This year’s Deep Water Literary Festival embraces metamorphosis and transformation—a theme that resonates through the history of literature and art, as through so much of human experience. For our opening event, a midsummer night’s concert at Tusten Theater, transformation takes musical form as Marie Howe’s extraordinary poetry becomes song in a collaboration with composer Ricky Ian Gordon and soprano Jennifer Zetlan—a testament to art’s alchemy. Grammy-winning pianist, Kevin Hays, will add his own twist to Philip Glass’s short score, “Metamorphosis.”

Among many highlights, “On Becoming,” features novelists Susan Choi, Douglas Stuart, and Geoff Dyer as they explore the ways in which identity is forged in the crucible of memory and adversity, while “Elsewhere People” gathers acclaimed writers Madeleine Thien, André Aciman, Cristina Henríquez, and Alejandro Heredia to explore displacement as a perpetual state of becoming—where home is both lost and reinvented. “Ordinary Rebels” uncovers history’s quiet revolutionaries—from Mildred Harnack’s anti-Nazi cell to Italy’s women partisans—proving how ordinary people are transformed by extraordinary courage.

As always, Deep Water Literary Fest is committed to storytelling in all its forms, and this year’s performances include “Chrysalis Effect,” a dance piece that reimagines survival in a post-apocalyptic world, and artist Raphaele Shirley’s “100 Pink Smoke Flares Twice,” an ephemeral installation where pink smoke transforms landscapes into fleeting visions of beauty–a reminder that art and literature is alchemy. It bends time, bridges divides, and transforms words into worlds. We can’t wait to share it with you.

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