This Saturday, Aspen turned the page on a new literary era in the city, as the Aspen Literary Festival touched down for its inaugural edition. With Book of the Month as the presenting sponsor, the book subscription and tastemaking platform gathered a coterie of writers to connect, dine, and raise their glasses against a backdrop of warm, evening light and an unmatched mountain vista just outside.
The Locale: At Casa Tua Aspen, Book of the Month Executive Chairman John Lippman and Editorial Director Brianna Goodman held court amidst a buzzy room full of conversation and Mediterranean fare, rounding out a weekend of readings, talks, storytelling, and plenty of insider chatter.
The Crowd: Among the author class present at the dinner, Victor LaValle, Xochitl Gonzalez, and James Frey mingled with 14 Book of the Month awardees including Elin Hilderbrand and V.E. Schwab. Emerging talents like Anika Jade Levy, Rob Franklin, and Hal Ebbott were also present to join in the night’s revelry, as were novelists Jasmine Guillory and Jade Chang, and journalists Gilbert Cruz and Alisyn Camerota.
Food and Drink: Guests dug into Italian-inflected fare ranging from burrata and late-summer tomato stew, to tender fillets of branzino and tiramisu topped with mascarpone cream.
What You Missed: The chance to mingle with a rare curation of savvy minds across publishing and news, as the debut festival fleshed out new dialogues on the state of literature today.
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