Most of us are lucky to get a bunch of cards or an inscribed book on our birthday. This year, award-winning poet and St. Michael’s College artist-in-residence Greg Delanty got a rather more substantial gift of words: A 260-page issue of the U.K. poetry journal Agenda celebrates his 50th birthday.... Read more

Peter Miller has slept in the same Colbyville house since 1968, save for a few years in New York City. Back when central Vermont was more rural, the photographer-writer would sit at his desk watching farm animals. “I learned a lot about sex,” he recalls wryly, referring to a 1970 essay he penned about a pig that “porked” a sheep. Over the years, Miller, now 74, made a few adjustments to his 1850 former farmhouse, a shaded residence near the Ben & Jerry’s factory on Route 100.... Read more

Vermont-based cartoonist Alison Bechdel talks about fame, her 25-year old comic Dykes to Watch Out For and her celebrated graphic novel Fun Home.

Alison demonstrates impressive physical strength and explains why the personal has always been political for her.

Music: Antara, Harbor All The Strays, "Paint"

You can watch this video on YouTube here.... Read more

Last May, Alison Bechdel stopped creating new episodes of “Dykes to Watch Out For,” her comic strip about a group of lesbians and their non-lesbian pals. Bechdel, who lives in Bolton, drew the strip for 25 years; in its heyday, it ran in more than 70 gay and alternative publications in the U.S., Canada and the U.K., including Seven Days. It has spawned 11 book-length collections that have been translated into Spanish, French, German and Finnish.... Read more

Some of us take New Year’s resolutions earnestly: With newfound determination, we itemize the myriad ways in which we ought to improve ourselves. Others regard the New Year — or rather, their own stick-to-it-iveness — more cynically. Especially after numerous failed attempts to, say, lose 10 pounds, learn a new language or really clean out the basement.... Read more

When you arrive, Ramon is busy by your father’s bed. He wheels aside the table, pulls the walker into place. It’s the second time he’s drawn your dad, and you’re relieved to see him. He is calm and gently competent. He doesn’t get upset like Biljana, yesterday’s aide who couldn’t understand why your dad insisted on speaking to her in a language (Hungarian) that she (being Bosnian) could not comprehend. On Ramon he’s trying Portuguese.

“Como é você?” he says. “Como é o tempo?”... Read more

One spring, Burlington author Marc Estrin attends an unusual midnight gathering at the Flynn Center.... Read more

Nearly every area bookstore has a special shelf for local authors and, each year, Vermont food writers stack that shelf with more volumes.... Read more

In our media-drenched culture, stage spectacles and movies are sometimes more relatable than real life. R.W. Martin of Starksboro certainly feels that way. “I want to be stuck in that stage world — “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” he says, breaking into song.... Read more

People often joke that the nice thing about Burlington is it’s so close to Vermont. But they’re talking about a particular version of Vermont: the mountains with hiking access, the picturesque restored dairy barns, the white-steepled meeting houses. Not the decrepit trailer homes dotting the hollows on Class III roads, their front yards decorated with rusting cars. Not the homeowner who has left his Civil War-era house to rot and erected a “new” one steps away out of tattered tarps and discarded two-by-fours.... Read more