Powers and Schley Will Read Works 8/ 3

On Aug. 3, the Strafford Reading Series will feature Vermont writers Thomas Powers and Jim Schley. The picnic grounds open at 6 and the reading begins at 7 p.m. at Barrett Hall in South Strafford.

Every summer, the Reading Series presents public readings by outstanding fiction writers, poets, and essayists. Proceeds from the series support Strafford's Morrill Memorial and Harris Library.

This year, due to extensive renovation at the 18th-century Strafford Town House, the readings will be held in South Strafford at Barrett Hall.

Powers and Schley both explore a historical period that continues to be an object of intense fascination among contemporary Americans—the mid-nineteenth century collision of settlers, soldiers, and speculators with the Native Americans of the Great Plains, an era that culminated in many ways with the 1876 killing of the Oglala warrior and mystic Crazy Horse.

Powers, one of the country's most influential journalists, is widely admired for his cogent probing of Cold War, military, and intelligence issues. He is also a renowned historian, winner of a Pulitzer Prize in 1971 for National Reporting and author of the books "The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA" (1979), "Heisenberg's War: The Secret History of the German Bomb (1993)," and "The Confirmation" (2000), a novel.

He also contributes frequently to periodicals such as The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Book Review, Harper's, The Nation, The Atlantic, and Rolling Stone.

In Strafford Powers will be reading from an unpublished manuscript, re-examining the historic and mythical "Passion Play" of Crazy Horse's life and death.

Jim Schley is a poet and essayist who has edited more than 100 books on a wide range of subjects. His writings have been featured in national magazines and newspapers as well as on Garrison Keillor's public radio show, "The Writer's Almanac."

Schley is currently working on a narrative about a Plains Indian warbonnet which came into the possession of his mother's ancestors in the early 1870s and which his family is now seeking to return to the descendants of its original bearer.

On August 10, the third reading in the series will feature two literary naturalists: Ted Levin and Joe Sherman.