Exeter LitFest

Exeter LitFest The Exeter LitFest is held annually on the first weekend in April. Past segments can be seen on Exeter TV 98 (Youtube/Facebook).

When ready, our full schedule is posted each year on our website ExeterLitFest.com Thanks for your support!

We're doing a new little feature over here so you can get to know your Exeter Literary Festival Board. The board member ...
05/20/2026

We're doing a new little feature over here so you can get to know your Exeter Literary Festival Board. The board member spotlight for May is founder Renay Allen!

Renay was voted class bookworm in 8th grade. Leveraging that awkward title, seven years ago she convinced a creative group of Exeter citizens to work with her to create the Exeter LitFest to showcase local authors of all persuasions. She remained president of that non-profit board until 2024, when she passed the title to a local woman with professional experience in the publishing world, Katie Adams, and took a backseat to watch the next generation grow the Fest into its current powerhouse of regional authors and poets.

CURRENTLY READING: "What We Can Know" by Ian McEwan. She tells us: "It's the best dystopian climate fiction since 'Ministry For The Future', full of pointed jabs, but also with glimmers of hope. Set in a submerged UK, it concerns the search for a lost poem - an intriguing combination."

Cooking up an exciting new year over here!
05/20/2026

Cooking up an exciting new year over here!

Scenes from an incredible day! Thank you so much to everyone who came out.
04/07/2026

Scenes from an incredible day! Thank you so much to everyone who came out.

As more and more often we see climate changes and disasters shaping the world around us, novelists are faced with the da...
04/01/2026

As more and more often we see climate changes and disasters shaping the world around us, novelists are faced with the daunting challenge of how to confront such a large-scale issue within the human stories they write. Moderated by local literary darling Liberty Hardy, this panel showcases three mesmerizing writers for a conversation about climate fiction in a warming world.

Julie Carrick Dalton is the author of The Forest Becomes Her (July 2026), The Last Beekeeper, and Waiting for the Night Song. She is the winner of the New Hampshire Book Awards' People's Choice for Best Novel, and was a finalist for the Massachusetts Book Award, and the Siskiyou Prize for New Environmental Literature. A former organic farmer, forest manager, and beekeeper, and a 2026 TEDx speaker, she is a frequent speaker on the topic of fiction in the age of climate crisis. When she isn't reading or writing, you can probably find Julie kayaking, skiing, swimming, gardening, or trying to track down her four children and two dogs.

Nick Fuller Googins is the author of the novels, The Frequency of Living Things and The Great Transition. His short fiction and essays have appeared in The Paris Review, Men’s Health, The Sun, The Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere. He lives in Maine, and works as an elementary school teacher.

Andrew Krivak is the author of five novels, two chapbooks of poetry, and two works of nonfiction. His 2011 debut novel, The Sojourn, was a National Book Award finalist and winner of both the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for fiction and the inaugural Chautauqua Prize. His most recent novel, Mule Boy, is about the men who died in a tragic mining disaster, and the boy who survived to tell their story. Krivak lives with his wife and three children in Somerville, Massachusetts, and Jaffrey, New Hampshire.

Our opening keynote this year sees renowned astrophysicist Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein return to the stage, this time l...
03/31/2026

Our opening keynote this year sees renowned astrophysicist Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein return to the stage, this time launching a brand new book, The Edge of Space-Time. Early readers have called it "enthralling," "an instant classic," and "very, very funny." She will be joined in conversation by Phillips Exeter Academy's instructor of science, Dr. Summer Morrill. Not to be missed!

An associate professor of physics and astronomy and core faculty in women’s and gender studies at the University of New Hampshire, Dr Prescod-Weinstein conducts award-winning theoretical physics research on dark matter, the early universe, and neutron stars, while also researching Black feminist science studies. Her first book, The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred, won the 2021 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Science and Technology, the 2022 Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science, and a 2022 PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Award. A columnist for New Scientist and Physics World, she is originally from East L.A., California, and now divides her time between the New Hampshire Seacoast and Cambridge, Massachusetts.

This year's poetry event is something new and different! Curated by Diannely Antigua, the event will feature readings by...
03/30/2026

This year's poetry event is something new and different! Curated by Diannely Antigua, the event will feature readings by acclaimed poets Sara Deniz Akant and Myles Taylor as well as student poets from Exeter High School, followed by a moderated discussion among the group. Come support our local student writers and hear from two dynamic voices in poetry.

Sara Deniz Akant is a Turkish-American educator and poet and author of, most recently, Hyperphantasia, winner of the Massachusetts Book Award.

Myles Taylor is a transmasculine writer, organizer, educator, Capricorn-Aquarius cusp, glitter enthusiast, and author of the collection Masculinity Parable, which was shortlisted for the Nossrat Yassini Poetry Prize.

Diannely Antigua is a Dominican American poet and educator, former poet laureate of Portsmouth, NH, and author most recently of the "revelatory" (Boston Globe) Good Monster.

We are absolutely thrilled to bring Illustrator E.B. Goodale to the Exeter Literary Festival this year. Bring the kids t...
03/25/2026

We are absolutely thrilled to bring Illustrator E.B. Goodale to the Exeter Literary Festival this year. Bring the kids to the Exeter Public Library children's room on Saturday, April 4th at 10am to hear from this award-winning artist.

03/24/2026

We're blushing ☺️

We're thrilled to bring Catherine Newman to this year's festival as one of our featured authors. Her latest novel, WRECK...
03/24/2026

We're thrilled to bring Catherine Newman to this year's festival as one of our featured authors. Her latest novel, WRECK, was an instant New York Times best seller and a continuation of the story of the charming Rocky and her family from Newman's last hit, SANDWICH. Come see her in conversation about fiction and family with novelist Lara Prescott Saturday, April 4 at 4pm. FREE in the Exeter Town Hall.

We are thrilled to offer this American history panel at this year's festival: Writing the American Story, featuring thre...
03/18/2026

We are thrilled to offer this American history panel at this year's festival: Writing the American Story, featuring three amazing historians. Each in their own way has written about American self-definition, how our history is full of people - known and unknown - who have envisioned and fought for a country better than the one they inherited. Saturday April 4 at 1:30pm, FREE

-Brooke Barbier received her PhD in American history from Boston College. She is the author of Boston in the American Revolution: A Town Versus an Empire and the award-winning King Hancock: The Radical Influence of a Moderate Founding Father. Her next book, Cocked and Boozy: An Intoxicating History of the American Revolution, releases in June 2026 and examines the influence of alcohol on the creation of the United States.

-Kabria Baumgartner is an award-winning public historian who has worked with numerous local historical organizations. In 2021, she co-founded the award-winning Newburyport Black History Initiative (NBHI), an organization that highlights and incorporates Black history into the public landscape in downtown Newburyport. In 2019, she published her first academic book, In Pursuit of Knowledge: Black Women and Educational Activism in Antebellum America, which tells the story of Black girls and women who fought to democratize public education in the nineteenth-century Northeast. She is Dean's Associate Professor of History and Africana Studies at Northeaster University.

-Caleb Gayle is a professor at Northeastern University, a contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine, and the author of Black Moses: A Saga of Ambition and the Fight for a Black State (Riverhead Books). Black Moses was a finalist for the New England Book Award, longlisted for the National Book Award, and named one of the Best Books of the Year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, among others.

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03833

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