Community Calendar

Liza Bennett, author of four novels set in the Berkshires, turns to creative nonfiction in Georgia & Anita: The Lifelong Friendship of Georgia O’Keeffe and Anita Pollitzer (University of Nebraska Press, 2025) to tell the fascinating, little-known story of the enduring friendship between America’s first great woman artist and a charismatic leader of the suffragist movement. It was Anita Pollitzer who first showed Georgia O’Keeffe’s work to family friend and mentor Alfred Stieglitz, the world-famous photographer whose 291 gallery in New York City was the epicenter of the modern art world. While O’Keeffe, Stieglitz, and their circle of friends were at the forefront of American modernism, Pollitzer became a leader of the National Woman’s Party and was instrumental in the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, guaranteeing women the right to vote.

Of local interest, the book explores the many decades that O’Keeffe spent at Stieglitz’s home on Lake George, a period that started with great creative output for the artist and ended in personal turmoil. Based on extensive research, including their fifty-year correspondence, Georgia & Anita casts light on the friendship of these two women who, in different ways, helped to modernize the world and women’s roles in it.

Liza Bennett is a full-time writer and former advertising executive. She has published ten novels, including Local Knowledge, So Near, A Place for Us, and Bleeding Heart under her maiden name Liza Gyllenhaal. Georgia & Anita is her first work of nonfiction. She is the past Board Chair and long-time board member of the Academy of American Poets, currently serving on the Emeritus board, and is the Secretary of the West Stockbridge Historical Society. She divides her time between New York City and the Berkshire Hills in Massachusetts.

Book will be for sale via Cash or Check.

THAT TIME OF YEAR, a quarterly-ish reading series at Spotty Dog Books
Featuring writers Jennifer Kabat, Ric Royer, Aatish Taseer on the theme, “Place”

JENNIFER KABAT is the author of the twinned memoirs The Eighth Moon and Nightshining. Her writing has appeared in The Best American Essays, Granta, Frieze, 4Columns, New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, BOMB, and many others.

RIC ROYER is a writer, performer, performer of writings, and writer of performances. His most recent book, Niagara Falls, NY, spent two months as the best-selling Niagara Falls travel guide after Amazon mistakenly categorized it as a travel guide.

AATISH TASEER is the author of the memoir Stranger to History: A Son’s Journey Through Islamic Lands and the acclaimed novels The Way Things Were, a finalist for the 2016 Jan Michalski Prize, The Temple-Goers, short-listed for the Costa First Novel Award, and Noon; and the memoir and travelog The Twice-Born.

Hosted by Andrea Kleine

Nature's Ghosts: The World We Lost and How to Bring it Back by Sophie Yeo

Come and discuss themes of ecology and humanity’s relationship with nature with other book and nature lovers in our reading and hiking club! Each month we will go on a leisurely hike with stopping points for book discussion. Some months will have guest lecturers.

Registration is encouraged.

Playing Possum: How Animals Understand Death by Susana Monso

Come and discuss themes of ecology and humanity’s relationship with nature with other book and nature lovers in our reading and hiking club! Each month we will go on a leisurely hike with stopping points for book discussion. Some months will have guest lecturers.

Registration is encouraged.

Journalist Mariah Blake and Bennington College professor David Bond discuss PFOA contamination in our region and Blake's new book, "They Poisoned the World: Life and Death in the Age of Forever Chemicals.” Book signing to follow..