Join your fellow readers and paddle enthusiasts on Friday, May 13 at 5:00 pm when Brattleboro Literary Festival Cocktail Hour will feature New Yorker writer Ben McGrath. Free and open to the public….register https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_5lw_taPyQuG9xpm4BOqFmg

For decades, Dick Conant paddled the rivers of America, covering the Mississippi, Yellowstone, Ohio, Hudson, as well as innumerable smaller tributaries. These solo excursions were epic feats of planning, perseverance, and physical courage. At the same time, Conant collected people wherever he went, creating a vast network of friends and acquaintances who would forever remember this brilliant and charming man even after a single meeting.

Ben McGrath was one of those people. McGrath wrote a widely read article about their encounter, and when Conant's canoe washed up a few months later, without any sign of his body, McGrath set out to find the people whose lives Conant had touched–to capture a remarkable life lived far outside the staid confines of modern existence.

Riverman is a moving portrait of a complex and fascinating man who was as troubled as he was charismatic, who struggled with mental illness and self-doubt, and was ultimately unable to fashion a stable life for himself.

Ben McGrath will be in conversation with local writer Tim Weed.

Ben McGrath began working at The New Yorker, as a fact checker, in 1999, and has been a staff writer since 2003. His feature subjects have included the Tea Party movement, a Mafia trial and various dispatches from the world of sports: Formula 1 and Iditarod racing, the N.F.L.'s concussion crisis, and Kobe Bryant's contemplation of retirement. His new book is Riverman: An American Odyssey. He lives in New York.

Tim Weed is the author of a short fiction collection, A Field Guide to Murder & Fly Fishing, and a young adult novel, Will Poole's Island. Tim serves on the core faculty of the Newport MFA in Creative Writing. He's an avid outdoorsman and lives in Vermont.