Here comes a flood of literary brilliance. From June 20–22, the Deep Water Literary Fest returns to the hamlet of Narrowsburg (pop. 370), and for one weekend a year, the Sullivan Catskills become the sun-dappled epicenter of the global literary brain trust. This year’s theme—Metamorphosis and Transformation—is loose enough to let a hundred interpretations bloom and resonant enough to tie together a dazzling array of events: from the opening-night performance of Marie Howe’s poetry sung by soprano Jennifer Zetlan accompanied by pianist Kevin Hays to a fire-red fog of pink smoke unfurling across the landscape in Raphaele Shirley’s 100 Pink Smoke Flares Twice.
The lineup is stacked like a bookshelf that’s going to collapse on your head in the best possible way: Douglas Stuart (Shuggie Bain), Susan Choi (Trust Exercise), Marlon James (A Brief History of Seven Killings), Cristina Henríquez (The Great Divide), Peter Pomerantsev, Lynn Nottage, Rebecca Donner, Madeleine Thien, Burhan Sönmez, and more.
Let us pause here for a beat of deep admiration for Geoff Dyer, who will appear on a panel called “On Becoming,” alongside Choi and Stuart. Dyer, who has made a genre out of evading genre, is a sentence-level genius. He writes like someone who has both seen God and been embarrassed by the experience. His essays feel tossed off, in the way only something obsessively crafted can. There is no one else who could write a book that is kind of about D. H. Lawrence and kind of about trying not to write about D. H. Lawrence and call it Out of Sheer Rage—and make it work. His presence alone justifies the trip.
Elsewhere on the program, expect discussions of exile and displacement, historical resistance, literary remix culture (Kafka reimagined, anyone?), and more. The second annual Deep Water Independent Book Fair—curated by Ahu Terzi of The Hound Books in Roscoe—returns to Narrowsburg Union on June 21 to spotlight indie publishers and their daring catalogues.
“It’s thrilling to be able to bring two Booker Prize winners, two National Book Critics Circle Award winners, two Pulitzer Prize winners, and a National Book Award recipient to this river town on the New York-Pennsylvania border,” says founder and director Aaron Hicklin. “Bringing together writers and readers for a weekend of conversation, story-telling, and communion is indescribably magical.”
What other literary event can pack this much star power into a town with fewer residents than a Brooklyn block? With two-thirds of events free and the rest a mere $15, Deep Water continues to democratize literary conversation—one transformative sentence at a time.
Related Stories
The Deep Water Literary Festival Returns to Narrowsburg June 16-18
This article appears in June 2025.
