The Authors and Artists Festival, now in its third year, is focusing on elevating the voices of people of color, with a roster of minority headline speakers who will focus on the event’s theme of “Writing the Land.”
Northfield resident Lisa McLoughlin, organizer of the event and member of the Authors and Artists 2022 Advisory Board, explained that, in applying to receive a grant through the New England Grassroots Environment Fund, the board was asked to explain how it is working to feature a diversity of voices through the festival.
“It was that process that made us realize we haven’t done enough with this,” she said. “It’s been an amazing movement in the right direction for the festival.”
This year’s festival will take place online on Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. each day. There is no cost for attendees to register.
The poets reading at the festival come from the Writing the Land project — also directed by McLoughlin — and from Human Error Publishing. The Writing the Land project pairs poets with protected lands to create an anthology, published through Human Error Publishing. The theme of “Writing the Land” is specific to this year’s event, though McLoughlin said the Authors and Artists Festival always relates to the environment in some way.
“Our speakers are speaking about the intersection of environmental and social justice from a lot of different angles,” McLoughlin said.
The first festival was planned as an in-person event in 2020, but ended up being held online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It has remained an online event ever since. McLoughlin described this shift positively.
“I feel really comfortable with it online because we can welcome more people to the festival this way,” she noted, speakers included.
The six headliner speakers for the weekend are: Dina Gilio-Whitaker, Ross Gay, Jillian Hishaw, John Francis, Rahawa Haile and Latria Graham.
Among the local poets participating in this year’s Authors and Artists Festival is Shutesbury resident Dina Stander, who plans to lead a workshop on navigating climate grief, which is described as a psychological response to ecological loss related to the changing climate.
“As writers who express the experience of being an earthling, the impending crisis of climate change is really something we have to grapple with,” Stander said.
Mary Brancaccio, a teacher from Livingston, New Jersey, and participating poet in the Writing the Land project, said she opted to participate in the festival because of “how writing can be used to raise awareness, not only about climate change, but also about why it matters that we protect the lands that we protect.”
“Writers and poets can help create a vision of what human interaction with land can look like,” Brancaccio said. She also noted that writing can be a very solitary activity, but festivals like these grant writers the opportunity to come together and be in community with one another.
“I think one of the things about projects like these is they remind us that we have this capacity for finding wonder right outside our windows,” she said.
Similarly, Margaret Saraco, a Montclair, New Jersey poet who is participating in the festival, shared, “I know when I walk in the woods my stress falls from me. I can only hope my writing, to some degree, will bring that release and relief to listeners.”
All of the speakers’ books will be made available at local libraries, and more information, including how to register and a full schedule of headline speakers and working groups, can be found at nature-culture.net/authors-artists-festival.