David Bowie, T. Rex, Thin Lizzy — titans of rock ‘n’ roll music, all connected by the iconic touches of legendary producer, arranger, and VersoFest 2024 keynote subject Tony Visconti.
Visconti will be in conversation with WFUV's Paul Cavalconte for The Westport Library's third annual music and media festival on Saturday, April 6 at 1 pm, discussing his art and career as one of pop music’s longest working and most influential producers. This event is free and requires registration, tickets are available now via this link.
Beyond music, Visconti has created moments blooming into cultural movements (glam rock), art linked to collective memory in T. Rex’s “Get It On (Bang A Gong),” “Cosmic Dancer,” and “20th Century Boy” and Bowie’s “The Man Who Sold The World,” “Rebel Rebel,” and “Heroes.” Lifetime achievements, GRAMMY Awards, film and TV soundtracks, and many other honors celebrate Visconti’s production and arrangement vision, which also includes collaborations with Paul McCartney & Wings (for their famed Band on the Run album), U2, Bert Jansch, Angelique Kidjo, Luscious Jackson, Alejandro Escovedo, the Strawbs, Fall Out Boy, Gentle Giant, Mercury Rev, Sparks, Badfinger, The Moody Blues, The Alarm, Kristeen Young, and D-Generation. In addition, Visconti recently arranged the strings on New Haven musician and former Verso Studios Connecticut Music Oral History Podcast guest Kelly Reilly’s “Happiness Lasts.”
“Now in its third year, VersoFest 2024 is shaping up to be another impressive and inspiring weekend for creators and fans alike. Announcing the legendary Tony Visconti, who has been at the helm of countless cultural touchstones is a tremendous launch for our 2024 program,” said Westport Library Executive Director Bill Harmer.
VersoFest 2024 is a four-day music festival and conference happening Thursday, April 4, through Sunday, April 7. VersoFest includes panels where experts share their perspective and vision. Intimate workshops provide creators the opportunity to deconstruct, improve, and hone their craft. Performances entertain and inspire.
Previous years have featured a diverse and eclectic mix of performers and subjects including the Smithereens, Sunflower Bean, Grand Wizzard Theodore (inventor of scratch DJing), producer Steve Lillywhite (U2, Talking Heads, Dave Matthews Band), Richard Butler (Psychedelic Furs), Dennis Dunaway (Alice Cooper), Miriam Linna (Norton Records, Kicks Books, Kicksville Radio), actor/producer Michael Jai White, Little Steven’s TeachRock Foundation, Connecticut Public, and many more.
Visconti is currently touring the globe celebrating the release of the new 77-track box set Produced by Tony Visconti. Visconti told popular music blog Super Deluxe Edition, “This boxset covers five-and-a-half decades of my efforts in the art of making iconic recordings. Some of it is familiar and some will have a eureka moment, ‘I didn’t know Visconti produced that one!’”
Mark your calendar for The Westport Library Big Fall Book Sale, to be held Friday, December 1, through Monday, December 4, on the Library’s main level.
Once again this fall, the Book Sale offers something for everyone, with thousands of gently used books for children and adults in more than 50 categories of nonfiction and fiction, as well as noteworthy, vintage children’s and antiquarian books, vintage vinyl records, music CDs, and movie and television series DVDs, as well as a limited selection of ephemera and artwork.
The book sale hours, with free admission, are as follows:
Friday, December 1: 12-6 pm
Saturday, December 2: 9 am – 5 pm
Sunday, December 3: 11 am – 5 pm (almost everything half-price)
Monday, December 4: 9 am – 5 pm (“Bag Day” — shoppers can fill our logo bag for $10 per bag, or their own equivalent-sized bag for $8, or buy individual books at half-price)
On Friday morning, December 1, from 8:55 am to 12 pm, the Book Sale will be open only to patrons who purchase an Early Access ticket. Early Access tickets must be purchased in advance and are available online, through eventbrite.com. Click here to purchase early access tickets.
Of special interest for this sale:
Also, back by popular demand is the Fiction for $1 Room — an entire conference room filled with hardcover fiction, mystery, science fiction and fantasy books, and young adult fiction, plus paperback novels, all offered at just $1 each. (Please note: The books in this room will remain priced at $1 each on Sunday’s half-price day.)
To volunteer at this sale, please send an email to Judi Lake at [email protected].
If you can’t make the sale, you can still visit the Westport Book Shop at 23 Jesup Road, across Jesup Green from the Library, or shop any time 24/7 on the Book Sale’s online store or its eBay store.
The Westport Library Book Sale is operated by Westport Book Sale Ventures, a nonprofit enterprise with a dual social mission: raise funds to support The Westport Library while providing meaningful employment for adults with disabilities.
If reading is a solitary act, the form of the book galvanizes us for communal discussion, debate, and celebration. Established in 2002, WestportREADS continues the storied tradition of reading a book together to strengthen community engagement in literature.
The 2024 WestportREADS selection is The Art Thief by Michael Finkel, the true-crime tale of the world’s most prolific art thief, Stéphane Breitwieser, who stole, never for money, but for personal treasure and adoration.
Select copies of the book are available for borrowing now at The Westport Library, with the full complement of WestportREADS volumes arriving in December. The Art Thief is also available as a digital copy (e-book) and as an audiobook.
A full slate of programming centered on The Art Thief begins in early January. The capstone event will be held Friday, January 26, when Finkel appears in-person at the Library to deliver the WestportREADS keynote address (registration coming soon).
“We are excited to convene around Michael Finkel’s The Art Thief in Westport’s annual celebration of literature,” said Westport Library Executive Director Bill Harmer. “Finkel is a writer who simultaneously pushes the boundaries of truth while searching for it. The Art Thief narrative gives us the twists and turns of any great true-crime story while raising existential questions on art, capital, and values.”
Finkel (True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa; The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit) is a journalist and best-selling memoirist hailing from Northern Utah. After a prosperous run as a New York Times reporter, Finkel was terminated for compositing quotes in the 2001 story Is Youssouf Malé A Slave?
Shortly afterward, Finkel discovered that Oregon murderer Christian Longo used “Michael Finkel” as an alias. Finkel reached out to Longo, forging a relationship that served as the basis for True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa. The book was adapted for film in 2015’s True Story, premiering at Sundance Film Festival, starring Jonah Hill, James Franco, and Felicity Jones.
Finkel’s follow-up, The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit, chronicled Christopher Knight, an intentional recluse who lived for 27 years in the woods of Maine with almost no human interaction, surviving by grifting life essentials. Vanity Fair contributing editor and ABC News special correspondent Stephen Junger raved that The Stranger in the Woods was "a story that takes the two primary human relationships — to nature and to one another — and deftly upends our assumptions about both.”
Finkel’s The Art Thief arrives with similar acclaim. Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Kathryn Schulz wrote in The New Yorker, “The Art Thief, like its title character, has confidence, élan, and a great sense of timing. It is propelled by suspense and surprises. … This ultra-lucrative, odds-defying crime streak is wonderfully narrated by Finkel, in a tale whose trajectory is less rise and fall than crazy and crazier. ... Part of what makes Finkel’s book so much fun is that, without exception, [Breitwieser’s] strategies are insane.”
Finkel told Esquire, “Working on this book changed the way I experience museums and commune with a work of art. Breitwieser is often low energy; then, when he walks into a museum, it’s like he’s had a triple shot of espresso. This is someone who’s very parsimonious with his words, then suddenly he’s babbling like your favorite crazy art professor. I would watch his face as he stood in front of an artwork. If he didn't like something, it was a flat face. If he liked something, it was as if he’d been electrocuted, and he’d often look around the room to see if he could commune alone with it.“
Past WestportREADS selections include Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab, Towards a More Perfect Union: Confronting Racism by Layla Saad, and Exit West by Moshin Hamid, among others.
For more past WestportREADS selections, and to learn more about the annual event, visit the WestportREADS homepage on The Westport Library website.
WestportREADS is supported through a generous bequest by the estate of Jerry A. Tishman.
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Photo credit for Michael Finkel photo: Doug Loneman
Oscar-nominated filmmaker and 32 Sounds Director Sam Green
Academy-Award nominated filmmaker Sam Green continually pushes the bounds of theatrical experience with live score/narrated documentaries like The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller with Yo La Tengo, A Thousand Thoughts with the Kronos Quartet, and Green’s defining tour de force, The Weather Underground, chronicling the rise and fall of the radical political organization.
On Friday, December 8, at 6:30 pm, the Lundberg Family Foundation Master Film Series welcomes Green’s latest Sundance and SXSW selected documentary, 32 Sounds. Green will be in attendance for a post-screening Q&A with the audience. This event is free and requires registration.
32 Sounds is described as “a meditation on the power of sound to bend time, cross borders, and profoundly shape our perception of the world around us.” In creation of a “wholly unique, sensory rich experience,” the film lives up to its promise. Each member of the audience is given their own set of headphones for a special immersive binaural audio experience (a kind of spatial sound technology that gives the listener a much clearer sense of space).
Ever the form and technology trailblazer, Green developed the film through a creative residency at MASS MOCA in North Adams, Massachusetts, with Stanford University, Arizona University, and NYU, among others, serving as film commission partners.
“Normally, we think of movies as a visual medium, and they are, to an extent. The sound is always seen as a second-class citizen,” Green told Seventh Row. “This movie was hard to make. It’s almost like that cliché of a sculptor who allows the sculpture to come out of the stone, which sounds corny, but there’s something to it. As you work the material, you start to realize why you’re drawn to this, and what it is that is getting to you. That takes a lot of time and struggle.”
The 32 Sounds filmmaking team includes, among others, Oscar-winning and five-time Oscar-nominated sound designer Mark Mangini, multi-talented composer JD Samson, and celebrated producer and Oscar nominee Josh Penn.
Mangini won his Oscars for Dune and Mad Max Fury Road and is also known for films like Blade Runner 2049, Star Treks I, IV, and V, The Fifth Element, and Gremlins.
Samson is best known as leader of the band MEN and for being one-third of the electronic-feminist-punk band and performance project, Le Tigre.
Penn has been nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture, Outstanding Producer at the Producer’s Guild Awards, and has won a Peabody Award. He has premiered a dozen films at Sundance since 2012, garnering five awards from the festival. He has produced Beasts of the Southern Wild (Sundance Grand Jury Prize, Cannes Caméra d’Or, and four Oscar nominations, including Best Picture), Monsters and Men (Sundance Special Jury Prize), and the series Philly D.A. (Gotham and Peabody Award winner).
The Westport Library’s Lundberg Family Foundation Masters Film Series showcases films and filmmakers, celebrating contemporary masters, innovative new voices, and emerging artists. Previously the series debuted the Connecticut premiere of Larry Locke’s documentary, Heaven Stood Still: The Incarnations of Willy DeVille, followed by master class sessions.
Items available in the 2023 Holiday Shop. Photos: Julie Bonington
This season, make The Westport Library Store your first stop for gift shopping.
The Library’s Holiday Shop is now officially open, located in the writing center adjacent to the Hub on the main floor of the Library, alongside the Library Store and Patron Services desk.
Related: Open for Business Instagram video promotion
The Holiday Shop will remain open through the end of the year, but don’t wait to find that perfect gift for the reader, writer, and special person in your life. In our store, you can find something for everyone on your list from our curated collection of fun and unique items. There are scarves, hats, and gloves, many of which are handmade. Puzzles and games and many fun decorative items, including unique snow globes. A great selection of notebooks and journals. Fun toys, art supplies, novelty items for kids, and more.
Be sure to stop by and check it out! And remember, store purchases are tax free, and all the proceeds support Library services and programs.
Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Degas, legends in the canon of painting, gone in minutes, as 13 priceless works of art disappeared from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston in the dawning hours of March 18, 1990.
On the hinge of 2024’s WestportREADS selection, The Art Thief, by Michael Finkel, comes Westport Library’s Vanished program, Thursday, November 16, 7-8 pm. The event is free with registration.
Vanished features Stephen Kurkjian, journalist and author of the definitive book on the heist, Master Thieves, and Robert Wittman, retired FBI agent and author (with John Shiffman) of The New York Times best-selling memoir, Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World’s Stolen Treasures. Architect, academic, and Fulbright Specialist Allen Swerdlowe will present and moderate the discussion, delving into the Gardner Museum, the stolen pieces of art, the suspects, and the theories in the world’s biggest theft of art objects from a single institution.
“There are mysteries inside of mysteries inside the story," Swerdlowe told Westport Library Director of Strategic Community Partnerships Jennifer Bangser on the WPKN Open Book radio hour.
“One of which is that there was a painting called Chez Tortoni that was stolen from a room that nobody entered. Some of the authorities believe that there were two robberies that night. The story is complicated by the fact that the thieves were in the museum for 81 minutes. Robberies like this typically take a few minutes. ... It suggests the thieves knew they would not be apprehended.”
The mystery twists through rock ‘n’ rollers moonlighting as security (or vice versa), fake police arrests, and a potential Connecticut connection. These puzzling Garnder heist details and dead ends have consumed all included for 33 years.
Kurkjian is a 40-year veteran of The Boston Globe, serving as the paper’s former Washington bureau chief and a founding member of its investigative Spotlight Team. He has won more than 25 national and regional awards, including the Pulitzer Prize on three occasions. Kurkjian covered much of the investigation into the heist while in The Globe newsroom and has remained on the story since. He co-produced the award-winning podcast Last Seen with WBUR-FM radio in Boston, and has appeared in numerous documentaries on the case, including This is a Robbery, a four-part Netflix series, and others on the History Channel and CNN.
Wittman joined the FBI as a special agent in 1988, receiving detailed training in art, antiques, jewelry, and gem identification, taking on the role of the FBI’s investigative expert in art and cultural property crime investigations. Written with 2009 Pulitzer Prize Finalist Shiffman, Priceless follows Wittman through his career with the FBI, providing a first-perspective account of some of the most well-known art heists in modern history (including Gardner) and the undercover FBI stings that sought to foil them.
“It’s fascinating because of the fact that nothing was ever seen again,” Swerdlowe said of the crime. “It’s fascinating because everybody thinks they know the answer, and in all in cases it’s not the answer they thought it was.”
Roger Kafuman’s Speaking of Music series returns to The Westport Library with a special program, Speaking of Jazz: What It Is, to be held Saturday, November 11, in the Library’s Trefz Forum.
Doors open at 7 pm, with the show kicking off at 7:30 pm. Tickets are $10 and can be purchased here.
The grandson of storied ragtime songwriter Mel B. Kaufman, Roger Kaufman (pictured above) has spent a lengthy career in music as a bandleader, bass player, producer, moderator, and historian. Among the 1966 Staples High School graduate’s many endeavors is founding Old School Music Productions, his music event production company that produces the Speaking of Music series as a “cornerstone of musical education” that combines narration, expert discussions, and live musical performances.
“Rooted in America’s rich and storied musical history, Speaking of Music delves deep into the essence of indigenous musical genres, performing the music live, and through dialogue and discussion,” said Kaufman, “creating a unique and uplifting live event for enthusiasts and novices alike.”
Speaking of Music is a continuation of Kaufman’s 60-year passion for the performance, promotion, and preservation of rhythm and blues. In 2016, he successfully helped the Smithsonian acquire, archive, and exhibit donations by the celebrated guitarist and composer/producer Steve Cropper (“Midnight Hour,” "Knock on Wood," "Dock of the Bay") at the Smithsonian's Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. And he has worked closely with Smithsonian curators and deserving artists to archive and preserve their work, including a 2018 exhibition by Weston resident Jose Feliciano.
The November 11 Speaking of Jazz performers include the Brian Torff Group, the Jones Factor Lite, and the Tim DeHuff Quartet featuring vocalist Audrey Martells.
Joining the performers are a distinguished panel of experts that includes jazz author and critic Bill Milkowski; jazz saxophonist Rabbi Greg Wall; bassist Dave Anderson; and bassist, author, and music educator Torff. Kaufman will moderate the discussion.
The panel will provide insights into the fluidity of jazz's definition and also share their unique insights into the evolution of jazz — from its African and European origins to its Southern/Delta roots of call-and-response blues, spirituals, and the gospel to the early New Orleans influences of ragtime, the swing era, the bop & bebop revolution, West Coast jazz innovations, soul jazz, fusion, and contemporary Jazz.
About the Performers
The Brian Torff Group features Torff (bass, guitar, vocals), Wes Lewis (saxophone), and Ryan Sands (drums), with special guests Matt De Champlain (piano) and John Fumasoli (trombone).
Torff is a renowned bassist, composer, author, and educator who currently serves as the music program director at Fairfield University. He has recorded and performed with pianists Mary Lou Williams and Marian McPartland, gypsy jazz violin virtuoso Stephane Grappelli, and with the big bands of Oliver Nelson and the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra. Alongside pianist George Shearing, he was featured on The Tonight Show and Merv Griffin; the two also hosted their own PBS special from the Café Carlyle in New York City.
The Jones Factor Lite is a six-piece band formed in 1986 by trombonist/bandleader Fumasoli. The group features trombonist, composer, arranger, and bandleader Fumasoli, saxophonist and flautist Bill Harris, trumpeter Ben Kibbey, pianist Rob Aries, bassist Anderson, and drummer Tyger MacNeal.
Fumasoli has performed or recorded with Gerry Mulligan, Tony Bennett, Cab Calloway, John Tropea, Gerry Niewood, The Rippingtons, The Gil Evans Band, Diana Ross, The Temptations, The Four Tops, Johnny Mathis, Wayne Newton, Sammy Davis Jr., Melissa Manchester, and others. His teaching experience includes more than 40 years in the Fairfield public schools as a band director, and he has been on the faculty of Fairfield University for 25 years where he teaches jazz history.
The Tim DeHuff Quartet includes DeHuff (guitar), Aries (pianist), Anderson (bass), and MacNeal (drums).
Longtime Westporter DeHuff has performed with Joe Beck, David Benoit, Jeff Berlin, Larry Coryell, James Cotton, George Duke, Charlie Karp, Jan Klemmer, Dave Liebman, The Main Ingredient, John Mehegan, Blue Mitchell, Alfonse Mouzon, Pee-Wee Ellis Band, Lee Ritenour, Ronnie Spector, David Spinozza, and Johnny Winter, among others. In addition to recording, performing, producing, and arranging, DeHuff teaches guitar practice in Fairfield County.
Jazz vocalist and actress Martells, meantime, just returned from an Asian tour with Westport's Nile Rogers and Chic. Her Speaking of Jazz performance will celebrate the groundbreaking influential voices of Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, and Sarah Vaughan, all of whom played pivotal roles in shaping the history of jazz.
From now through December 21, and starting up again after midterms in January, The Westport Library will be teaming with students from Staples High School to establish a near-peer tutoring program.
The program, to be held in the Children’s Library space, will feature Staples students tutoring local middle school and elementary school students in a variety of subjects. This is a drop-in program available between 4 pm and 8 pm, Monday through Thursday, with the tutor availability being posted weekly. (Click here to see the weekly schedule.)
“We’re so excited to bring back this program and thrilled to partner with these amazing students from Staples to provide this service,” said Jeanmarie Ryan, Westport Library teen services librarian. “It’s a wonderful opportunity for younger kids who need some extra help to get it in a supportive environment, while also benefitting the Staples students who get the chance to give back to the community.”
Tutors will focus on specific subject areas including English, math, science, social studies, and even programming and Mandarin. All tutors are past participants or have received a letter of recommendation from a current or previous teacher.
Adults with students under the age of 12 are required to stay in the Children’s Library while their child is being tutored.
Tom Henske (right) in The Westport Library recording studio with audio engineer Travis Bell
Tom Henske has been a leader in the financial industry for nearly three decades — building an enviable resume and retiring in 2020 to focus on his current passion project: Total Cents. Total Cents endeavors to help parents, grandparents, and guardians get comfortable with teaching their kids about money and the importance of finances. A successful venture has become something even more, including a community partnership podcast that Tom hosts and produces in conjunction with the Library.
Tom is also a dedicated Westporter, having lived in the town for 18 years with his family. A former three-time NCAA champion soccer player at the University of Virginia, he served as an assistant coach with the Staples High School boys’ team for 11 years, and he has been actively involved in a myriad of community projects.
He recently took some time to talk with us about his podcast, engaging with the local community, and why he chose to invest his money — and time — with the Library.
Westport Library: How did you first get involved with the Library?
Tom Henske: I first crossed paths with The Westport Library during its transformation from a traditional library to a state-of-the-art hub for the community. Bill Harmer, introduced to me by [former Staples boys’ soccer coach and 06880 Blog founder] Dan Woog, reached out with an intriguing proposal: a podcast partnership. But as we brainstormed, we both had this "aha moment": Why not go beyond a standard personal finance podcast and create something that engages the entire community?
We realized that financial literacy is a universal need — it touches students, parents, grandparents, schools, local businesses, and professionals. So, we set out to make the Library a rallying point for financial education, a place where the whole community could come together for a common cause.
How did that involvement evolve into engagement and giving?
As the project gained momentum, I found myself flooded with speaking requests. Whether it was corporations, financial advisory firms, or parent groups at schools, everyone wanted to hear about financial literacy. That's when it hit me: I could turn these speaking engagements into opportunities for giving back. Instead of accepting speaker fees, I asked the venues to donate to The Westport Library. It was my way of showing gratitude for the Library's early belief in my vision. It's a win-win, really. They supported me, and now I get to support them in return.
In your view, why do libraries matter?
Libraries are more than just buildings filled with books. They're sanctuaries. They're places where people can study, meet friends, or simply escape into a good read. Our library, one of the few five-star libraries in the country, is a cornerstone of our community. It's a place where I know my kids are safe, whether they're studying or just hanging out. And honestly, how many places can offer that kind of peace of mind?
Why do you give to support The Westport Library?
I've been a financial advisor for 27 years, and I always say, “Your checkbook reflects your values.” The Westport Library aligns perfectly with my values. They're doing incredible work that benefits everyone in the community. While I may not be setting any donation records, I make it a point to contribute whenever I can. Every little bit helps, and it sends a strong message: We, as a community, believe in the power and potential of our library.
What would you tell others considering donating to support the Library?
Supporting the Library is really an investment in our community. So, when you contribute, you’re not just enriching a single institution; you're touching the lives of everyone who engages with the Library’s resources and services.
L to R: Yanone C by Hiromitsu Takahashi, courtesy WestPAC; Tilted Finish by Norm Siegel; and Continuum by Suzanne Benton
Three new exhibits are coming to The Westport Library to bring some color, curiosity, and energy to the end of fall and the start of winter.
Suzanne Benton’s All About Color will be featured in the Sheffer Gallery, with Norm Siegel’s Visual Curiosities in the South Gallery, and Showtime!, a series of selection from the Westport Public Art Collections (WestPAC), going up in the Jesup Gallery.
All three exhibits will run from October 27, 2023, through January 8, 2024, and all three will host artist receptions in the Library’s Trefz Forum: November 1 for Benton, November 8 for Showtime!, and November 20 for Siegel. The Benton and Siegel events will include a talk with the artists after the receptions.
“These are three brilliant exhibits for us to close out our collections for 2023,” said Carole Erger-Fass, the Library’s exhibit curator. “I’m thrilled we’ll be able to share these works with our community and welcome the artists into our space.”
Benton is a native New Yorker who has been based in Connecticut for 64 of the 70 years she’s practiced her many-faceted art. Her exhibitions include more than 200 solo shows, and her artwork is represented in museums and private collections worldwide. Author of The Art of Welded Sculpture and numerous articles, Benton is and has been listed in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in American Art, and Feminists Who Changed America 1963-1975. In April 2023, she received a Lifetime Recognition Award from the Women’s Caucus of Art in Florida.
“In this ninth decade of life, and as a working artist for nearly 70 years, I’d become interested in the concept of Late Style as described by the literary theorist Edward Said, who said, ‘Each of us can supply evidence of late works, which crown a lifetime of aesthetic endeavor,’” recounted Benton. “My Late Style arrived as a surprise during the Covid pandemic. Sheltering in place ushered in an uncanny level of solitude that only painting could voice. Reaching for the purist of colors, I entered a world of Neo-Transcendental paintings large and small that I call All About Color.”
Siegel was inspired to become an artist during a sixth-grade field trip to the to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, mesmerized by a Willian Harnett still life and an Albert Bierstadt Yellowstone landscape. He subsequently attended the High School of Industrial Arts and The Cooper Union, going on to a career as an art director that included helping to help launch The Discovery Channel. He returned to painting in retirement and has had his work exhibited at The Salmagundi Gallery in New York, The New Britain Museum of American Art, the Billis Gallery in Westport, and at the Kershner Gallery at The Fairfield Public Library, among others.
“Unlike many artists, it’s difficult for me to put into words what I put on the canvas,” said Siegel. “What you see is what I intend you to see. I’m not one to experiment with new techniques, materials, or mediums. Spontaneity and intuition are not involved. I do experiment with subject matter to satisfy my past and current influences and my sense of humor using the skills I’ve honed over decades, with brush and paint on canvas or panel.”
Showtime!, meantime, celebrates the performing arts in Westport. A cultural asset to Westport, WestPAC holds more than 1,800 works of art in a broad range of media — paintings, watercolors, drawings, prints, illustrations, cartoons, photographs, sculptures, and murals — by notable American artists, giants of the international art world, and important artists who established their homes and studios in the Westport-Weston community. WestPAC’s artworks were acquired primarily through gifts, mostly given by the artists themselves or donated by heirs and collectors.
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Pictured above (clockwise from top left): Suzanne Benton, Norm Siegel, the WestPAC logo
Stephen Graham Jones and Neil Gaiman during the Friday evening StoryFest keynote conversation/Fall 2023 Malloy Lecture in the Arts.
Three days, 20 programs, 50 authors. StoryFest 2023, The Westport Library’s sixth annual literary festival, was its biggest and most diverse yet, drawing authors from a wide variety of genres to provide something for any reader and every fan.
Hosted throughout the Library — most events were held in the Trefz Forum, while also utilizing Brooks Place, the Hub, and the Komansky Room — StoryFest featured a keynote conversation with acclaimed author Neil Gaiman; a series of panel conversations on Saturday ranging from inclusivity in children’s literature to women writing crime fiction to exploring humor in horror; intimate author talks; a live recording of Clay McLeod Chapman’s Fearmongers podcast; a staged reading of Eric LaRocca’s new psychological thriller; a Pink or Treat book reading and Halloween Parade with Pinkalicious author Victoria Kann; a TeachRock workshop; and a live score of the Spanish language Dracula by guitar virtuoso Gary Lucas.
“We had high hopes for this year’s StoryFest, and the actual event managed to exceed them,” said StoryFest co-founder and event organizer Alex Giannini. “It’s always pure magic to get this many amazing authors together in one place, and everyone who came out could not have been friendlier and more enthusiastic. We’re definitely going to take some time to enjoy this one, but I’m already excited for 2024.”
The running theme throughout the weekend was an appreciation for writers, readers, libraries, and community. As moderator Stephen Graham Jones said to the 350-plus patrons at the start of Friday evening’s keynote conversation with Gaiman, “Thank y’all for showing up tonight and supporting libraries. It’s so important.”
“Libraries are so special to me,” said Angie Kim, author of The New York Times best-seller Happiness Falls. “I’m an immigrant. I came from Korea to the U.S. as an 11-year-old, and public libraries were my haven. It’s where I hid out from the bullies in middle school and where I got help learning English. So, to have this sponsored by The Westport Library, which is so beautiful and so accessible, has been amazing.”
Kim was one of the many authors who stayed for the full StoryFest experience, visiting the Mercy Learning Center in Bridgeport during the day on Friday, attending Gaiman’s talk Friday night — one of nearly 30 authors who ringed the mezzanine for the keynote conversation — and appearing on two panels and signing books afterward on Saturday.
“This is my favorite event that I’ve done, and it’s even better this year,” said Black Sheep author and StoryFest veteran Rachel Harrison. “It’s just such a great crowd, a great environment. The programming is so thoughtful. There’s just something for everybody.”
Added A Likeable Woman author May Cobb: “This is absolutely one of my favorite festivals for books and storytelling. It’s just such an engaging, intimate experience, where you get to interact with readers and other writers. It feels like we’ve built a community … and I feel like I’m part of a family. It’s very special.”
Joining Kim at the Mercy Learning Center was Mitzy Sky. In addition, Tommy Greenwold, Dan Poblocki, Lorien Lawrence, and Janae Marks all gave talks on Friday at local Westport schools; and Patricia Dunn, John Palisano, and Wendy Walker traveled to Norwalk High School and P-Tech Norwalk.
“This has been an awesome experience,” said Sky, who first came to StoryFest as a fan and was making her first appearance as a panelist. “I’ve been here since 2017. It’s my favorite thing to do.”
In addition to the events and programs, StoryFest included a fully stocked bookstore with autographed titles from the participating authors, including 600 signed volumes from Gaiman, as well as posters and other memorabilia.
“The festival has been great,” said Sidik Fofana, author of Stories from the Tenants Downstairs. “It’s the perfect motivation to start writing, because I want to be invited again. What a great way to spend three days.”
L to R: The book cover for Head Over Heels; Melissa Newman
The Newman family is a Westport institution, and fittingly, the latest chronicle by and about the family will get its unveiling in their hometown.
Westport's own Melissa Newman will celebrate the launch of her extraordinary new book, Head Over Heels: Joanne Woodward & Paul Newman, A Love Affair in Words and Pictures, in The Westport Library's Trefz Forum on Tuesday, October 10. She will be in conversation with longtime friend and filmmaker Doug Tirola, sharing insights into her affectionately curated and lushly illustrated book, which offers a fresh perspective on her parents, both storied legends, putting their relationship front and center.
The event kicks off at 7 pm ET; please click here to register. The event is free to attend. Copies of Head Over Heels will be on sale, with Newman signing copies after her talk.
“Music, visual art, and drama have always been a big part of the family DNA,” Melissa said. “It’s been fascinating, certainly, to be an insider to my parents’ artistic process as well as the nuances of their relationship. The two things are inexorably intertwined. The more I thought about it, the more I felt the photographs and writings in this book needed to be collected and sent into the world in a particular way, and that perhaps I brought enough of a distinct perspective to make something unique.”
Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman, longtime Westport residents, were most famous as movie stars and stage actors, but they also were artistic collaborators, political activists, and philanthropists whose legacies are expansive and enduringly modern.
With 120-plus photos of the couple together, including many that have never been published, Head Over Heels celebrates the enduring power of love. It features handwritten notes, snapshots, letters, and family treasures — offering revelatory and intimate insights into the private lives of these towering figures in American public life.
“I wanted to capture some of the layers, the humor, the beauty and complexity of their 50-year love affair,” Melissa Newman said. “I wanted it to feel immersive, the way I think they were immersed in each other. Once I began this journey, I was gobsmacked by the list of photographers who chronicled them. I tried to include not only unseen material, but also some of the less obvious choices from familiar series.
“My friend, co-creator, and editor Andrew Kelly was a sleuth of the highest order. We let the images lead us, reveling in unexpected visual and textual juxtapositions. Together we pared away until we felt we had something we felt was worthy of them.”
Primarily an artist and jazz vocalist, Melissa is also a writer and a third-generation teacher whose eclectic career has included singing jingles, teaching in a women’s correctional facility, and leading art and vocal workshops. As a visual artist she has designed everything from packaging to theater posters to tattoos. She continues to perform regularly with her jazz trio and quartet.
Tirola, also a Westport resident, is an American filmmaker and writer who has worked as a director and executive producer. He is the owner and president of 4th Row Films, a movie and television production company.
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About the Event:
Book Launch: ‘Head Over Heels: Joanne Woodward & Paul Newman, A Love Affair in Words and Pictures’
Tuesday, October 10
7 pm
Westport Library, Trefz Forum
Register (seats are limited)
