Welcome to the Reading Room!

In this inner circle of Brighter Winter participants, you'll find even more connection and conversation with other book lovers. Below, you'll find an overview of our scheduled ZOOM gatherings, a place to submit you questions for the authors we're interviewing, and discussion questions for our January and February book clubs.

What to expect from Reading Room gatherings...

We'll host three different Zoom gatherings each month during the Brighter Winter program. You can find information about each one on this page, and we will email meeting reminders each Monday before a gathering.

You choose your level of participation! Attend all the gatherings, or pick the topics or speakers that interest you; join us live on the call, or watch the replay later. The replays will be available for the duration of Brighter Winter 2025.

the schedule

Unless otherwise noted, all Reading Room gatherings will be on Thursday evenings from 8 PM – 9 PM EST. 

January 9: Author Interview: Anita Yoder, Life is for Living  
January 16: Literary Night (speaker TBD)
January 23: Book Club: My Antonia, Willa Cather. Discussion led by Cathy Breit.

February 6: Author Interview: Emily Smucker, The Highway and Me and My Earl Grey Tea
February 13: Literary Night: “Why Poetry?” by Natasha Witmer 
February 20: Book Club: Made For Friendship, Drew Hunter. Discussion led by Cathy Breit.

Our ZOOM gatherings will consist of three types of content

Here's an overview!

Author Interviews

We'll kick off each month hearing from a current author about their lives, published work, and current projects. We'll take question submissions ahead of time, and have a short Q&A time at the end of the interview, so start thinking about what you would like to ask! To submit your questions in advance, reply to this email or send us a message at brighterwinterchallenge@gmail.com, and specify which author the question is for.

Literary Nights

On literary nights, we'll have a special speaker joining us to present their thoughts on a topic pertaining to books in general and Brighter Winter books in particular! These lectures will be informal, and again an opportunity will be presented at the end for a brief discussion or questions. 

For the interviews and literary topics, you aren't required to join with your camera on (although we encourage it) and discussion participation is totally optional.

Book Clubs

Our third and most interactive gathering is an online book club - one in January and one in February. These book clubs will be hosted by Cathy Breit, and she’ll be guiding the discussion (meet her on her Substack). Because the nature of a book club is participatory, we're depending on book club attendees to engage in the conversation! 

For January, the Book Club will be reading My Antonia by Willa Cather. In February, we’ll be talking about Made For Friendship by Drew Hunter. If you decide to participate, just read the book assigned for that month, and come prepared to discuss. We’ll ask for an RSVP a week before to help Cathy plan accordingly. After your RSVP, you’ll receive  a discussion guide in advance so you can think about the questions ahead of time.

Join Us!

Below you'll find our scheduled gatherings. Links to join the ZOOM call will be added the week of the meeting.

January 9 @ 7:30pm est

Interview with Anita Yoder

Join us for our first ZOOM gathering, an interview with Anita Yoder, author of Life is for Living.

Use the button below to join the ZOOM call.

COMING SOON
  • Anita Yoder Interview

    Click below to watch the playback of Anita's interview. This recording will be available until February 28.

    Watch here 
  • Coming Soon

  • Coming Soon

  • Coming Soon

Upload Your Grids Here!

As each month's challenges wind to a close, we'll update the links here for you to upload your completed grids.