A Medal Day Celebration in Historic Harrisville

Thank you for joining us on Thursday, June 26 in Historic Harrisville’s Spinning Room for a conversation on the art of writing about culture between award-winning writers and MacDowell Fellows Lucy Sante and Alexandra Lange. With oeuvres that span genres and fields of culture including music, literature, politics, photography, design, and urbanism, these acclaimed authors read from their recent books and delved into questions of developing the critic’s eye and the author’s voice. Their conversation was moderated by Fellow Peter Orner, author of eight books and chair of the English and Creative Writing Department at Dartmouth College. Audience Q&A followed.

Lucy Sante (Jem Cohen photo), Alexandra Lange (Mark Wickens photo), Peter Orner (Phoebe Orner photo)

Alexandra Lange is a journalist, design critic, and author. Her most recent book is Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall, published in 2022. She is a contributing writer for Bloomberg CityLab, a MacDowell Fellow, and a past Loeb Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. In 2025 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism for a series on how urban design and architecture affect children and families.

Lucy Sante is the author of Low Life, Evidence, The Factory of Facts, Kill All Your Darlings, Folk Photography, The Other Paris, Maybe the People Would Be the Times, Nineteen Reservoirs, and, most recently, I Heard Her Call My Name: A Memoir of Transition. Her awards include a Whiting Writers Award, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Grammy (for album notes), the International Center of Photography's Infinity Award, and Guggenheim and Cullman Center fellowships. She retired in 2023 after 24 years teaching writing and the history of photography at Bard College.

Born in Chicago, Peter Orner is the author of eight books, including Maggie Brown & Others; Esther Stories, a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award; Am I Alone Here?, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. A new novel, The Gossip Columnist’s Daughter will be out this August from Little, Brown. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, the Paris Review, and been awarded four Pushcart Prizes. A Guggenheim and MacDowell fellow, Orner is chair of the English and Creative Writing Department at Dartmouth College. He lives with his family in Norwich, Vermont where he’s also a volunteer firefighter.

(Michael Pellegrini photo)

On Saturday, June 28, the tenants of Historic Harrisville now a multi-use complex of artists’ studios, small businesses, and cultural spaces—opened their doors for Historic Harrisville’s first-ever Open Studios Day. Guests were warmly invited to explore and connect with the artists, writers, designers, and business owners—including several MacDowell Fellows—whose diverse contributions enrich the former Cheshire Mills complex with art and community spirit.

Visitors to Historic Harrisville’s Open Studios and MacDowell subscribers received a card for 10% off at the Harrisville General Store, applicable the day of Open Studios only.