A New Chapter
THE AUTHORS GUILD FOUNDATION WELCOMES TWO NEW LEADERS
By Laura Mars
From the pages of our May/June 2024 issue.
AGF Executive Director Deborah Wilson and Executive Producer of Literary Programs Bernard Schwartz.
The Authors Guild Foundation (AGF) was founded in 1912 and is the nation’s oldest and largest professional organization for published writers. It advocates on behalf of working writers to protect free speech, freedom of expression, and authors’ copyrights, and fights for fair contracts and authors’ ability to earn a livable wage. AGF also offers free programming for working writers, and organizes public events like the annual WIT (Word, Ideas, and Thinkers) Festival in Lenox in the fall, bringing together a diverse group of authors to speak about their work, critical issues, and to further nourish the Berkshires’ literary community.
Two seasoned literary leaders are now at the helm of the AGF: Deborah Wilson as executive director and Bernard Schwartz as executive producer of literary programs. They replace Lynn Boulger, who retired in January.
“The roles were split because it’s a lot for one person: major fundraising and building out literary programs,” says Wilson, who was at PEN America for five and a half years. “AGF is growing. We have chapters in 16 cities, and we want to expand in Texas, which is the state with the highest number of banned books, just surpassing Florida. Many on our staff are lawyers who take the cause to Congress, from book bans to AI to copyright issues.”
Schwartz led the 92nd Street Y’s Unterberg Poetry Center for 18 years. “I am really excited to be inheriting the WIT festival,” he says. “The vision that predates me of making a literary festival, or a festival of ideas, in the Berkshires that convenes many different sorts of writers is an inspired one.”
He is working on the collaborations and partnerships that are so important to the success of a festival like WIT, not only with Shakespeare & Company, where the festival has been held since its start in 2022, but with The Bookstore in Lenox, The Red Lion Inn, and elsewhere. Schwartz hopes to expand sessions into schools this year, allowing greater access to WIT’s programs.
This year’s festival goers can expect a series of thought-provoking conversations, presentations, panels, and speeches by a wide range of social and societal innovators including authors, journalists, historians, educators, and business leaders. Attendees will have the opportunity to interact with speakers in Q&A sessions, book signings, and receptions. The lineup will be announced in mid-June, although we do know that award-winning Afro-Carribean writer and essayist Jamaica Kincaid will be coming to Lenox to talk about her newest book, An Encyclopedia of Gardening for Colored Children. (See page 108.) Another event that is locked in will take place on Sunday, September 29, at the Stockbridge library for children and families with Mary Pope Osborne, author of The Magic Treehouse children’s book series.
Schwartz also announced a new online literary seminar by AGF starting this summer. It is inspired by Rachel Cohen’s A Chance Meeting, which is a group biography that chronicles the links and serendipitous meetings between giants of American culture. Newly released as a New York Review Classic, Cohen’s book travels from the Civil War to the Vietnam War. Seminar sessions feature writers presenting talks on classics of American literature, with Cohen hosting the first session on May 22, and the last session on December 11.
The lineup of online seminar sessions includes:
June 10: Colm Toibin on Henry James’ “The Jolly Corner."
July 10: Brenda Wineapple on Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself.”
August 8: Merve Emre on Willa Cather’s The Professor’s House.
September 5: Saidiya Hartman on W.E.B. Du Bois’s Blackwater.
October 17: Daphne Brooks on Zora Neale Hurston’s You Don’t Know Us Negroes and Other Essays.
November 13: Langdon Hammer on Elizabeth Bishop’s North & South.
Save the date!
The Authors Guild Foundation’s 3rd Annual WIT (Words, Ideas, and Thinkers) Festival will be held on the grounds of Shakespeare & Company in Lenox from September 27–29, 2024.
authorsguild.org/foundation
for updates!