PREVIEW: Kinderhook Books Presents the Rough Notes Festival
08/28–08/30 @ Kinderhook Books, Kinderhook
“There are a lot of literary festivals, but I wanted this one to be about writing. We’re embracing authors of poetry and non-fiction, but I also wanted to bring in songwriters, stand up comedians, and playwrights. Just to celebrate the craft in all of its forms.”
Kinderhook Books is hosting their inaugural Rough Notes literary festival this weekend in Kinderhook, NY. Tig Notaro will kick off the festival tonight with a sold-out performance followed by a conversation between Notaro and Hacks’s Lauren Weedman on the creative process. Saturday is absolutely packed with talks and performances, most notably conversations on poetry, queer memoirs, a discussion on the “afterlife of art,” a workshop for kids, a performance from Metroland’s mini muse, Lulu Grey, and the night will close with a performance from Natalie Merchant. Sunday is where folks will take what they learned and apply it to their own writing through many workshops on the craft.
Owner of Kinderhook Books and founder of the festival, Mindy Kay Bricker, spoke with me about this upcoming event.
“When I opened Kinderhook Books in 2023, the Rough Notes Festival was always in the business plan. About two years in we started with ‘Rough Notes Craft Talks.’ Big authors were giving talks two Saturdays in a row or so. They were on Zoom in the winter and people from Canada, from the UK, happened to hear about it. People really just appeared. [They] were stoked about them,” Mindy explains, happily bewildered.
“We started collecting data. Who is coming to these, what do they say about them? And, importantly, what do the authors say about them? In the meantime, we created this little space [the store] that feels like a home. Every year we were like, should we do it now?” she adds with a laugh. “In January I applied for the American Express Main Street Grant and I got it.
“There are a lot of literary festivals, but I wanted this one to be about writing. We’re embracing authors of poetry and non-fiction, but I also wanted to bring in songwriters, stand-up comedians, and playwrights. Just to celebrate the craft in all of its forms.”
It’s true, she’s done this as an ode to these kinds of writers. It would be less risky to start the festival with pop culture crowd pleasers, but it’s time for these genres to get their flowers.
The inspiration for such an approach came from her experience curating previous Rough Notes Craft Talks. This series of classes and workshops began last year as a way to encourage and motivate aspiring writers to get started — or finish — writing their novel. Much like this weekend’s festival, Mindy’s aim was for attendees to leave with easily digestible and actionable takeaways.
“One of the questions we get a lot when we have events with authors is ‘were you able to select who read your audiobook?’ There are a lot of questions about what happens to the work after it’s written. Now I’m obsessed with the afterlife of art. I want to know what that process is like for various authors. So having Peter Cameron [What Happens at Night, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone] and Sigrid Nunez [The Vulnerables, What Are You Going Through, The Friend], that’ll be a really interesting panel. Martin Scorsese is directing one of Peter’s books, some of Sigrid’s books were adapted into movies…”
That particular panel will be hosted by writer and director Nadia Conners (The Uninvited, The 11th Hour) and another panelist will be Oscar Nominee and writer Griffin Dunne (This is Us, Dallas Buyers Club, I Love Dick, The Friday Afternoon Club), who will both be sure to add interesting perspectives as they’ve been on both the writing and adaptation sides.
“My idea is that, while, yes, it’s through Kinderhook Books, but I want all of the local businesses to get a boost from this. We’re all participating. That when you walk through the village we’re all talking about the same thing.”
Though Mindy and I laughed our way through our conversation, riffing off of her enthusiastic energy, here is where she got the most sentimental. “I’m just so grateful this is happening and everyone is involved. It really takes a village. What is really magical is that I’m from a small town and small towns mean so much to me, because you can do things like this where the whole town is participating. It means so much to me to give a small community front row access to something that’s so special and to see our performers go back to their roots. These are the kinds of audiences who Tig and Natalie had when they started. I’m just so thankful. And I have no idea how this happened; I’m just glad it did!” she says, erupting into joyous laughter.
We’re glad too, Mindy! And she even let me in on an update — the festival is already a go to return next year.
For tickets and more information, go to theroughnotes.com and follow @kinderhookbooks on Instagram.
