Award Winning Author Visits Seacoast

It’s an exciting time for author, folksinger, and music journalist Scott Alarik. His latest book, Revival: A Folk Music Novel, received the national Benjamin Franklin Silver Award for Popular Fiction. The novel is published by Portsmouth’s own Peter E. Randall Publisher, which Alarik calls “the perfect partner for a book like this,” because it’s managed by popular local songwriter Deidre Randall.

Booklist praised Revival as “a joyous celebration of folk musicians and their world.” To honor the book’s release, the Harvard Square Business Association (HSBA) named September, 2011, “Revival Month in Harvard Square,” connecting all the square’s public events to the novel. Now the HSBA has announced that Revival Month will become an annual September tradition. “This book is a love story about two songwriters, but it also explores what tradition means in the 21st century,” says Alarik. “For Revival to create its own tradition is an amazing honor.”

Friday, June 22, at 7 p.m., Alarik visits Sheafe Street Books in Portsmouth (603-498-4696), performing a mix of music and readings from Revival. The store is also a prize winner, receiving Yankee Magazine’s 2012 Editor’s Choice Award. “I’ve heard that Sheafe Street Books is a real community store,” says Alarik. “That makes it the perfect place to bring this book - and sing a few songs.”

National music stars have been singing the novel’s praises. Songwriting legend Tom Paxton calls it “a moving story…beautifully painted,” and Americana phenom Mary Gauthier says it’s “a beautifully told and totally beautiful love story.” Boston songwriter Catie Curtis said the “characters [are] so believable you want to go hear them in concert,” and Maine folk star Gordon Bok called it “just about the warmest, most nourishing book I’ve read.”

Alarik covered folk music in the Boston Globe for over 20 years. His first book, Deep Community: Adventures In the Modern Folk Underground, was called “an essential primer to the continuing folk revival” by The Library Journal. Alarik is also a veteran folk performer, of whom Garrison Keillor wrote, “I have rarely seen an audience in such a good mood as when he’s just been there.”

More information available at http://www.scottalarik.com/.