Charles Browning

Rolf Grimsted

Beverly Gunderman

Vania Kent

Paula Mauro & LB Thompson

Milton & Sally Avery Arts Foundation

Diane Schetky - Simple Pleasures Poetry Fellowship

Harold & Mariah Schoolman

Shelley Schorsch

The Sulzberger Foundation

Lucille Weiner

Pamela Walter & Carol Zoref

Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin are winners of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critic’s Circle Award for American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Martin J. Sherwin is the Walter S. Dickson Professor of English and American History at Tufts University and author of A World Destroyed: Hiroshima and Its Legacies, which won the Stuart L. Bernath Prize, as well as the American History Book Prize. Kai Bird is the author of The Chairman: John J. McCloy, The Making of the American Establishment and The Color of Truth: McGeorge Bundy and William Bundy, Brothers in Arms. He co-edited Hiroshima’s Shadow: Writings on the Denial of History and the Smithsonian Controversy. A contributing editor to The Nation, he lives in Washington, D.C..

Jaysinh Birjepatil, author of Chinnery’s Hotel, was born in Baroda, India and educated in England. He has taught at the University of Baroda and Brown University, and currently teaches English Literature at Marlboro College. His poetry has appeared in journals and anthologies on both sides of the Atlantic.

Robin Brickman is the award-winning illustrator of A Log’s Life, Beaks!, and many other children’s picture books. A professional illustrator for over 25 years, her books are about the natural world and artistic creativity. Robin’s picture book illustrations combine her love for natural science with her life-long passion for art and craftsmanship.

Bonnie Christensen has illustrated many books for children, including Pompeii; Lost and Found, written by Mary Pope Osborne. She wrote and illustrated Woody Guthrie: Poet of the People, which Kirkus Reviews called “Strong and beautiful…A powerful, lyrical tribute to the musician whose music is so much a part of our lives.” She lives in northern Vermont with her daughter, Emily.

Brock Clarke is the author of The Ordinary White Boy and What We Won’t Do, winner of the 2002 Mary McCarthy Prize for Short Fiction. His most recent collection, Carrying the Torch, won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction. His novel An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England will be published by Algonquin in Spring 2007.

Chard deNiord is the author of three collections of poems: Asleep in the Fire, Sharp Golden Thorn, and Night Mowing. He teaches at Providence College and directs the New England College MFA Program in poetry. He lives in Putney, Vermont.

Deborah Eisenberg is the author of five short story collections including her most recent, Twilight of the Superheroes. She is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Rea award and three O. Henry Awards. She teaches at the University of Virginia.

Martin Espada has been called “the Latino poet of his generation.” His book, Alabanza: New and Selected Poems, 1982-2002, received the Paterson Award for Sustained Literary Achievement and was named an American Library Association Notable book. Winner of many awards, including a 2006 Guggenheim Fellowship, Espada teaches creative writing and the work of Pablo Neruda at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. His most recentbook is The Republic of Poetry, just released by Norton.

Mary Gaitskill’s novel Veronica was listed as one of the “10 Best Books of 2005″ by The New York Times and was a finalist for this year’s National Book Award and the 2005 National Book Critic’s Circle Award. Her other books are Bad Behavior, Two Girls Fat and Thin, and Because They Wanted To. Her story “Secretary” was the basis for the film of the same name. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, she teaches creative writing at Syracuse University.

Ilya Kaminsky was born in Odessa, Ukraine (former Soviet Union) in 1977, and arrived in the United States in 1993, when his family was granted asylum by the American government. Ilya is the author of Dancing In Odessa, which won the Whiting Writer’s Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Metcalf Award, the Dorset Prize, the Ruth Lilly Fellowship, given annually by Poetry magazine. It was also named Best Poetry Book of the Year 2004 by ForeWord magazine.

Jamaica Kincaid is the author of Annie John, Lucy, A Small Place, At the Bottom of the River, Autobiography of My Mother, and others. She has received numerous awards and honors, including the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters for At the Bottom of the River, and a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund writer’s award.

Jarrett J. Krosoczka’s books include Baghead, Bubble Bath Pirates, Giddy Up, Cowgirl and My Buddy, Slug. In 2003, Jarrett was chosen by Print as one of their 20 top new visual artists under 30. Newsweek and The New York Times have also recommended his work, among others. His book Punk Farm, about a group of raucous farm animals that form an underground rock band, is currently in development as a feature film at DreamWorks Animation.

Maxine Kumin has published fifteen volumes of poetry, most recently Jack and Other New Poems, as well as novels, short stories, and essays. She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1973 and has been a poetry consultant for the Library of Congress, a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, and Poet Laureate of New Hampshire.

Sydney Lea is aVermont poet, novelist and essayist. He is the author of To the Bone: New and Selected Poems, which was a co-winner of the 1998 Poet’s Prize. Lea’s eight poetry volumes include The Floating Candles and Pursuit of a Wound, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His most recent collection is Ghost Pain. Lea was the founder and long-time editor of The New England Review. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations.

Peter Lefcourt, though a mediocre shortstop in the Queens, N.Y., Public School League, is an aficionado of baseball. When he is not selling his soul to Hollywood, he publishes novels, seven to date: The Deal, Di & I, Abbreviating Ernie, The Woody, Eleven Karens, The Manhattan Beach Project, and The Dreyfus Affair, the last being about the love affair between the shortstop and second baseman of a major league baseball team.

Jeffrey Lent published his first book, In the Fall, to national acclaim. Hailed as “majestic …epic … vital” by The New York Times Book Review and compared to the works of William Faulkner and Cormac McCarthy by Newsweek, the debut landed its author squarely in the company of the best American novelists of the day. Set in Vermont, In The Fall is a multi-generational story that begins during the Civil War. Lent’s second book, Lost Nation, is set in the New Hampshire wilderness. He is currently completing two new novels.

E.B. Lewis is the illustrator of a numerous books for children including Happy Feet: The Savoy Ballroom Lindy Hoppers and Me, Talkin’ About Bessie (a 2003 Coretta Scott King Award winner), The Bat Boy and His Violin (a Coretta Scott King Honor book), Down the Road (a Notable Book for Children by the American Library Association), and The Other Side (a Notable Book for Language Arts).

Charles C. Mann is a three-time National Magazine Award finalist. He has received writing prizes from the American Bar Association, the American Institute of Physics, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the Margaret Sanger Foundation. His most recent book is 1491: A History of the Americas Before Columbus. A correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, Science, and Wired, he has covered the intersection of science, technology, and commerce for many newspapers and magazines here and abroad.

Alice Mattison is the author of In Case We’re Separated: Connected Stories, The Book Borrower, three collections of short stories, and a volume of poetry. She teaches fiction in the Bennington Writing Seminars. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Ms., Glimmer Train, Ploughshares, Agni, The Threepenny Review, The Michigan Quarterly Review, and Shenandoah. She lives in New Haven, Connecticut.

Bob McGee is the author of The Greatest Ballpark Ever: Ebbets Field and the Story of the Brooklyn Dodgers. He won the 2005 Dave Moore Award for baseball writing, an annual award recognizing the “most important book on baseball” published each year. His sports articles have appeared in The New York Times, the Oakland Tribune, and elsewhere.

Seth Mnookin is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and author of Hard News: Twenty-one Brutal Months at The New York Times and How They Changed the American Media, a Washington Post Best Book of the Year. His most recent book is Feeding the Monster; How Money, Smarts and Nerve Took A Team to the Top, a book about the John Henry/Tom Werner ownership group of the Boston Red Sox.

Lisa Olstein is the author of Radio Crackling, Radio Gone, winner of the Hayden Carruth Award from Copper Canyon Press. She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and Centrum. Her poems have appeared in many literary journals including The Iowa Review, Denver Quarterly, and LIT.

Joshua Wolf Shenk is the director of the O’Neill Literary House at Washington College and author of Lincoln’s Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness. Shenk’s work has also appeared in Harper’s Magazine, The New Yorker, GQ, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and other publications. He is a former editor of The Washington Monthly and has been a correspondent for The New Republic, The Economist, and U.S. News & World Report. Co-presented by Retreat Healthcare.

Robert Stone was born in Brooklyn in 1937. He is the author of seven novels: A Hall of Mirrors, the National Book Award–winning Dog Soldiers, A Flag for Sunrise, Children of Light, Outerbridge Reach, Damascus Gate, and Bay of Souls. He has also written short stories, essays, and screenplays, and published a short story collection, Bear and His Daughter, which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. A Merry Prankster in the 1960’s, Stone’s memoir of that time will be published next year.

Nilofaur Talebi was born in London to Iranian parents and schooled in Iran, Europe and the United States. She received a BA in Comparative Literature from UC Irvine, and an MFA in Writing and Literature from Bennington College. In 2002 she launched The Translation Project to bring contemporary Iranian literature to a worldwide audience in multiple languages and media. An award winning translator, she is the editor and translator of An Anthology of Contemporary Iranian Poetry Around the World (forthcoming 2007) and creator of Midnight Approaches…, a DVD of short films based on these poems. For more information visit www.thetranslationproject.com.

Brian Turner is a soldier-poet who served for seven years in the U.S. Army. Beginning in November 2003, he was an infantry team leader in Iraq with the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division. His debut collection, Here, Bullet, is the winner of the 2005 Beatrice Hawley Award. He has been featured on “All Things Considered” and “Fresh Air.”

Elizabeth Winthrop is the highly acclaimed author of over fifty works of fiction for all ages, from picture books to adult novels. She has won the Dorothy Canfield Fisher Award, the Pen Syndicated Fiction Award, and The California Young Readers Medal among others. Best known for her fantasy series, The Castle in the Attic, her latest novel, COUNTING ON GRACE, is a work of historical fiction set in North Pownal, Vermont. www.elizabethwinthrop.com

In January of 1863 the farm was purchased by Bill Miles, a local blacksmith who proceeded to set up his shop atop the hill. Miles also served as a Sergeant in the Union Army, but was called Colonel by his friends who thought him quite well spoken. In 1864, Bill was serving in Company I of the 4th Regiment of the Union Army with his friend and fellow Townshend resident Charles Hall. In June of that year, the Regiment made a disastrous and failed attack on the Weldon Railroad near Petersburg, Virginia. While Bill managed to escape, Charles was captured by Confederate soldiers and imprisoned in the notorious Andersonville Prison Camp where he would remain until November 1964. After the war, both men returned to Townshend and remained friends. In March of 1888, Charles and his wife Delia moved up to the farm eventually purchasing it from Miles in March of 1892. They would remain well into the 20th Century.

In 1940, in her book New England Year: A Journal of Vermont Farm Life, Muriel Follett wrote of a visit to Hall Farm:

“One would never dream there was a road leading somewhere, as we turned off the main road and started up the hill. The rough road wound through the woods, with branches from the trees touching the car on either side. It seemed like a different world we had entered and the car was a thing out of place. We should be riding in an oxcart or, at best, a buggy. And then, around a sharp turn in the road, a gray weather-beaten farmhouse came into sight. It looked old, old as though it had been there forever, and I had the strangest feeling of having stepped back in time fifty years or more. The very atmosphere feels old-old world. It’s the strangest sensation! When I started up that hill I felt like a normal adult able to cope with my world, but after spending an hour with them I felt like Alice in Wonderland, growing smaller and smaller and younger all the time.”

By mid century, what was now know as Hall Farm changed hands several times – from Charles Hall to Ray Bemis to Royal Cutts, who finally sold it to Benjamin Lawrence for $3,000 in the 1950’s.

In February 1958 Hall Farm was purchased by Kaye E. Paulus & Eleanor Paulus who eventually turned it over to their son Jeremy who retained ownership until 1999 when it was purchased by Scott Browning and Philip Schoolman and founded as The Hall Farm Center for Arts & Education.

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When renovations began in 1999, Hall Farm looked every bit of its two hundred plus years. The property lacked electricity and water was provided from a hand-pump. Over the course of that year Hall Farm was brought into the 20th-century while retaining the feel and spirit of a Vermont farm in the 1800’s. What was once the barn now serves as the communal hub of Hall Farm. It features a book and music library, wireless internet, telephones, a dining room, and kitchen. The farmhouse has been completely renovated and provides housing for artists in residents and other participants in Hall Farm programs. Other farm buildings have renovated and are used as studio space.

Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts (artist-in-residence, 2004) is one of six recipients of the 2006 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Awards, which are given annually to women writers who demonstrate excellence and promise in the early stages of their careers. The awards of $15,000 were presented to the six recipients in New York City on September 14th.

Michelle Wildgen’s (artist-in-residence 2002) novel, You’re Not You, was published in June by St. Martin’s Press.

From the South: Interstate 91 to Vermont Exit 2. Left on Western Ave at stop sign. After 1/2 mile, left on Cedar Street. At 3rd stop sign, left on RTE. 30 (Linden St.). About 16 4/10 miles to Townshend. Right on Rte. 35. After 4 1/10 miles, left “Hall Farm” mailbox. 3/10 miles to top of hill.

From the West, East and North: see map (PDF or JPG format) for directions.

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Hall Farm Center
392 Hall Drive
Townshend, Vermont 05353

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