The Hudson Children’s Book Festival, established in 2009, is held each year in the historic city of Hudson, NY, and strives to create, sustain, and nurture a culture of literacy in partnership with our community and schools. This free, public event fosters a love of reading as families meet and greet world-class creators of books for children of all ages.

Featuring NYC writers/faculty Liz Kingsley and Lucinda Holt, along with students from Hudson Valley. Liz Kingsley Liz's poetry has appeared in New Ohio Review, The McNeese Review, The Round, and Euphony; her fiction has appeared in The William and Mary Review; her essay appears in the collection “BLENDED: Writers on the Stepfamily Experience”; and her poems were nominated for Pushcart Prizes in 2013 and 2020. She studies poetry with Philip Schultz at The Writers Studio where she is the Administrative Director. During regular business hours, she is an elementary school special education teacher. She lives with her partner, their five children, and their two dogs in Westfield, New Jersey. Lucinda Holt Lucinda is the director of the online writing program at The Writers Studio and director of communications at Answer where she edits a sexual health magazine and website for teens. Lucinda also writes and edits for The Pickaninny Papers. She is at work on a novel.

Join us for The Spotty Dog Trivia Night. Since 2006, we've held this bi-weekly trivia event. Teams of up to four people compete against each other over four rounds of 15 questions, a worksheet of (usually) 20 questions, and four bonus questions. The winning team gets their bar tab on the house. Anyone can play. See you there!

Volume is a FREE reading & music series featuring prose, poetry and a short DJ set. Every second Saturday at 7:00 pm at The Spotty Dog. Books are available for purchase and signing. This month's writers include: JO ANN BEARD is the author of In Zanesville, a novel, and The Boys of My Youth, an essay collection. She teaches nonfiction writing at Sarah Lawrence College. DONIKA KELLY is the author of Bestiary and the chapbook Aviarium. Donika is a Cave Canem Graduate Fellow and winner the 2018 Kate Tufts Discovery Prize. She is an Assistant Professor teaching creative writing at Baruch College. T KIRA MADDEN is an APIA writer, photographer, and amateur magician. She is the founding editor-in-chief of No Tokens, and facilitates writing workshops for homeless and formerly incarcerated individuals. Her debut memoir, Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls is out now from Bloomsbury. Followed by a DJ set from Melissa Febos

Spotty regular and friend Charles Washington is back with a mix of dance and hip hop grooves.

Join us for The Spotty Dog Trivia Night. Since 2006, we've held this bi-weekly trivia event. Teams of up to four people compete against each other over four rounds of 15 questions, a worksheet of (usually) 20 questions, and four bonus questions. The winning team gets their bar tab on the house. Anyone can play. See you there!

Damian Barr is the author of Maggie & Me, which the Sunday Times named Memoir of the Year. He is Literary Ambassador for the Savoy in London where he hosts his Literary Salon, which been going for ten years with hundreds of prominent guests including Bret Easton Ellis, John Waters, Colm Tóibín, Jojo Moyes, David Mitchell, and Mary Beard. The Salon has partnered with the BBC Short Story Prize and the Man Booker, Hay, and the Windham-Campbell Prizes. Barr is also Literary Editor of the Soho House group and appears regularly on BBC Radio 4. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and was 2013’s Stonewall Writer of the Year. He lives in Brighton, England. Tim Murphy is the author of the novels "Correspondents" and "Christodora," both published by Grove Atlantic. "Christodora" was longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal. Under the name Timothy Murphy, he is also the author of the 1990s novels "Getting Off Clean" and "The Breeders Box." He has been for nearly 20 years a journalist focusing mostly on HIV/AIDS and LGBTQ issues, for publications including the New York Times, New York magazine, Out magazine, the Nation, POZ magazine, and for the magazines of the ACLU and Lambda Legal. He was a founding member of the NYC-based activist groups Gays Against Guns and Rise and Resist. He has taught journalism at City College of New York and currently teaches creative writing once weekly at Arts & Letters junior high school in Brooklyn, where he lives. A proud Boston-area native, he loves spending time in upstate New York/western Massachusetts as well as in Beirut, not far from the home of his maternal ancestors. He is at work on a new novel as well as some TV projects and, when not tethered to his laptop in his Brooklyn bedroom as he is right now, tries to see as much theater as one possibly can on a freelance writer's salary.