Welcome to the second full day of events for the eighth annual Succeed2gether's Montclair Literary Festival.
All of these events take place in downtown Montclair on May 4 in the First Congregational Church (FCC; two venues), the Montclair Public Library (MPL; two venues), and in a tent outside the MPL.
All events are FREE, except for the Ann Napolitano talk at 5:20pm (tickets here) and the Festival Party (tickets here). Registrations not required for the free events although encouraged for the Rachel Khong talk at 12:15pm (RSVP here).
Parking is available for free in front of the FCC on South Fullerton (see signs) or on surrounding streets. Paid parking can be found at the Crescent, 1 Seymour Street and Glenridge Ave parking decks. See this map for more parking information.
Two food trucks (Silantro Lime Tacos and Toni's Kitchen) will be available outside the FCC for food purchases, or the fabulous restaurants along Church St are just a short stroll away.
We have an incredible line-up this year and hope you can join us!
SATURDAY MAY 4, 9:00 A.M. – 10:50 A.M.
POETRY CAFÉ
We all need more poetry in our lives! Start your day with coffee, bagels and poetry! Hear from some of New Jersey’s finest poets. Hosted by Christine Adams and John J. Trause, and featuring Alicia Cook, Frank Rubino, Don Zirilli, Joanne Ashe, and Marcia LeBeau.
Venue: First Congregational Church, The Guild Room.
SATURDAY MAY 4, 9:45 A.M. – 1:00 P.M.
MUSICIAN
Michaela McClain
Michaela McClain is a singer/songwriter, educator, performer & creator of Music with Michaela, a baby & me music program founded here in Montclair, offering baby & me music classes for baby & caregiver. Michaela is a seasoned performer, having performed for many private events throughout NJ & NYC. She will be singing a few children's songs in the morning & adult songs in the afternoon until 1:00pm. Look for her in a small tent in front of the Library. Children's music from 9:45-11:30am & Adult music 11:30am-1:00pm. Recommended for all ages.
Venue: Pop-Up Tent near Montclair Public Library Tent.
SATURDAY MAY 4, 10:00 A.M. – 10:40 A.M.
CHILDREN
Jason Patterson
Blue, Barry, and Pancakes are best friends! They love roller skates, inflatable rubber ducks, and going on HIGH VELOCITY adventures! Co-author Jason Patterson will share the story of Blue, Barry and Pancakes: Mayhem on Wheels. Recommended for ages 4-8.
Venue: Montclair Public Library Tent.
SATURDAY MAY 4, 10:55 A.M. – 11:35 A.M.
CHILDREN
Tracey Baptiste
Mermaid and Pirate cannot understand each other. They speak different languages and come from different worlds. But they’re quick to lend a hand, or a tail, when the sky grows stormy and waters get rough, and a friendship is born. Hear author Tracey Baptiste tell her story of a shared adventure where kindness and generosity speak louder than words. Recommended for ages 3-7.
Venue: Montclair Public Library Tent.
SATURDAY MAY 4, 11:00 A.M. – 11:30 A.M.
STORY TIME
Indigenous Stories
Amelia Martinez, a member of the New York Ramapo-Munsee Indian Tribe, presents an Indigenous-themed story time and will read from a few Indigenous-authored children's books. Recommended for ages 4–9.
Venue: Montclair Public Library, 3rd floor.
SATURDAY MAY 4, 11:50 A.M. – 12:30 P.M.
CHILDREN
Alliah L. Agostini
Learn about Juneteenth and its traditional foods with local author Alliah L. Agostini and her books The Juneteenth Story and The Juneteenth Cookbook and then celebrate the end of slavery with a fun activity taken from The Juneteenth Cookbook. Recommended for ages 8-11.
Venue: Montclair Public Library Tent.
SATURDAY MAY 4, 11:00 A.M. – 12:00 P.M.
FICTION
Romance in the Real World
In the mood for a summer romance? Romance novel lover and former genre marketing manager, Kim Burns shares three excellent choices for you: One Last Shot, a debut novel featuring a supermodel and a photographer who meet again ten years later on an Italian photoshoot from Betty Cayouette, creator of the viral TikTok account Betty's Book List; 888 Love and the Divine Burden of Numbers, is Abraham Chang's love letter to Western pop culture, Eastern traditions, and being a first-generation New Yorker; and Summer Romance, the hilarious story of a professional organizer, whose life is a mess and the summer she gets unstuck with the help of someone unexpected from her past, by Annabel Monaghan, the bestselling author of Nora Goes Off Script.
Venue: First Congregational Church, The Sanctuary.
SATURDAY MAY 4, 11:00 A.M. – 12:00 P.M.
FICTION
Family Stories on the World Stage
Acclaimed author of We are Not Ourselves Matthew Thomas leads a discussion about bestselling novelists Claire Messud's and Amitava Kumar's hotly anticipated new releases, both rich multigenerational family sagas. This Strange Eventful History follows the Cassar family over seven decades – separated in the chaos of World War II, running from a complicated colonial homeland, and, after Algerian independence, living without a homeland at all. A saga inspired, in part, by Messud’s own family history. Kumar’s My Beloved Life traces the arc of one man’s life from his birth in 1935 through his adulthood, as changes big and small sweep across India, illuminating how we tell stories and write history, how individuals play a counterpoint to big movements, and how no single life is without consequence.
Venue: Montclair Public Library Auditorium.
SATURDAY MAY 4, 11:00 A.M. – 12:00 P.M.
FICTION
History Reimagined
Kim Coleman Foote (Coleman Hill) is in conversation with debut author Vanessa Chan and Judith Lindbergh, founder of The Writers Circle, a New Jersey-based creative writing center, about their captivating new novels that bring us historical fiction through a new lens. In Chan’s national bestseller, The Storm We Made, a Malaysian housewife becomes an unlikely spy for the Japanese and her actions have repercussions that threaten to destroy her husband and three children. Akmaral is the story of a nomad woman warrior on the Central Asian steppes. Lindbergh draws from legends of the Amazon women and recent archaeological discoveries to craft a sweeping tale about a powerful woman who must make peace with making war.
Venue: First Congregational Church, The Guild Room.
SATURDAY MAY 4, 11:50 A.M. – 12:30 P.M.
CHILDREN
Alliah L. Agostini
Learn about Juneteenth and its traditional foods with local author Alliah L. Agostini and her books The Juneteenth Story and The Juneteenth Cookbook and then celebrate the end of slavery with a fun activity taken from The Juneteenth Cookbook. Recommended for ages 8-11.
Venue: Montclair Public Library Tent.
SATURDAY MAY 4, 12:15 P.M. – 1:15 P.M.
FICTION
Rachel Khong Real Americans
Dionne Ford (Go Back and Get It: A Memoir of Race, Inheritance, and Intergenerational Healing) talks with California-based Rachel Khong, author of Goodbye Vitamin and founder of The Ruby, a space for women and nonbinary writers and artists in San Francisco, about her second novel. In Real Americans, fifteen-year-old Nick Chen has never felt like he belonged on the isolated Washington island where he lives with his single mother. When he sets out to find his biological father, the journey threatens to raise more questions than it provides answers. This exhilarating novel of American identity asks: Are we destined, or made? And if we are made, who gets to do the making?
Venue: First Congregational Church, The Sanctuary.
SATURDAY MAY 4, 12:15 P.M. – 1:15 P.M.
FICTION/NON-FICTION
The Female Odyssey
Bestselling novelist, Eliza Minot (In the Orchard) introduces us to two new books which explore pregnancy, childbirth and the modern mothering experience. With shades of Shirley Jackson and Rosemary's Baby, Clare Beams’ The Garden tells a psychologically thrilling tale of women yearning to become mothers and the ways the female body has always been policed and manipulated. The Book of Mothers: How Literature Can Help Us Reinvent Modern Motherhood by Carrie Mullins moves through the literary canon––from Pride and Prejudice and Little Women to Beloved and The Joy Luck Club to examine how our notions of motherhood have been shaped by literature and puts these classics into conversation with the most urgent issues of the day.
Venue: Montclair Public Library Auditorium.
SATURDAY MAY 4, 12:15 P.M. – 1:15 P.M.
FICTION
New Voices/New Perspectives
National Book Award finalist author Julia Phillips (Disappearing Earth, Bear) talks with three debut novelists about themes of family, forbidden love, loneliness and isolation. Spanning three timelines in China and New York, Jiaming Tang’s Cinema Love is a tender epic about men and women who find themselves in forbidden relationships. Eskor David Johnson’s exuberant, fantastical odyssey, Pay As You Go, wonders if what we're searching for is ever really out there. Loneliness & Company by Charlee Dyroff is a timely novel set in near future New York about a young woman who finds herself tangled in a secret government project combating loneliness.
Venue: First Congregational Church, The Guild Room.
SATURDAY MAY 4, 1:30 P.M. – 2:30 P.M.
FICTION
The Mystery of Writing Crime
Join bestselling crime novelist and accomplished artist Jonathan Santlofer in conversation with the legendary Joyce Carol Oates, award-winning author of more than 70 books. Santofler’s new novel The Lost Van Gogh is an intricately layered historical thriller brimming with inside information about the high-stakes art world of theft, forgery, and murder that includes brilliantly rendered drawings by the author. Prolific Oates has two books out this year. The Butcher is a harrowing story about a women’s asylum in the nineteenth century – a unique blend of fiction and fact and a nightmare voyage through the darkest regions of the American psyche. Letters to a Biographer is a rich compilation of Oates's letters across four decades that displays her warmth and generosity, her droll sense of humor, her mastery of the lost art of letter writing and gives a fascinating glimpse into her writing practice.
Venue: First Congregational Church, The Sanctuary.
SATURDAY MAY 4, 1:30 P.M. – 2:30 P.M.
NON-FICTION
Politics: Dystopia Revisited
Award-winning journalist Eric Roston introduces us to two versions of dystopia. Julia is an imaginative, feminist, and brilliantly relevant-to-today retelling of Orwell’s 1984 by acclaimed novelist Sandra Newman. This unique perspective lays bare our own world in haunting and provocative ways, just as the original did almost 75 years ago. The Truce: Progressives, Centrists, and the Future of the Democratic Party is the inside story of the Party at a moment of great peril – when a new generation aggressively pursued their progressive ideals while the powerful, centrist establishment adapted to remain in command. Luppe B. Luppen and Hunter Walker illuminate this story of backroom maneuvering and political strategy which grapples with the dangers that threaten American democracy and the complicated cast of characters trying to save it.
Venue: Montclair Public Library Auditorium.
SATURDAY MAY 4, 1:30 P.M. – 2:30 P.M.
FICTION/NON-FICTION
Traditions & Transformations
Author and psychotherapist Lisa Williamson Rosenberg discusses three books that address traditions and transformation. In Flores and Miss Paula, Melissa Rivero tells the story of a Peruvian immigrant mother and her millennial daughter, showcasing the complexities of the mother-daughter bond with fresh insight and empathy. From Gina Chung (Sea Change) comes Green Frog, a short story collection that explores Korean American womanhood, bodies, animals, and transformation as a means of survival. Nina Sharma’s The Way You Make Me Feel: Love in Black and Brown is a hilarious and moving memoir in essays about love and allyship, told through one Asian and Black interracial relationship.
Venue: Montclair Public Library Tent.
SATURDAY MAY 4, 2:45 P.M. – 3:45 P.M.
FICTION
Exploring Popular Fiction
Looking for a juicy new read? Laurie Lico Albanese (Hester, Stolen Beauty) talks with authors of four popular new releases about how their books came about and why they wrote them. In Days of Wonder, Caroline Leavitt brings us a high-drama page-turner about mothers and daughters, guilt and innocence, and the lengths we go for love. In Elle Evans’ Wedding Issues, competition for a bridal magazine cover unleashes mayhem, forcing a mastermind maid of honor to stop being a people pleaser and start figuring out what she wants out of life. A wife, mother, and frustrated writer faces an impossible deadline for turning her life around in Blank, Zibby Owens’ hilarious debut novel about family, friendship, success, and exhilarating self-(re)discovery. In Rosey Lee’s The Gardins of Edin, four Black women fight to preserve their legacy, heal their wounds, and move forward together, with loose parallels to beloved women from the Bible.
Venue: First Congregational Church, The Sanctuary.
SATURDAY MAY 4, 2:45 P.M. – 3:45 P.M.
MEMOIR
Nell Painter – I Just Keep Talking: A Life in Essays
Ira Wagner, executive director of the Montclair Art Museum, speaks with leading historian and artist, Nell Painter on I Just Keep Talking: A Life in Essays, her comprehensive new collection spanning art, politics, and the legacy of racism that shapes American history as we know it. Painter asks readers to reconsider ideas of race, politics, and identity and nimbly portrays the trials of a country frequently at war with itself. Along with Painter’s writing, this collection also features her original artwork, threaded throughout the book for emphasis or as a counterpoint. These essays will surely solidify Painter’s place among the finest critics and writers of the last half-century.
This event is co-presented with Montclair Public Library's Open Book, Open Mind program.
Venue: Montclair Public Library Auditorium.
SATURDAY MAY 4, 2:45 P.M. – 3:45 P.M.
NON-FICTION
AI: Savior or Existential Threat
Science and technology writer Ivan Amato discusses new insights into AI and the workings of the human mind with the authors of three fascinating books. In The Algorithm: How AI Decides Who Gets Hired, Monitored, Promoted, and Fired and Why We Need to Fight Back Now, Hilke Schellmann delivers a shocking and illuminating exposé on how AI has taken over the world of work. George Musser tackles the extraordinary interconnections between quantum mechanics, cosmology, human consciousness, and artificial intelligence in Putting Ourselves Back in the Equation: Why Physicists Are Studying Human Consciousness and AI to Unravel the Mysteries of the Universe. In Imagination: A Manifesto, Ruha Benjamin calls on us to take imagination seriously as a site of struggle and a place of possibility for reshaping the future.
Venue: Montclair Public Library Tent.
SATURDAY MAY 4, 4:00 P.M. – 5:00 P.M
NON-FICTION
Motherhood Revisited
Two acclaimed authors share their keen observations and insight on contemporary motherhood with book critic Kate Tuttle. Emily Raboteau crafts a powerfully moving meditation on race, climate, and environmental justice in Lessons for Survival: Mothering Against “the Apocalypse”. Raboteau bears witness to the inner life of Black womanhood, motherhood, the brutalities and possibilities of cities, while celebrating the beauty and fragility of nature. In her first memoir, Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story, Leslie Jamison turns her powers of perception to her intimate relationships: her consuming love for her young daughter, a ruptured marriage, and the legacy of her own parents’ complicated bond. In examining what it means for a woman to be many things—a mother, an artist, a teacher, a lover—Jamison places the magical and the mundane side by side. These innovative works stitch together the emotional and intellectual components of motherhood, offering a profound sense of hope.
This event is co-presented with Montclair Public Library's Open Book, Open Mind program.
Venue: First Congregational Church, The Sanctuary.
SATURDAY MAY 4, 4:00 P.M. – 5:00 P.M
FICTION/NON-FICTION
A Tale of Two Courtrooms
In Wilkes-Barre, PA at the beginning of the 21st century, thousands of children and teens were tossed into juvenile detention centers for petty infractions like stealing a candy bar. Twenty years later, thanks to the launch of the Newark N.J. Youth court, children who commit similar crimes now appear before a jury of their teen peers, who decide their fate. Journalist Candy J. Cooper tells the Pennsylvania story in her new book, Shackled: A Tale of Wronged Kids, Rogue Judges, and A Town That Looked Away. She speaks with Judge Victoria Pratt, who was involved with the launch of the Newark youth court and authored The Power of Dignity: How Transforming Justice Can Heal Our Communities.
Venue: Montclair Public Library Auditorium.
SATURDAY MAY 4, 4:00 P.M. – 5:00 P.M
NON-FICTION
The Groundbreaking Swans of Harlem
At the height of the Civil Rights movement, five trailblazing Black prima ballerinas, members of the Dance Theatre of Harlem, performed in some of ballet’s most iconic works. These Swans of Harlem danced at the White House, for the Queen of England, Mick Jagger, Stevie Wonder, and beyond. Karen Valby’s The Swans of Harlem: Five Black Ballerinas, Fifty Years of Sisterhood, and Their Reclamation of a Groundbreaking History is a riveting account of these extraordinarily accomplished women. Celebrating their historic careers and the sustaining, grounding power of female friendship, this story is a window into the robust history of Black ballet, hidden for too long. Valby will be joined by Khadija Griffith, daughter of Gayle McKinney-Griffith, a dancer featured in the book, and event moder Sharron Miller, founder of Sharron Miller’s Academy for the Performing Arts and former Alvin Ailey principal dancer.
Venue: Montclair Public Library Tent
SATURDAY MAY 4, 5:20 P.M. – 6:20 P.M
FICTION
Ann Napolitano: Within Arm's Reach
We are excited to welcome New York Times best-selling author of Hello Beautiful, Ann Napolitano. Within Arm's Reach, originally published in 2004, is now reissued 20 years later as a special paperback edition. Ann will be in conversation with Sarah Lyall, writer at large for the New York Times.
Within Arm's Reach is the tender and perceptive debut novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Hello Beautiful, about three generations of a large Catholic family jarred into crisis by an unexpected pregnancy.
Venue: First Congregational Church, The Sanctuary.
SATURDAY MAY 4, 6:30 P.M. – 8:30 P.M.
FESTIVAL PARTY
Meet the Authors!
Join festival authors and supporters for dazzling conversation, drinks, and light snacks to celebrate the seventh annual Montclair Literary Festival. Round off the day in style while supporting Succeed2gether’s important work to close the education achievement gap.
Venue: First Congregational Church, The Guild Room.
