# Event Details - **Event Name**: THE UNRELIABLE PAST - **Event Start and End Date**: Sat, 29 Aug, 2026 at 03:30 pm – Sat, 29 Aug, 2026 at 04:30 pm (-04:00) - **Event Description**: Authors Jayne Anne Phillips, Francine Prose, and Amitava Kumar explore how they make sense of memory as an ephemeral muse for their craft.About this EventOn the second day of The Rough Notes Festival, authors Jayne Anne Phillips, Francine Prose, and Amitava Kumar discuss memory—perhaps the most powerful source of creation we have as writers, as artists, and even as human beings—as a tool in their writing. “We tell ourselves stories in order to live,” as Joan Didion pointed out in The White Album. The past—whether our own personal past or shared human experience—is the wellspring that we can constantly pump for inspiration, plot, emotion, and more. Yet memory is also notoriously unreliable, biased, and spotty. How can we make sense of memory as an ephemeral muse for our craft, and how can our craft best reflect the shifting dualities of memory in a way that makes for writing that is forever moving, changing, dynamic, and free?ABOUT THE ROUGH NOTES FESTIVALPresented by Kinderhook Books, the three-day event is, at its core, a literary festival—but it also celebrates the craft of writing in all its forms: songwriting, stand-up comedy, screenwriting, art, design, and more.ABOUT THE AUTHORSAMITAVA KUMARAmitava is the author of the novels My Beloved Life and Immigrant, Montana, as well as several other books of nonfiction and fiction. In 2016, Kumar was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship (General Nonfiction) as well as a Ford Fellowship in Literature from United States Artists. He lives in Poughkeepsie, where he is Helen D. Lockwood Professor of English at Vassar College.JAYNE ANNE PHILLIPSJayne Anne is the author of six novels. Night Watch was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2024. Her work has been a finalist once for the National Book Award and twice for the National Book Critics Circle Award. The recipient of Guggenheim, National Endowment for the Arts, Howard, Bunting, and Rockefeller Foundation Fellowships, she is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.FRANCINE PROSEFrancine is the author of twenty-three works of fiction including the highly acclaimed Five Weeks in the Country; The Vixen; Mister Monkey; the New York Times bestseller Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932; A Changed Man, which won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize; and Blue Angel, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her works of nonfiction include the highly praised 1974: A Personal History, Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife, and the New York Times bestseller Reading Like a Writer, which has become a classic. Prose is the recipient of numerous grants and honors, including a Guggenheim and a Fulbright, a Director’s Fellow at the Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library.ROB SPILLMANRob is a writer, editor, teacher, and literary citizen who currently teaches private classes and offers manuscript consultations through the Shipman Agency’s Work Room. He is a contributor to Lithub and is a Fellowship Coach for the Op Ed Project. He co-founded and edited the seminal literary magazine Tin House, which received the inaugural CLMP Firecracker Award for Magazine of the Year in 2015. He is the recipient of the PEN/Nora Magid Award for Editing, the Vido Award, presented by VIDA, Women in Literary Arts, and the CLMP Energizer Award for Acts of Outstanding Literary Citizenship. - **Event URL**: https://allevents.in/kinderhook/the-unreliable-past/100001996319884514 - **Event Categories**: art, literary-art, festivals, comedy, entertainment - **Interested Audience**: - total_interested_count: 0 - **Event Highlights**: - Duration: 1 hour - Location: Kinderhook Books - Languages: English ## Ticket Details - **Ticket Price Range**: min: 19.28, max: 19.28, currency: USD ## Event venue details - **city**: Kinderhook - **state**: NY - **country**: United States - **location**: Kinderhook Books - **lat**: 42.3952406 - **long**: -73.6987936 - **full address**: Kinderhook Books, 10 Broad Street, Kinderhook, United States ## Event gallery - **Alt text**: THE UNRELIABLE PAST - **Image URL**: https://cdn-az.allevents.in/events2/banners/8212b1397279cf0449e27e1d09761c9307c371a8dc4c74f2828a8c69b800879b-rimg-w1200-h720-dc080808-gmir.jpg?v=1785574035 ## FAQs - **Q**: When and where is THE UNRELIABLE PAST being held? - **A:** THE UNRELIABLE PAST takes place on Sat, 29 Aug, 2026 at 03:30 pm to Sat, 29 Aug, 2026 at 04:30 pm at Kinderhook Books, 10 Broad Street, Kinderhook, United States. - **Q**: Who is organizing THE UNRELIABLE PAST? - **A:** THE UNRELIABLE PAST is organized by Kinderhook Books. - **Q**: Who is this event for? Is it right for me? - **A:** THE UNRELIABLE PAST is ideal for festival lovers, culture enthusiasts, and anyone looking for a vibrant, immersive community experience. Whether you're a first-time attendee or a longtime enthusiast in Kinderhook, this event is thoughtfully curated to deliver a standout experience worth every moment. If THE UNRELIABLE PAST sounds like your kind of event, don't wait - spots fill up fast. ## Structured Data (JSON-LD) ```json [ { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "Event", "name": "THE UNRELIABLE PAST", "image": "https://cdn-az.allevents.in/events2/banners/8212b1397279cf0449e27e1d09761c9307c371a8dc4c74f2828a8c69b800879b-rimg-w1200-h720-dc080808-gmir.jpg?v=1785574035", "startDate": "2026-08-29T15:30:00-04:00", "endDate": "2026-08-29T16:30:00-04:00", "url": "https://allevents.in/kinderhook/the-unreliable-past/100001996319884514", "eventStatus": "https://schema.org/EventScheduled", "location": { "@type": "Place", "name": "Kinderhook Books", "address": { "@type": "PostalAddress", "streetAddress": "10 Broad Street", "postalCode": "12106", "addressLocality": "Kinderhook", "addressRegion": "NY", "addressCountry": "US" }, "geo": { "@type": "GeoCoordinates", "latitude": "42.3952406", "longitude": "-73.6987936" } }, "eventAttendanceMode": "https://schema.org/OfflineEventAttendanceMode", "description": "Authors Jayne Anne Phillips, Francine Prose, and Amitava Kumar explore how they make sense of memory as an ephemeral muse for their craft.", "offers": [ { "@type": "AggregateOffer", "availability": "https://schema.org/InStock", "priceCurrency": "USD", "availabilityStarts": "2026-08-01", "availabilityEnds": "2026-08-29T16:30:00-04:00", "validFrom": "2026-08-01", "lowPrice": "19.28", "highPrice": "19.28", "price": "19.28", "url": "https://allevents.in/kinderhook/the-unreliable-past/100001996319884514" }, { "@type": "Offer", "availability": "https://schema.org/InStock", "priceCurrency": "USD", "availabilityStarts": "2026-08-01", "availabilityEnds": "", "validFrom": "2026-08-01", "url": "https://allevents.in/kinderhook/the-unreliable-past/100001996319884514", "price": "19.28", "name": "General Admission" } ], "organizer": [ { "@type": "Organization", "name": "Kinderhook Books", "url": "https://allevents.in/org/kinderhook-books/23992063" } ] } ] ```