On Tuesday, May 30, at 7:00 pm, the Brattleboro Literary Festival, Brooks Memorial Library and the Words Trail will celebrate the newly released edition of 28 short stories by Brattleboro author Mary E. Wilkins Freeman. This new edition features an introduction and critical commentary by Freeman scholar Brent Kendrick, who will be on hand to talk about Mary and her work. Join us at the Library- books will be available for sale.
Mary was inspired to become a writer in high school…she would go to her father's dry goods shop in downtown Brattleboro every day after school, which was fortuitously located next door to a bookstore. She graduated from high school in Brattleboro and later moved away after her father died, but she maintained her connection to Vermont. She was a prolific writer and wrote across multiple genres, publishing 3 plays, 14 novels, 3 volumes of poetry, 22 volumes of short stories, over 50 uncollected short stories and prose essays, and 1 motion picture play. Over the course of a career that spanned nearly 50 years, she amassed a fortune.
Brent L. Kendrick, Ph.D., is widely known for his scholarly work on Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and is the editor of "The Infant Sphinx: Collected Letters of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman," praised by The Journal of Modern Literature as "the most complete record to date of Freeman's life as writer and woman."
He is working on a new, two-volume update--"Dolly: Life and Letters of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman. Vol I: The New England Years (1852-1901), Vol II: The New Jersey Years (1902-1930). He earned his Ph.D. in American Literature from the University of South Carolina. After a twenty-five-year career at the Library of Congress–where he received the institution's Distinguished Service Award–he relocated to the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia where he taught American Literature and Creative Writing.