Putting My Winter Book Reading to Good Use in Woodstock

I am so excited to be returning to Woodstock, New York, this weekend, not for the Woodstock Film Festival, but rather for the Woodstock Writers Festival, a "Celebration of the Memoir." The festival will include workshops, fetes, readings, panels, moveable feasts and more with many of today's best-selling authors including Ruth Reichl, Susan Orlean, Julie Powell, Susan Richards, and Laura Shaine Cunningham, just to name a few.


Woodstock Writers Festival Executive Director (and The Film Panel Notetaker's favorite film panel moderator of all time) Martha Frankel invited me as one of the lucky scholars to attend the inaugural festival. I was so delighted by the offer, I couldn't pass it up. I also couldn't go without first reading some of the memoirs by the authors who will be in attendance.


* Since mid-November, I've read the following books, all of which I highly recommend, my favorite being Hats and Eyeglasses...seriously :)

• Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously by Julie Powell

• Hats and Eyeglasses by Martha Frankel

• The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean

• Foreskin's Lament by Shalom Auslander

• Pride of Family by Carole Ione

While a writers festival celebrating the memoir might seems like a bit a departure for me, I have been toying with the idea of writing a memoir, if not in novelization form, then perhaps as a short. Whatever I end up doing, I am sure I will get much inspiration from the Woodstock Writers Festival, and look very forward to attending and meeting all of these great writers.


* All of the above mentioned books can be purchased on Amazon.com by clicking on the widgets below: