Presented by Kinderhook Books, the three-day event treats stand-up, songwriting, and screenwriting as seriously as it treats novels—with a kids' newsroom built entirely on typewriters.
On Friday, August 28, comedian, author, and Oscar nominee Tig Notaro takes the intimate stage at Van Buren Hall in Kinderhook to open The Rough Notes Festival, a new three-day literary event founded by Kinderhook Books owner Mindy Kay Bricker. Notaro performs at 6:30pm, then sits down with “Hacks” actor and comedian Lauren Weedman for a conversation about writing, stand-up, and the work of building a memoir. The show is currently sold out, though organizers plan to release a second round of tickets once a related round of fundraising wraps up.
It's a big opening act for a first-year festival in a village of about 1,200 people. Bicker says that’s the point.
Bricker, who also works as digital editor for the New Republic, opened Kinderhook Books in December 2023, and the festival was part of the plan from the start. The spark, she says, came a few years earlier, in 2019, when Jack Shainman Gallery's Kinderhook outpost, The School, mounted an exhibition of Basquiat and Warhol collaborations.
"I was struck by how crazy it was that this exhibit was on such a large, elevated scale, and that we're in literally the smallest village in Columbia County," Bricker says. "It was the coolest feeling—as a resident, I was so honored that it happened here. When I opened the bookstore, the festival was always part of that business plan. I wanted to replicate that: this moment where we're celebrating the village and doing exceptional things in a small community."
What she didn't want was a conventional book festival. "What was very important to me is that this is not a traditional literary festival," she says. "What I really want to do is celebrate the craft of writing in all its forms—stand-up, songwriting, screenwriting, any art that's in conversation with writing. Not everyone is a reader, but people are drawn to good writing whether they realize it or not. They have a favorite song because they love the lyrics. They have a favorite movie because it's written well."
That's also the logic behind opening with Notaro rather than a straightforward author panel. "That first night, I always want to be a performance," Bricker says. "Tig is one of my favorite comedians—actually my favorite comedian—her writing is really, really smart, her life is really interesting, her memoir is interesting. I had to ask her. And she said yes!"
From there, the festival spreads across the village. Saturday, August 29, brings three back-to-back panels in Kinderhook Books' wine garden: a poetry conversation moderated by poet Mark Wunderlich with Michael Dumanis, Monica Ferrell, and Vermont poet laureate Bianca Stone; a discussion of queer memoir with Temim Fruchter, Eliot Glazer, Henry Hoke, Chloé Caldwell, and Hugh Ryan; and a panel on adaptation featuring novelists Sigrid Nunez, whose novel The Friend became a 2025 film with Bill Murray and Naomi Watts; Peter Cameron, whose novel What Happens at Night is being adapted by Martin Scorsese; and Ben Shattuck, whose story collection The History of Sound premiered as a film at Cannes in 2025.
Sunday’s programming shifts to craft talks on writing itself, with novelists Thomas Grattan and Richard Mirabella and former Paris Review editor Emily Nemens, followed by a session on the practical architecture of a creative life with novelists Olivia Muenter and Casey Scieszka, who runs an artist residency out of her Catskills inn.
Saturday evening also brings an art opening: "Re-Scripting," a group show responding to literary work, at September gallery, which Kristen Dodge moved from Hudson to Kinderhook in 2022. Bricker credits Dodge with pulling the show together on her own initiative. "She immediately said she'd been wanting to host an exhibition of artists responding to or in conversation with literary work," Bricker says. "It's things like that, with all of the businesses coming together, that make this a community effort."
The festival's most ambitious undertaking is aimed at kids. On Saturday morning, the Typewriter Project turns the lawn beside the village green into a working newsroom. The impressively optimistic plan is for children to report, write, edit, and type their own community newspaper on seven vintage typewriters.
The project honors Lamont Thomas, a 12-year-old who in 1951 launched his own Kinderhook newspaper, The Bugle, typed entirely on a portable Remington and sold door to door for five cents. He kept it running for four years. Thomas's family recently donated his original newspapers and his typewriter to Kinderhook Books.
"Those newspapers this little boy put together are so wild — they're heartbreakingly beautiful," Bricker says. "He had ads folded into the columns, a sports section, a section with jokes. He just knew everyone's business in the village."
Scott Connors, who repairs and restores typewriters at Stephentown Typewriter Company and is known in typewriter circles as one of Tom Hanks's occasional pen pals, is restoring Thomas's original machine for the occasion. He's also donating the day's seven typewriters and giving kids a talk on typewriter history.
The festival received a $20,000 grant from the Amex Shop Small Grants Program, distributed through Main Street America, to help cover startup costs—funds Bricker applied for without much expectation of winning. Most events beyond Friday's performance are ticketed individually and listed on the festival's website; the Typewriter Project is free and open to all ages. Kinderhook Books newsletter subscribers get first access to new ticket releases, with anything left over posted to Instagram afterward.
Tickets and full schedule at theroughnotes.com.
