The inaugural Rough Notes Festival is a three-day event presented by Kinderhook Books. At its core, it’s a literary festival, but it also celebrates the craft of writing in all its forms: songwriting, stand-up comedy, screenwriting, art, design, and more.
Named after Kinderhook's 19th-century broadsheet, The Rough Notes, the festival is born of a place steeped in centuries of storytelling—from Washington Irving's Kinderhook-inspired folk tales to today's vibrant community of novelists, playwrights, poets, artists, journalists, and historians.
Through readings, performances, and conversations, the festival explores the journey of narrative—from first idea to finished work—and the role it plays in shaping how we see ourselves and the world.
FRIDAY
AUGUST 28
6:30 P.M. | OPENING NIGHT PERFORMANCE
AN EVENING WITH TIG NOTARO
at VAN BUREN HALL
Join comedian, author, and Oscar nominee Tig Notaro for a performance, followed by a conversation on writing and the creative process with Hacks actor and comedian Lauren Weedman.
LAUREN WEEDMAN
SATURDAY
AUGUST 29
10:30 A.M. | “I TOO DISLIKE IT.”
WHY POETRY ENDURES
WINE GARDEN at KINDERHOOK BOOKS
In this conversation with four poets, we will return to the basics: What are poems for? Why do we write them? What happens when we read or write poetry? And what is the role of poetry in a culture that loves to consume addictive slop? Despite our bad PR, poetry occupies a central role in our cultural consciousness, but why? How does poetry continue to adapt in a time of eroding attention, distraction, surveillance and totalitarianism? In this panel, we will find out what the poets have to say.
MARK WUNDERLICH
MODERATOR
Mark is the author of the forthcoming book, Matey, from Graywolf Press and four books of poems, the most recent of which is God of Nothingness, published by Graywolf in 2021. His other books include The Earth Avails, which received the Rilke Prize, Voluntary Servitude, and The Anchorage, which received the Lambda Literary Award.
MICHAEL DUMANIS
Michael immigrated to the United States at the age of five. His second book of poems, Creature, was published by Four Way Books in 2023, and was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award. His first, My Soviet Union, won the Juniper Prize for Poetry. He is also coeditor, with poet Cate Marvin, of the anthology Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century. With Kevin Prufer, he coedited the volume Russell Atkins: On the Life & Work of an American Master. He is a member of the Literature Faculty at Bennington College, where he runs the Poetry at Bennington reading series and is Editor of Bennington Review.
MONICA FERRELL
Monica is the author of four books of fiction and poetry, including The Future (March 2026) and the collection You Darling Thing, a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Award and Believer Book Award in Poetry. Her novel The Answer Is Always Yes was named one of Booklist's Top Ten Debut Novels of the Year. Her first collection of poems, Beasts for the Chase, was a finalist for the Asian American Writers Workshop Prize in Poetry and won the Sarabande Books Kathryn A. Morton Prize. She is the Doris and Carl Kempner Distinguished Professor at Purchase College (SUNY).
BIANCA STONE
Vermont’s poet laureate. Bianca is the author of the collections, What is Otherwise Infinite, winner of the 2022 Vermont Book Award; The Möbius Strip Club of Grief, Someone Else’s Wedding Vows, and The Near and Distant World (Tin House, 2026). She collaborated with Anne Carson on the illuminated version of Carson’s Sophocles translation, Antigonick, as well as illustrated a children’s book A Little Called Pauline, using a Gertrude Stein poem. Her poetry and writings have appeared widely in such magazines as The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poets and Writers, The Nation and the Best American Poetry series.
12 P.M. | QUEERING THE QUEER MEMOIR
WINE GARDEN at KINDERHOOK BOOKS
We all know that queer lives are as varied and complex as the world itself. But what about queer narrative? This panel explores the craft of queer personal nonfiction, discussing the expectations that surround queer narrative and how, in one’s own craft, an author can harness or upend established patterns to create stories that reflect the truth of lived experience—no matter how messy, contradictory, or motley.
TEMIM FRUCHTER
MODERATOR
Temim is the author of City of Laughter and is the recipient of fellowships from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, Vermont Studio Center, and a 2020 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer's Award. She is co-host of Pete’s Reading Series in Brooklyn,
ELIOT GLAZER
Eliot is a comedian, actor, podcaster, musician, and writer for beloved TV shows including New Girl, Younger, and Broad City, on which he played "Eliot" in his most challenging role to date. He lives in Los Angeles. Published by Gallery Books, his first book The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Gay comes out on August 11.
HENRY HOKE
Henry is an editor at The Offing and the author of five books. His most recent novel Open Throat—a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize, and the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction—was adapted for the stage at Little Island in New York City. The First Girl in Hell, a western, is coming in 2027 from FSG and Granta.
CHLOÉ CALDWELL
Chloé is the author of the national bestseller, Women, which The Atlantic called a “frenetic cult classic.” About her new memoir, Trying, The Washington Post wrote “Caldwell shows readers how to endure catastrophe with aplomb; there can be no better recommendation for literature.” She is also the author of the books I’ll Tell You In Person, The Red Zone, and Legs Get Led Astray.
HUGH RYAN
Hugh is an award-winning historian, and the author of the recent memoir My Bad: A Personal History of the Queer Nineties and Beyond, as well as When Brooklyn Was Queer and The Women's House of Detention. He holds an MFA from Bennington College, where he also teaches, and is a Lead Historian at the new American LGBTQ+ Museum.
2 P.M. | THE AFTERLIFE OF ART
WINE GARDEN at KINDERHOOK BOOKS
“A writer only begins a book. A reader finishes it,” wrote Samuel Johnson. Once a book is published, it’s no longer in the author’s hands and what was once a highly controlled process—a sort of private communion between author and text—is now open for public consumption, commentary, and adaptation. Whether it’s seeing their work interpreted by another artist on the silver screen, or re-engaging with their work themselves, this panel examines art as an iterative process—stories with afterlives that never end.
NADIA CONNERS
MODERATOR
Nadia is a writer and director whose most recent film, The Uninvited, is a Hollywood satire starring Walton Goggins, Pedro Pascal, Elizabeth Reaser, Rufus Sewell, and Lois Smith. The film premiered at SXSW and is now being adapted for the stage in the U.K. She previously co-directed and co-wrote the acclaimed environmental documentary The 11th Hour with Leila Conners and Leonardo DiCaprio.
(Photo credit: Kate Warren)
PETER CAMERON
Peter is the author of seven novels and three collections of stories. Martin Scorsese is set to release soon his film adaptation of Peter’s 2020 novel What Happens at Night , starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence.Peter’s short fiction and poems have been published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Kenyon Review, Mademoiselle, Rolling Stone, Grand Street, The New Republic, and The Yale Review. He taught at Columbia, Oberlin, Yale, Sarah Lawrence, The New School and Bennington Writing Seminars.
SIGRID NUNEZ
Sigrid is the author of nine novels, including The Vulnerables, What Are You Going Through, and The Friend, which was a New York Times bestseller and winner of the 2018 National Book Award. The Friend was made into a 2025 feature film starring Bill Murray and Naomi Watts.
BEN SHATTUCK
Ben’s most recent book, The History of Sound, was the recipient of the 2025 Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award and the Story Prize Spotlight Award, and was shortlisted for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. His film adaptation of the title story premiered at the 2025 Cannes film festival.
3:30 P.M. | THE UNRELIABLE PAST
WINE GARDEN at KINDERHOOK BOOKS
Memory is perhaps the most powerful source of creation we have as writers, as artists, and even as human beings. “We tell ourselves stories in order to live,” as Didion pointed out in The White Album. The past—whether our own personal past or shared human experience—is the wellspring that we can constantly pump for inspiration, plot, emotion, and more. Yet memory is also notoriously unreliable, biased, and spotty. How can we make sense of memory as an ephemeral muse for our craft, and how can our craft best reflect the shifting dualities of memory in a way that makes for writing that is forever moving, changing, dynamic, and free?
AMITAVA KUMAR
Amitava is the author of the novels My Beloved Life and Immigrant, Montana, as well as several other books of nonfiction and fiction. In 2016, Kumar was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship (General Nonfiction) as well as a Ford Fellowship in Literature from United States Artists. He lives in Poughkeepsie, where he is Helen D. Lockwood Professor of English at Vassar College.
JAYNE ANNE PHILLIPS
Jayne Anne is the author of six novels. Night Watch was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2024. Her work has been a finalist once for the National Book Award and twice for the National Book Critics Circle Award. The recipient of Guggenheim, National Endowment for the Arts, Howard, Bunting, and Rockefeller Foundation Fellowships, she is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
FRANCINE PROSE
Francine is the author of twenty-three works of fiction including the highly acclaimed Five Weeks in the Country; The Vixen; Mister Monkey; the New York Times bestseller Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932; A Changed Man, which won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize; and Blue Angel, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her works of nonfiction include the highly praised 1974: A Personal History, Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife, and the New York Times bestseller Reading Like a Writer, which has become a classic. Prose is the recipient of numerous grants and honors, including a Guggenheim and a Fulbright, a Director’s Fellow at the Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library.
10 A.M.- 1 P.M. | THE TYPEWRITER PROJECT
on THE BANK LAWN
Calling all kids!
The Typewriter Project celebrates literacy, creativity, and civic engagement while honoring the legacy of one Kinderhook writer whose curiosity and initiative helped document a community.
Over the course of a single morning, participants will report, write, edit, and type out their stories while learning about local history, journalism, collaboration, and the written word. The finished newspaper will be later copied and distributed to local businesses, creating a tangible record of the children’s work and a living connection between Kinderhook’s past and present.
OPEN TO: ALL—NEAR AND FAR
COST: FREE
About The Typewriter Project
Beginning in 1951, twelve-year-old Lamont Thomas launched The Bugle, a newspaper he produced entirely on his portable Remington Letter-Riter typewriter in the Village of Kinderhook. A dedicated newshound, Lamont chronicled the life of his community—reporting who had traveled where, who was under the weather, local happenings, sports scores, jokes, and more. He sold each issue for five cents and even secured advertisers, carefully typing them into the paper’s two-column layout. For four years, until he folded the paper in 1955, Lamont faithfully published The Bugle from his home on Hudson Street.
Lamont’s family donated both the original newspapers and Lamont’s typewriter to Kinderhook Books. Inspired by his remarkable project, The Rough Notes Fund for Rural Literary Education will recreate the experience for a new generation at The Bank, formerly Kinderhook Bank, where Lamont’s father served as President for 50 years. Using seven vintage typewriters, local children will work together to produce their own community newspaper, with each typewriter dedicated to a different section—news, sports, humor, announcements, advertisements, and more.
1 P.M. |
LULU GREY
on THE BANK LAWN
Lulu Grey is an 11-year-old singer-songwriter, born and raised in upstate New York. With a profound passion for music from a young age, Lulu has dedicated years to refining their craft, drawing inspiration from various genres and personal experiences.
In September 2025, Grey released their debut album, “Dreamin’ Grey,” featuring seven original compositions. They also premiered a music video for their single “Look At Us Now.”
In their burgeoning career, they have already performed at the esteemed Caffe Lena, Art On Lark and on the main stage at the 2025 and 2026 Pride Festival in Washington Park, in front of thousands of spectators.
With no signs of slowing down, Grey is already working on new music for their second album and is poised to become a formidable presence in the upstate New York music community and beyond!
You can stream their music on Apple Music, Spotify, and Bandcamp.
Open to: All
Cost: Free
SUNDAY
AUGUST 30
CRAFT TALKS
ON
WRITING
THOMAS GRATTAN
Thomas is the author of The Recent East, which was a New York Times editor’s choice, longlisted for the PEN/Hemingway Award, and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times First Novel Prize. His new novel In Tongues is forthcoming from MCD Books/ Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. His short fiction has appeared in several publications, including One Story, Slice, and The Colorado Review. He received his MFA from Brooklyn College and teaches at the Bennington Writing Seminars.
RICHARD MIRABELLA
Richard is a writer and civil servant living in Upstate New York. His stories have appeared in Story Magazine,American Short Fiction, Split Lip Magazine, and elsewhere. He's the author of the novel Brother & Sister Enter the Forest, a New York Times Editors' Choice and Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction.
Emily is a writer, editor, illustrator, and educator. Her debut novel, The Cactus League, was published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Her second novel, Clutch, was published by Tin House/Zando in February 2026. Both books were New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice selections. Emily served as the editor of The Paris Review, the nation’s preeminent literary quarterly, from 2018 to 2021. During her tenure, the magazine won the 2020 American Society of Magazine Editors’ Award for Fiction, published two anthologies, and produced the second season of its acclaimed podcast.
EMILY NEMENS
Your Questions, Answered
Where can I park?
So many nearby places — see. the full list on our Parking page.
Can I still donate to the Festival and Fund?
Yes! Write to us at: theroughnotes@kinderhookbooks.com to find out how to support this community event!