFest panel members gave speeches about their works, including PEA English instructors Matthew Miller and Chelsea Woodard, as well as alumnus Adam White ‘01.
Instructor in English Chelsea Woodard reads from her poetry book At the Lepidopterist’s House at the Exeter LitFest. Courtesy of Liz Fisher
The night before the festival, organizers held events in preparation for the succeeding day of literature-related panels and interviews. President and founder of Exeter LitFest Renay Allen, who hosted the first LitFest in 2019, recalled the day of the festival, “It was a very busy day. Also a very busy weekend. The Friday night kickoff party for the LitFest was held at the Exeter Public Library and featured a jazz singer named Sharon Jones from Portsmouth. All of our events were free and open to the public, as we tried to be very equitable as well as featuring diverse voices.”
Reyes also detailed the planning process, “Panning began in the fall where we brainstormed ideas for the spring event. We had members of our board that have literary contacts who are able to invite regional authors, and we also like to have local authors in the mix, which is a community that we are very plugged into through The Water Street bookstore. The entire board decides as a whole who the invited guests will be every year, and we very much focus on a balanced and diverse selection of people.”
Instructor in English Courtney Marshall alongside author Ilyon Woo. Katie Adams/Exeter LitFest
She continued, “We were fortunate to receive a grant this year for the first time, so we had much more of a budget. We also like to tie in the whole downtown, and Peg Aronian, wife of retired PEA science teacher Rich Aronian, had an idea to have a poetry crawl in the storefront windows. So if you walk around downtown Exeter for the month of April, which is poetry month, you will see local authors and poets in the windows. One of the selected poets is a girl from Phillips Exeter Academy, Ariana Thornton.”
Instructor in English Matt Miller with author Andre Dubas III Katie Adams/Exeter LitFest
The day of the festival commenced at 10:00 a.m. with an opening brunch at Sea Dog Brewing Company, followed by a family event in the Exeter Public Library hosted by children’s book authors Matt Tavares and Suzanne Slade. At 1:00 p.m. the event made its way to the Exeter Town Hall where a panel of Exeter High School poets were asked questions, and featured author Ilyon Woo shared a conversation with PEA Instructor in English Courtney Marshall. Several writer panels followed, including a poetry reading event featuring English instructor Chelsea Woodard, and the festival concluded with a keynote address and conversation with author Andre Dubus III, moderated by Instructor in English Mathew Miller.
Panelists, most of whom had recently released publications, were invited to the festival through different connections. “I was asked by the organizers. It’s a pretty tight literary community and we like to show up for each other,” said Miller. “I’ve been part of it before in various capacities. This year I am excited to read some poems Friday night and I am looking forward to talking to my friend Andre Dubus III about his new book Ghost Dogs on Saturday. I’ll also be reading at the Word Barn on Sunday.”
When asked about the philosophy that he brings to his work, he added, “…I love stories. I love playing with words. I love that language gets us close to what we want to say but never gets us all the way there, so we keep on at it, hoping to fail better…with every attempt.”
Woodard spoke about what brought her to the event: “I was asked by a former faculty member, Mr. Sneeden, who is on the festival board, [to contribute]. I had a new book come out in the fall, a new book of poems, and so he asked me to be a part of a panel with two other poets, where we’d each give a reading from our most recent books.”
Woodard’s anthology, A Trip To The Lepidopterist’s Office, was a book five to six years in the making, that drew inspirations from both Woodard’s personal life, and her love for the natural world. “I worked on this book for several years, probably for about five years before it felt like it was done and I started sending it out. I had written my first two books mainly while I was in my MFA program and my PhD program, when you have more time that’s built in, but when writing this one, I was in real life and trying to make time for both work and writing, so it took me a little bit longer,” she said. “I worked on the book for five or six years, and then continued to revise it even after it won the Michael Waters Prize and was going to be published. Even after I won the prize, I still changed it a bunch—I took out poems, I wrote a couple of new poems—so it was kind of always evolving.”
Woodard commented on the title, and her choice to hone in on a ‘lepidopterist.’ “I’m a big fan of Vladimir Nabokov, and he was a famous butterfly scientist and collector as well as a writer. I became more interested in him as a scientist almost, and as someone who had to live his whole life in exile than as a writer. So, the first section of this book is about different kinds of collectors. Some collectors are famous ones like John James Audubon or Jacob Grimm (from the Grimm Brothers), but then there are also just some run-of-the-mill collectors, like a metal detectorist or an articulator—the person who assembles skeletons for museums—different types of collecting.”
She continued, “So the first section is about collecting, and then the book continues with those two threads. There are a bunch of persona poems that take on different real people, imagined people and also characters from myths. And then there are poems that are very personal and are more domestic, so the “house” part of the book title. There are some poems that are very much more arm’s distance and kind of observing nature, and then there are some that are really personal about my life—so just a mix.”
When asked about participating in the event, White, PEA alumnus class of ‘01, said, “My old Exeter classmate, Katie Adams, reached out to ask if I could participate. It sounded like a fun opportunity to get back to Exeter, and since it was Katie who was asking, it was easy to say yes.”
White generally writes from a perspective close to his own real-life perspective. This is only exemplified by how his experiences from his childhood and his time at PEA shaped his love for writing.
“I always loved when I received a creative writing assignment in my English classes at Exeter. I usually tried to make my classmates and friends laugh, no matter what the prompt. I also grew up as an only child on a dirt road with no cable TV in a small town in Maine, so I guess I had to use my imagination to make my own fun,” he said.
To add on, the novel that he chose to present has significant ties to his hometown as well. White said, “I’ll be talking about my novel The Midcoast. The panel I’m on will be discussing novels set in New England, so The Midcoast is a good fit since it’s set in my hometown of Damariscotta, ME.” This LitFest was White’s first time attending. When asked about what he was looking forward to at the event, he said, “…It’s always great to connect with new readers at these festivals, but I also love getting to meet new authors and read their work. I always look forward to talking about writing with other writers.”
White hoped that his audiences had some takeaways from his pieces. He said, “Hopefully they’ll be entertained, and then in the [sic] looking back, maybe they’ll think the book was a little deeper than they realized.”
Woodard also shared a sentiment on what she hopes her poems will bring about, whether it be at this year’s festival or beyond. “I’m always grateful when people want to read or listen to poems. I think that’s pretty cool. Maybe there’s something that resonates with them.” She continued, “I had a poetry professor who was very lovely, who said, no matter what else it does, if a poem doesn’t make you feel anything, then it’s not worth anything. So I guess I hope my poems make people feel something or think about something in a new way.”