Ben Shattuck, author of the newly released “Six Walks: In the Footsteps of Henry David Thoreau,” will give an author talk at the West Tisbury library on Tuesday, May 17, at 4:30 pm.
He will read from the book, followed by a Q & A with actor and stand-up comedian Jenny Slate.
Shattuck, a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, is a recipient of the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize and a 2019 Pushcart Prize. He is the director of the Cuttyhunk Island Writers’ Residency. His writing can be found in the Harvard Review, The Common, the Paris Review Daily, Lit Hub, and Kinfolk Magazine. According to a press release from the library Shattuck currently lives with his wife and daughter on the Massachusetts coast, where he owns and runs a general store built in 1793.
Slate is also the New York Times bestselling author of “Little Weirds” and children’s book “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On: Things About Me.” She has been in many movies and TV shows and also plays many cartoon animals.
Henry David Thoreau walked the beaches of Cape Cod in 1849, and more than a century later, Shattuck does the same. “With little more than a loaf of bread, brick of cheese, and a notebook, Shattuck sets out to retrace Thoreau’s path through the Cape’s outer beaches, from the elbow to Provincetown’s fingertip,” the release says.
After the Cape, Shattuck goes up Mount Katahdin and Mount Wachusett, down the coastline of his hometown, and then through the Allagash. The book captures his encounters along the way, and documents the restorative “effects that walking can have on a dampened spirit.”
Books will be available to purchase from Bunch of Grapes bookstore. This event is free and open to the public.
For more about this event, call the library at 508-693-3366 or email ogately@clamsnet.org.
