That world is the beating heart behind The Authors Guild Foundation’ s WIT( Words, Ideas, and Thinkers) Literary Festival, now rolling into its fourth year. This September, the Berkshires will once again pulse with intellectual electricity as The WIT festival brings together a lineup of authors and thinkers under the theme“ The Power of Words: Authors & Activism.” From the storied rooms of Shakespeare & Company in Lenox to the elegant Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in Great Barrington, the festival promises four days of conversations that inform, inspire, and matter.
The festival kicks off Thursday, September 25, with powerhouse voices Masha Gessen and Michael S. Roth, joined by Alia Malek, diving deep into the perils of authoritarianism and the fight for free expression. Friday heats up with a double dose of intrigue: at 2:30 p. m., investigative journalist Tim Weiner teams up with former CIA officer turned novelist James Lawler and Garrett M. Graff to pull back the curtain on intelligence and secrecy. That evening, Pulitzer-winning playwrights Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and Sanaz Toossi join New Yorker critic Vinson Cunningham to explore theater’ s role in shaping identity and confronting displacement.
Saturday, September 26, starts with a jolt of climate talk as Catherine Coleman Flowers and vaccine scientist Peter Hotez, moderated by Dr. Jeremy Faust, dissect environmental justice and its impact on vulnerable communities. The afternoon offers a historic first: Torrey Peters, acclaimed author, and Chase Strangio, the trailblazing ACLU attorney and first openly trans person to argue before the U. S. Supreme Court, team up with journalist J. Wortham to unpack storytelling’ s power in the fight for equality. Later, poet Hanif Abdurraqib and cultural scholar Imani Perry, led by Shana L. Redmond, weave a tapestry of music, memory, and resistance.
The festival concludes Sunday, September 27, at Great Barrington’ s Mahaiwe, where Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde and novelist Marilynne Robinson, in conversation with Paul Elie, reflect on mercy, faith, and democracy’ s fragile promise. The Bookstore in Lenox has been a Berkshire community resource for nearly 50 years.
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