when
September 20, 2025
October 3, 4, & 5, 2025
where
Norfolk Library
Norfolk, CT
Writers In Conversation
Haystack Book Festival brings together in unmoderated conversation writers and thinkers who have something to talk about. Past and upcoming talks are as various as Pulitzer Prize finalist Janice Nimura and Dorothy Wickenden on the women who helped spark the first American civil rights movement, David Chaffetz and Sarah Maslin Nir on Horses as treasured companions and engines of power, NYT Cooking’s Sam Sifton and Melissa Clark on the world of cooking, William Egginton and Samuel Moyn exploring the public circulation of ideas, George Packer and Elizabeth Becker on the coverage of war and how it has changed, Allen Ellenzweig and Jarrett Earnest on the work of photographer George Platt Lynes, Hugh Eakin on Picasso and the movement of modern art to America, and many conversations on our environment and the nature that surrounds us with Noah Charney, Carl Safina, David Allen Sibley, and many others.
Festival Events
Plato and the Tyrant
Saturday, Sept 20 - 2:00 PM
James Romm, author of Plato and the Tyrant: The Fall of Greece’s Greatest Dynasty and the Making of a Philosophic Masterpiece
in conversation with
Frederic Hof, author of Reaching for the Heights: The Inside Story of a Secret Attempt to Reach a Syrian-Israeli Peace
Never Take the Rule of Law for Granted: China and the Dissident
Saturday, Sept 20 - 4:00 PM
Richard Hornik sits down with
Mark Clifford, author of The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong Kong’s Greatest Dissident, and China’s Most Feared Critic
in conversation with
Jerome Cohen, author of the memoir Eastward, Westward: A Life in Law
Sargent’s Greatest Patron
Friday, Oct 3 - 4:00 PM
Jean Strouse, author of Family Romance: John Singer Sargent and the Wertheimers
in conversation with
Susan Galassi, author of Picasso’s Variations on the Masters
The Brendan Gill Lecture
Friday, Oct 3 - 6:00 PM
Betsy Lerner, author of Shred Sisters: A Novel
Farther Than We Can See…
Saturday, October 4 - 10:30 AM
Hampton Sides, author of The Wide, Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook
in conversation with
Adam Higginbotham, author of Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space
Worthy and Unworthy Lives
Saturday, October 4 - 1:00 PM
Dagmar Herzog, author of The Question of Unworthy Life: Eugenics and Germany’s Twentieth Century
in conversation with
Sophia Rosenfeld, author of The Age of Choice: A History of Freedom in Modern Life
American Whim
Saturday, October 4 - 3:00 PM
Caleb Smith, author of Thoreau’s Axe: Distraction and Discipline in American Culture
in conversation with
Jennifer Fleissner, author of Maladies of the Will: The American Novel and the Modernity Problem
A Walk in the Woods with Brian Donahue and Mike Zarfos*
Sunday, October 5 - 8:00 AM
Registration is required.
Limited to 20 people.
Location: GMF Sugar House, top of Windrow Road.
Building Local Building Green
Sunday, October 5 - 11:00 AM
Brian Donahue, author of Slow Wood: Greener Building from Local Forests
in conversation with
Mike Zarfos Executive Director, Great Mountain Forest
What is a Cookbook Anyway?
Sunday, October 5 - 1:30 PM
Kevin West, author of The Cook’s Garden: A Gardener’s Guide to Selecting, Growing, and Savoring the Tastiest Vegetables of Each Season
in conversation with
Sara B. Franklin, author of The Editor: How Publishing Legend Judith Jones Shaped Culture in America