Press Releases
June 4, 2024
ROCKPORT, ME – The Lesher Family Foundation, in partnership with the Authors Guild Foundation and Maine Media Workshops + College, will host a third season of its summer authors series at Pascal Hall, featuring four in-person events with award-winning writers.
The conversations kick off on June 25 with bestselling novelist and journalist Elliot Ackerman discussing 2054, his latest work of fiction. On July 23, Pulitzer Prize winner Andrew Sean Greer will talk about his novels Less and Less is Lost. Emily St. John Mandel comes to Maine on August 6 for a conversation about Sea of Tranquility, her latest bestseller. And the series concludes on August 27 with New Yorker staff writer Jia Tolentino, whose collection of essays is Trick Mirror.
The events are free, but space is limited, so registration is required to attend. (Register at authorsguild.org/pascal-hall-author-series.)
“We are delighted to announce the lineup for this summer’s Pascal Hall Authors Series,” said Linda Lesher, owner of Pascal Hall and Barnswallow Books. “It’s been wonderful to see the series grow since our first one in 2022. We’re grateful for the support of our partners, the Authors Guild Foundation and Maine Media.”
Elliot Ackerman (June 25) is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels 2054, Halcyon, 2034, Red Dress In Black and White, Waiting for Eden, Dark at the Crossing, and Green on Blue, as well as the memoir The Fifth Act: America’s End in Afghanistan, and Places and Names: On War, Revolution and Returning. His books have been nominated for the National Book Award, the Andrew Carnegie Medal in both fiction and nonfiction, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, among others. He is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and a Marine veteran who served five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he received the Silver Star, the Bronze Star for Valor, and the Purple Heart.
Ackerman’s interviewer is Alicia Anstead, a writer, editor, producer, and educator. She was previously executive editor of Inside Arts and of The Writer magazine. As an arts reporter at the Bangor Daily News in Maine, she won many awards for her writing. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Boston Globe, Scientific American, and Art New England.
Andrew Sean Greer (July 23) won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel Less, published in 2018. Its sequel, Less is Lost, was published in 2022. He is also the author of the bestseller The Confessions of Max Tivoli. Greer has taught at numerous universities, including Stanford and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, been a TODAY Show pick, a New York Public Library Cullman Center Fellow, a judge for the National Book Award, and a winner of the California Book Award and the New York Public Library Young Lions Award.
Greer’s interviewers are Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman. Among Chabon’s prize-winning books are The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Wonder Boys, and The Yiddish Policemen’s Union. Recently he has worked as the showrunner for the Star Trek spin-off Picard with Patrick Stewart. Ayelet Waldman is the bestselling author of A Really Good Day: How Microdosing Made a Mega Difference in My Mood, My Marriage, and My Life; the novels Love and Treasure, Red Hook Road, Love and Other Impossible Pursuits, and Daughter’s Keeper; as well as of the essay collection Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes.
Emily St. John Mandel (August 6) is the author of six novels, most recently Sea of Tranquility, which has been translated into 25 languages and was selected by President Barack Obama as one of his favorite books of 2022. Her previous novels include The Glass Hotel, which was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and has been translated into 26 languages; and Station Eleven, which was a finalist for a National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award, won the 2015 Arthur C. Clarke Award among other honors, has been translated into 36 languages, and aired as a limited series on HBO Max.
Mandel’s interviewer is Gibson Fay-LeBlanc, whose books of poetry are Death of a Ventriloquist and Deke Dangle Dive. He served as the City of Portland’s fifth Poet Laureate, ending a three-year term in 2018. He currently serves as Executive Director of the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance.
Jia Tolentino (August 27) is a staff writer at The New Yorker. Previously, she was the deputy editor of Jezebel and a contributing editor at the Hairpin. In 2023, she won a National Magazine Award for Columns and Essays. Her first book, the essay collection Trick Mirror, was published in 2019.
Tolentino will be in conversation with Morgan Lavoie, the C.O.O. and Editor in Chief of The Money News Network, where she is responsible for producing the network’s slate of content. Before MNN, she was at iHeartMedia, working on some of the company’s most popular podcasts. She is a Webby honoree.
For more information, contact Bernard Schwartz, Executive Producer of Literary Programs at the Authors Guild Foundation, at bschwartz@authorsguildfoundation.org.
Based in Rockport Maine, the Lesher Family Foundation works to build dynamic, resilient communities nurturing a connection to place, purpose, and potential. The Foundation is committed to hosting intellectually stimulating and inclusive cultural events at their properties, Pascal Hall and Barnswallow Books, in Rockport. Once a church, then an art gallery, the historic Pascal Hall has been gathering community for decades. The new owners plan to continue this tradition.
Founded in 1973 as a summer school for photographers, Maine Media Workshops + College is today fully accredited by the New England Commission for Higher Education, and offers certificate programs, workshops, and master classes in the fields of photography, film, media art, printmaking, book arts, and creative writing. Maine Media Workshops + College serves national and international students from its 20-acre campus in Rockport, Maine. Within Maine Media is The Writers Harbor, an innovative program designed to inspire and teach writers who are motivated to advance the art and craft of writing. The Writers Harbor fosters a community dedicated to developing their practice in the genres of poetry, nonfiction, fiction and screenwriting.
With more than 14,000 members, the Authors Guild is the nation’s oldest and largest professional organization for published writers. It advocates on behalf of working writers to protect free speech, freedom of expression and authors’ copyrights; fights for fair contracts and authors’ ability to earn a livable wage; and provides a welcoming community for writers and translators of fiction, nonfiction, poetry and journalism. Through its educational and charitable arm, the Authors Guild Foundation, it also offers programming to teach working writers about the business of writing, as well as organizing public events that highlight the importance of a rich, diverse American literary culture and the authors that contribute to it.
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