Festival Days

Quotes

“Ferocious… Beard [is] a towering talent… Perhaps instead of an essayist we should think of her as a poet-naturalist, wedding intuition and observation, and forming from this union something unaccountably yet undeniably real… a book as forceful as it is fine, leaving us both awed and unsettled.”—Leah Hager Cohen, New York Times Book Review

“Beautiful… Beard’s power comes from phrasings and insights that aren’t just screaming for likes. Few writers are so wise and self-effacing and emotionally honest all in one breath… Over the course of nine beguiling pieces—which seamlessly meld observation and imagination—she effects an intimacy that makes us want to sit on the rug and listen.”—Sara Lippmann, Washington Post

“[Beard’s] books are worth the wait. A master of sensory details, she also writes with humor, melancholy and a love of animals that never borders on saccharine… In her work, even everyday moments gleam with significance.”—Michele Filgate, Los Angeles Times

“A master of creative nonfiction, Beard explores life’s most salient moments through facts that she sometimes fractures.”—Amy Sutherland, Boston Globe

“Intimate, intelligent, intense—and ultimately comforting… Like a hot water bottle for grief, these honest, beautiful essays and stories take on the death of a beloved animal, a friend’s illness, getting dumped by a partner and other tragedies few escape.”—People (Book of the Week)

“Charged with fine detail… Beard is so good at what she does… In Beard's book, writing works like compound interest, each experience building on the last, which built on the one before.”—Ellen Akins, Minneapolis Star-Tribune

“A book so good you have to put it down, then pick it back up… The most indelible stories in Festival Days observe just as unflinchingly as Beard’s characters face the extremities of life and death. I can’t think of a writer who puts words to our most difficult moments as adroitly as Beard—who so steadfastly refuses to cut away when things get tough.”—Dan Kois, Slate

“Beard’s syntax is immortalizing… An acute quality in Beard’s work makes the stories feel lived, even alive, as if they are still happening. Sometimes, as writers, we see things for real only once we are writing them, and Beard’s title essay distills this fact beautifully.”—Rachel DeWoskin, Los Angeles Review of Books

“Beard shows her dazzling skill at finding universal truths in singular situations. Beard is not just a master of the short form—she’s a master of phrase and sentence, too.”—Bethanne Patrick, Washington Post

“A new collection from the masterful storyteller Jo Ann Beard is always reason to celebrate, and Festival Days marks her long-anticipated return to the essay. Written with clear-eyed empathy, these nine pieces have the luminous glow of fireflies caught in a child’s hand.”—Chicago Review of Books