Adirondack Feminism Historian Lorraine Duvall

The Adirondack Center for Writing (ACW) has announced the November installment of Barkreaders, a bi-monthly reading including an open mic, providing the public the opportunity to share up to 5 minutes of writing live before an audience, is set for Wednesday, November 9th.

Barkreaders gives local writers a place to both share their work and meet new authors at Adirondack Center for Writing. This installment features Lorraine Duvall of Keene, NY, author of three books, including most recently, Finding A Woman’s Place: The Story of a 1970s Feminist Collective in the Adirondacks.

Barkreaders include a 10-15 minute featured reading by the month’s guest, and then an open mic where audience members can sign-up to read a short piece of writing. Open mics are a great place for writers both new and experienced to test out their work in front of a supportive audience.

Duvall will begin her reading at 7 pm, with an open-mic to follow. Admission to the event is free, with a suggested donation at the door. The reading and open mic will run for a total of 60 minutes.

Lorraine Duvall, who in the 1970s spent time at a ground-breaking women’s commune in Athol, NY called A Woman’s Place. Her book is a history of this feminist collective. In 1974, seven women, with their eight children, left their jobs, friends, and families to live together communally on a 23-acre, rustic, abandoned resort in Athol, New York. They called their new home A Woman’s Place, inspired by other feminists to take this independent action and leave behind the restraints of the patriarchal society of the 1960s and ’70s. Hundreds of women passed through the doors of A Woman’s Place in its eight years of existence from 1974 to 1982. Duvall tells a powerful story of communal living — the trials and tribulations, the joys and sorrows.

After retiring to the Adirondack Mountains in 2000, Lorraine Duvall became active in helping to protect the Adirondack lakes, ponds, and rivers from exploitation. She explored these waters in her solo canoe, writing of her journeys with other paddling enthusiasts, culminating in the memoir, In Praise of Quiet Waters: Finding Solitude and Adventure in the Wild Adirondacks, which won the 2016 Literary Award from the Adirondack Center for Writing (ACW) for Best Memoir. Her first memoir, And I Know Too Much to Pretend, won the ACW Literary Award in 2014, where she writes of her experiences growing up in the formative years of the 2nd Wave of the Feminist Movement.

Duvall became immersed in the story of a rural commune of women not far from her home in Keene, NY., which resulted in the publication in 2020 of the book, Finding A Woman’s Place: The Story of a 1970s Feminist Collective in the Adirondacks. In 1974, seven women with their eight children left jobs, friends, and families to live together communally in Athol, NY, a remote area of the Adirondack Mountains. Duvall holds a B.S. degree in Mathematics, an M.S. in Operations Research, and a Ph.D. from Syracuse University in Information Studies. Her first job after graduating from college in 1960, with a major in mathematics, was as a computer programmer with an engineering group for General Electric Company. She proceeded to advance in her career in technology firms taking-on positions as a systems analyst, manager, and research director.

The Adirondack Center for Writing is located at 15 Broadway, in Saranac Lake. To register to attend the program, click here. For more information visit the ACW website.