TY GAGNE - JULY 10TH
Ty Gagne is chief executive officer of New Hampshire Public Risk Management Exchange (Primex³), a public entity risk pool serving local governments in New Hampshire. He is a certified Wilderness First Responder and the author of the book Where You’ll Find Me: Risk, Decisions, and the Last Climb of Kate Matrosova. Two of his essays, “Emotional Rescue,” and “Weakness in Numbers: How a Hiking Companion can be Dangerous” were published in Appalachia journal.
In The Last Traverse; Tragedy and Resilience in the Winter Whites, Ty Gagne lays out the events that led up to an epic and legendary rescue attempt in severe and dangerous winter conditions in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. More than a cautionary tale, it is a tribute to all the volunteers and professionals who willingly put themselves in harm’s way to save lives.
CHANDA PRESCOD-WEINSTEIN - JULY 24TH
Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is an assistant professor of physics and astronomy and core faculty in women’s and gender studies at the University of New Hampshire. The author of The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred, she is also a columnist for New Scientist and Physics World. Her research in theoretical physics focuses on cosmology, neutron stars, and dark matter. She also does research in Black feminist science, technology, and society studies. Nature recognized her as one of 10 people who shaped science in 2020, and Essence magazine has recognized her as one of “15 Black Women Who Are Paving the Way in STEM and Breaking Barriers.” A cofounder of Particles for Justice, she received the 2017 LGBT+ Physicists Acknowledgement of Excellence Award for her contributions to improving conditions for marginalized people in physics and the 2021 American Physical Society Edward A. Bouchet Award for her contributions to particle cosmology. Originally from East L.A., she divides her time between the New Hampshire Seacoast and Cambridge, Massachusetts.
J.W. OCKER - AUGUST 7TH
J.W. Ocker is the award-winning author of macabre travelogues, spooky kid’s books, and horror novels. His nonfictions books include The New England Grimpendium and The New York Grimpendium (both Lowell Thomas Award winners), Poe-Land: The Hallowed Haunts of Edgar Allan Poe (Edgar Award winner), and A Season with the Witch: The Magic and Mayhem of Halloween in Salem, Massachusetts. His novels include Death and Douglas and Twelve Nights at Rotter House. His most recent nonfiction book, Cursed Objects, came out from Quirk Books in September 2020 and his next novel, The Smashed Man of Dread End, from HarperCollins in Summer 2021.
He is also the creator of OTIS: Odd Things I've Seen (oddthingsiveseen.com), where he chronicles his visits to thousands of oddities of culture, art, nature, and history across the country and world with photos, articles, and through Odd Things I've Seen: The Podcast. His work has appeared on or in CNN.com, The Atlantic, Rue Morgue, the Boston Globe, The Guardian, TIME, and other places people stick writing. Ocker is from Maryland but has lived in New Hampshire for more than a decade. He has a wife, three daughters, and celebrates Halloween for two months.
JEFF SHARLET - AUGUST 21ST
Jeff Sharlet is an award-winning literary journalist and author of seven books including New York Times bestseller, THE FAMILY: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power and C STREET: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy. He is also the executive producer of the top-rated Netflix documentary series based on the books.
Jeff is the Frederick Sessions Beebe ’35 Professor in the Art of Writing, a member of the Society of Fellows, and Director of Creative Writing at Dartmouth College. He is an editor-at-large for Virginia Quarterly Review and a contributing editor for Harper’s and Rolling Stone. He has also contributed to The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, GQ, Esquire, Mother Jones, and more.
His work has earned numerous awards, including the National Magazine Award, the Outspoken Award, the MOLLY National Journalism Prize, the University of Virginia’s Staige D. Blackford Prize for Nonfiction, and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation’s Thomas Jefferson Award, and he has been the recipient of numerous fellowships from the MacDowell Colony.
He has been a frequent guest on The Rachel Maddow Show, Fresh Air, All In with Chris Hayes, CNN, and many other television and radio programs, and a speaker at colleges and universities including Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Duke, Penn, UVA, USC, University of Iowa, the Naval War College, and many others. He has been a Visiting Academic at Trinity College Dublin and a Visiting Research Scholar at NYU.
Jeff’s new book is THIS BRILLIANT DARKNESS: A Book of Strangers. In this masterful collection of images and reflections, he invites us to see his subjects – the people, moments and things we actively ignore or take no notice of. “The book ingeniously reminds us that all of our lives — our struggles, desires, grief — happen concurrently with everyone else’s, and this awareness helps dissolve the boundaries between us” (New York Times).
This is a book of other people’s lives, lives that became, for a moment— the duration of a snapshot— my life, too. – Jeff Sharlet
Ty Gagne is chief executive officer of New Hampshire Public Risk Management Exchange (Primex³), a public entity risk pool serving local governments in New Hampshire. He is a certified Wilderness First Responder and the author of the book Where You’ll Find Me: Risk, Decisions, and the Last Climb of Kate Matrosova. Two of his essays, “Emotional Rescue,” and “Weakness in Numbers: How a Hiking Companion can be Dangerous” were published in Appalachia journal.
In The Last Traverse; Tragedy and Resilience in the Winter Whites, Ty Gagne lays out the events that led up to an epic and legendary rescue attempt in severe and dangerous winter conditions in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. More than a cautionary tale, it is a tribute to all the volunteers and professionals who willingly put themselves in harm’s way to save lives.
CHANDA PRESCOD-WEINSTEIN - JULY 24TH
Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is an assistant professor of physics and astronomy and core faculty in women’s and gender studies at the University of New Hampshire. The author of The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred, she is also a columnist for New Scientist and Physics World. Her research in theoretical physics focuses on cosmology, neutron stars, and dark matter. She also does research in Black feminist science, technology, and society studies. Nature recognized her as one of 10 people who shaped science in 2020, and Essence magazine has recognized her as one of “15 Black Women Who Are Paving the Way in STEM and Breaking Barriers.” A cofounder of Particles for Justice, she received the 2017 LGBT+ Physicists Acknowledgement of Excellence Award for her contributions to improving conditions for marginalized people in physics and the 2021 American Physical Society Edward A. Bouchet Award for her contributions to particle cosmology. Originally from East L.A., she divides her time between the New Hampshire Seacoast and Cambridge, Massachusetts.
J.W. OCKER - AUGUST 7TH
J.W. Ocker is the award-winning author of macabre travelogues, spooky kid’s books, and horror novels. His nonfictions books include The New England Grimpendium and The New York Grimpendium (both Lowell Thomas Award winners), Poe-Land: The Hallowed Haunts of Edgar Allan Poe (Edgar Award winner), and A Season with the Witch: The Magic and Mayhem of Halloween in Salem, Massachusetts. His novels include Death and Douglas and Twelve Nights at Rotter House. His most recent nonfiction book, Cursed Objects, came out from Quirk Books in September 2020 and his next novel, The Smashed Man of Dread End, from HarperCollins in Summer 2021.
He is also the creator of OTIS: Odd Things I've Seen (oddthingsiveseen.com), where he chronicles his visits to thousands of oddities of culture, art, nature, and history across the country and world with photos, articles, and through Odd Things I've Seen: The Podcast. His work has appeared on or in CNN.com, The Atlantic, Rue Morgue, the Boston Globe, The Guardian, TIME, and other places people stick writing. Ocker is from Maryland but has lived in New Hampshire for more than a decade. He has a wife, three daughters, and celebrates Halloween for two months.
JEFF SHARLET - AUGUST 21ST
Jeff Sharlet is an award-winning literary journalist and author of seven books including New York Times bestseller, THE FAMILY: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power and C STREET: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy. He is also the executive producer of the top-rated Netflix documentary series based on the books.
Jeff is the Frederick Sessions Beebe ’35 Professor in the Art of Writing, a member of the Society of Fellows, and Director of Creative Writing at Dartmouth College. He is an editor-at-large for Virginia Quarterly Review and a contributing editor for Harper’s and Rolling Stone. He has also contributed to The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, GQ, Esquire, Mother Jones, and more.
His work has earned numerous awards, including the National Magazine Award, the Outspoken Award, the MOLLY National Journalism Prize, the University of Virginia’s Staige D. Blackford Prize for Nonfiction, and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation’s Thomas Jefferson Award, and he has been the recipient of numerous fellowships from the MacDowell Colony.
He has been a frequent guest on The Rachel Maddow Show, Fresh Air, All In with Chris Hayes, CNN, and many other television and radio programs, and a speaker at colleges and universities including Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Duke, Penn, UVA, USC, University of Iowa, the Naval War College, and many others. He has been a Visiting Academic at Trinity College Dublin and a Visiting Research Scholar at NYU.
Jeff’s new book is THIS BRILLIANT DARKNESS: A Book of Strangers. In this masterful collection of images and reflections, he invites us to see his subjects – the people, moments and things we actively ignore or take no notice of. “The book ingeniously reminds us that all of our lives — our struggles, desires, grief — happen concurrently with everyone else’s, and this awareness helps dissolve the boundaries between us” (New York Times).
This is a book of other people’s lives, lives that became, for a moment— the duration of a snapshot— my life, too. – Jeff Sharlet
