When this summer’s Bookstock literary festival was canceled, organizers were already looking ahead to next year.

So it comes as no surprise that the Upper Valley’s biggest literary event is back on the calendar for 2025. The festival is scheduled for May 16-18.

“Everybody felt a real commitment to Bookstock,” said Michael Stoner, who helped found the festival in 2009 and is now secretary of its board.

Bookstock started in 2009 as a modest volunteer effort built around the annual book sale at North Chapel. But in recent years it has become a big event, with its budget rising from around $10,000 to around $70,000.

For next year, “I think it will be considerably slimmed down,” Stoner said.

When the festival returned from the coronavirus pandemic, it was with greater ambitions. The past couple of years, the schedule had gotten so full of readings, panel discussions and other programs that some were overfull and others were thinly attended. The packed schedule also made it hard for attendees to venture into Woodstock village for meals.

Holding the festival in May also will avoid June, one of Woodstock’s busier months, Stoner said.

Next year, there will still be a book sale on the green, and there will still be readings and other events at venues around town, but exactly what shape that will take is a work in progress.

“Whatever we do, we want to do very well,” Stoner, who worked in communications for higher education, said in a phone interview.

The festival’s new board, soon to grow from four members to five, Stoner said, is replete with weighty credentials.

Chairman Jonathon Spector also leads the Woodstock Economic Development Corp., and is a former senior partner at McKinsey and Co., the global consulting firm, and CEO of The Conference Board. The vice chair is Priscilla Painton, a former journalist who moved to Woodstock in 2020 and in 2022 became editor-in-chief at Simon & Schuster, the century-old New York book publisher.

Joining them is Julie Moncton, a Woodstock resident who worked as an engineer in Silicon Valley before embarking on a second career in the book business.

Moncton and Jen Belton will serve as co-executive directors of Bookstock. Before she led Woodstock’s Norman Williams Public Library, Belton set up the White House library for Jimmy Carter, then served as director of news research for The Washington Post for 20 years.

Belton and Moncton were brought in in late March to manage this year’s Bookstock, and after surveying the lineup of programs and the fatigue of the festival’s stakeholders recommended that the festival be canceled for 2024. A smaller Woodstock Poetry Festival went ahead on the same weekend Bookstock had been planned for.

Belton, Moncton and other Bookstock backers worried that holding a sprawling festival would alienate people whose support would be essential to sustaining the festival for the long term.

“It just became difficult to balance out all these demands,” Stoner said.

After consulting with Woodstock business owners, Bookstock’s leaders know what sort of balance to seek in the coming months. Authors and attendees will no doubt be eager to see what that looks like.

Music of the New World

If traditional Celtic, Cape Breton and Quebecois music is your thing, this Sunday is probably already on your calendar. Randolph’s Chandler Center for the Arts holds its annual New World Festival from noon until 11 p.m. Canadian traditional music stalwarts Le Vent du Nord play a show on the Chandler stage and then close out the day with a performance in the festival’s dance tent across the street.

For tickets ($60 for adults, $35 for students under 21, and free for children under 12) and more information, go to chandler-arts.org.

Also in Randolph

Chet Abbot, a Randolph dairy farmer, holds concerts in one of his barns. He calls it ChetFest. On Saturday night at 5, he welcomes singer-songwriter Reed Foehl, who will be performing with his trio and with guitarist Val McCallum. Abbot advises attendees to get to his Wayside Farm early, as seating is limited, and to bring a chair. The shows are BYOB, but leave your dogs at home. Music starts at 6, gate opens at 5. Tickets ($25 in advance, $30 at the gate) are available through Seven Days Tickets.

Do you know where your children are?

This is your last warning. Parish Players is holding the final performances of Sam Shepard’s classic slice of American dread, “Buried Child,” on Friday, Saturday and Sunday at the Eclipse Grange Theater on Thetford Hill. Reserve tickets online at parishplayers.org, or via email at reservations@parishplayers.org.

Alex Hanson can be reached at ahanson@vnews.com or 603-727-3207.