Local author Ernest Hebert will kick off the second season of Jaffrey Civic Center’s “Stories to Share” series Friday, Oct. 7, at 5 p.m.
Hebert is the author of 11 published novels, a book of personal essays and a collection of poems. His piece “The Dogs of March” received a citation for excellence in 1980 from the Ernest Hemingway Foundation (now PEN/Faulkner Foundation). The New York Times Book Review named “Live Free or Die” as a “notable book of the year” for 1989.
In 2006, the same year the New England Booksellers Association named Hebert its fiction author of the year for 2006, his book “Spoonwood” won an IPPY (Independent Publisher Book Award) for best regional novel in the Northeast. Hebert’s latest novel, “Whirlybird Island,” published in 2022, is a literary murder mystery. Hebert lives close to fictional Darby in southwestern New Hampshire.
“My dad was traumatized by experiences in the Navy during World War II, and so were the dads of some of my dearest friends,” Hebert stated. “In 1968, I had an insight that much of the youth madness of the 1960s was a result of blowback from war trauma suffered by the dads of young protestors. I always wanted to write a novel with that theme of soldier trauma passed down to their progeny, but I couldn’t do it while the vets were still alive; it would hurt them. In 2017, I realized that they had all passed and that’s when I started the book that ended up titled ‘Whirlybird Island,’ which led to my essay, ‘The Sons and Daughters of War.’”
Hebert’s talk is the first of the eight-part, monthly speaker series on the first Friday of each month, October to May. Joe Steinfield, who writes monthly columns for the Keene Sentinel and the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript, is the moderator for the series. These programs are free, but to help support this event and others like it, donations are appreciated.
The program will be available as an in-person event at the Jaffrey Civic Center, 4o Main St., as well as virtually via YouTube live. To register for in-person attendance go to bit.ly/3RGlCjH. To participate virtually, go to youtu.be/9I7IMzkJ36s the day of the event.