BRATTLEBORO — Award-winning authors Jessica Anthony and Ada Calhoun joined forces via Zoom for a “literary cocktail hour,” on Thursday, Feb. 12.
The cocktail hour is a monthly Zoom series from the Brattleboro Literary Festival, where authors are invited to speak via Zoom about literature, writing and their own works. Calhoun and Anthony were originally scheduled to speak together at the 2025 festival, which was held in October. Anthony was unable to attend due to a personal injury, and was invited to speak with Calhoun virtually at the cocktail hour as a substitute for the originally planned conversation.
During the conversation, Calhoun and Anthony discussed Anthony’s most recent novel “The Most,” which explores a tennis prodigy-turned 1950s housewife reaching a high-water mark in her marriage and personal life. Anthony described her protagonist as a parody of stereotypes associated with the “1950s housewife” trope, and explained her intention of leaning away from stereotypes in order to create characters that feel realistic.
“When people think of a ’50s housewife, there are a lot of notions and ideas that come from advertising and television sitcoms. Not a lot of people have read a lot of literature from back then, and of course people in [the 1950s] lived lives that were just as unique as we do,” said Anthony. “Women in that era were unique and distinct, and living in that moment of cultural oppression. I think that the instinct to write any form of historical fiction because you are feeling romantic about the time period is a mistake, and instead to travel to a particular place in time to look at these character’s struggles and failures in a way that is similar to the struggles and failures we face nowadays.”
Anthony praised the Brattleboro Literary Festival for hosting events like the literary cocktail hour, and said that connecting through art and literature is important for building a strong community.
“This is a good example of what is possible when people participate, and participating in a literary conversation is an act of resistance. Even if it is just a small group of 10 or 15 people who come together and discuss the importance of imagination and creativity, that in itself is a radical act,” said Anthony.
Brattleboro Literary Festival committee member Nicole Lamoreaux said the literary cocktail hour is an addition to the yearly festival. According to Lamoreaux, the cocktail hour was conceived during the COVID-19 pandemic as a way to foster literary conversation while maintaining social distancing practices.
“It is interesting when you are talking to folks from Brattleboro or the surrounding towns because some people hear our name and instantly know about the festival, and others have no idea. These literary cocktail hours kind of give people a taste for what the whole festival is like for people who have never heard of us before,” said Lamoreaux. “It is a unique perspective of the authors that we have at these events. A lot of times, you’ll see an author interviewing themself or a journalist interviewing an author. What we do, with having authors interview each other, is have conversations between two people who are in the same industry and know the ins and outs of writing.”
Calhoun provided interview questions for the February conversation with Anthony, and considers herself an admirer of her work. Calhoun said she was happy for the chance to reconnect with Anthony after their previous plan fell through in October.
“I had read [“The Most”] in preparation for the event we were supposed to have in October before her injury, and I thought it was this totally hypnotic and beautiful novella. This was a second chance for us to sit down and discuss it, and I was really happy that this literary cocktail hour gets to focus on her book, since the last conversation was focused on mine,” said Calhoun.
Ryan Pacheco can be contacted at [email protected]
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