January 2026 Newsletter
ANNOUNCING
Bristol BookFest programming
and registration for 2026
All events require registration, as seats are limited. Events marked with * have a fee, which is indicated. Each event has a link embedded. Click to go.
Let’s take on Woolf’s challenge to be adventurous, diligent readers, but not over-readers:
“If, then, this is true—that books are of very different types, and that to read them rightly we have to bend our imaginations powerfully, first one way, then another—it is clear that reading is one of the most arduous and exhausting of occupations. Often the pages fly before us and we seem, so keen is our interest, to be living and not even holding the volume in our hands. But the more exciting the book, the more danger we run of over-reading.”
—Virginia Woolf, “How One Should Read a Book”
Once again we have the talented work of Hannah Goodall at the RWU Library and her annual BBF Library Guide. Hannah has built these guides since “All the King’s Men,” and they are consistently provocative, informative and fun reading guides. This year’s guide features the only recording of Virginia Woolf speaking and a special section on “Arts & Culture” loaded with film, ballet, theater and readings.
Winter Seminar with Steven Calvert runs on Tuesdays (January 20 to February 24) from 6 to -7:30 p.m. in the Herreshoff Room at Rogers Free Library. If you have registered and are unable to attend, please release your ticket. We have an active waitlist for each session.
Mark Schenker Online Lecture “WWI British Poets and the Creation of Modernism” via Zoom on Sunday, March 1 at 4:30 p.m. Registration required.
*Aurea Ensemble presents “Anthem.” This performance at St. Michael’s Episcopal Church in Bristol weaves poems, diary entries, letters and music from the Great War era. Tickets are $30. Registration required.
Rogers Free Library posts information and registration for film screenings, lectures, craft nights, a community art exhibit and the Readers’ Theater rehearsal and performance. Registration required.
Friday Keynote address by Merve Emre is scheduled for April 10 at 5:30 p.m. in the Colt Andrews School Auditorium, followed by a reception at Rogers Free Library. Registration required.
*Saturday full-day program of speakers, panelists and the Conversation Parlor is April 11, at Linden Place Ballroom from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tickets are $45. Registration required. Lunch is available for purchase; advance order is required.
Saturday Spotlight!
Our Spotlight event this year features the Rhode Island 2025 Youth Poetry Ambassador Robin Linden and Deputy Ambassador Julia Yakirevich along with Bridget Flynn, who will curate a reading of letters between Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West and present original poetry in response to the letters. All three are students at Wheeler School in Providence.
Our Keynote Speakers & Panelists
Keynote Address: Friday April 10
Colt Andrews School Auditorium
Merve Emre is the Shapiro-Silverberg Professor of Creative Writing and Criticism at Wesleyan University and the director of the Shapiro Center for Creative Writing and Criticism. Her books include “The Annotated Mrs. Dalloway” (Liveright). Ms Emre will also be a panelist on Saturday April 11.
Program Speaker/Panelist
Saturday April 11 Anne Fernald is professor of English and women’s, gender and sexuality studies at Fordham University. Her work includes editing “Mrs. Dalloway” (Cambridge University Press), the “Norton Critical Edition: Mrs. Dalloway” (W. W. Norton) which is the text BBF recommends this year, and the “Oxford Handbook to Virginia Woolf.” Her book, “Her Own Voice: Eight Women Who Rewrote Life and Art,” will be published this year (Beacon).
Program Speaker/Panelist
Saturday April 11 Carolyn Vega is the curator of the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature at The New York Public Library, which holds the archives of Virginia Woolf, Jack Kerouac, and many others. She has organized a number of exhibitions including “Virginia Woolf: A Modern Mind.” She holds an MSLIS from Pratt Institute.
