Barkreaders: Lorraine Duvall

An open mic with featured North Country writers. Where can you discover new North Country writers and also share some work of your own? BarkReaders takes place every other month here at ACW in Saranac Lake, NY. Each reading will include an open mic and feature a North Country author presenting a recent book publication.

We’re bringing words and people together to foster writing community here in Saranac Lake and promote the work of writers from in and around the Adirondack park. Join us at 7 PM on the second Wednesday of January, March, May, July, September, and November.

November’s guest is Lorraine Duvall. The event is free, though a $5-10 donation is suggested.

Lorraine Duvall (Keene, NY) 

After retiring to the Adirondack Mountains in 2000, Lorraine Duvall became active in helping to protect the Adirondack lakes, ponds, and rivers from exploitation. She explored these waters in her solo canoe, writing of her journeys with other paddling enthusiasts, culminating in the memoir, In Praise of Quiet Waters: Finding Solitude and Adventure in the Wild Adirondacks, which won the 2016 Literary Award from the Adirondack Center for Writing (ACW) for Best Memoir.

Her first memoir, And I Know Too Much to Pretend, won the ACW Literary Award in 2014, where she writes of her experiences growing up in the formative years of the 2^nd Wave of the Feminist Movement.

Duvall became immersed in the story of a rural commune of women not far from her home in Keene, NY., which resulted in the publication in 2020 of the book, Finding A Woman’s Place: The Story of a 1970s Feminist Collective in the Adirondacks. In 1974, seven women with their eight children left jobs, friends, and families to live together communally in Athol, NY, a remote area of the Adirondack Mountains.   

Duvall holds a B.S. degree in Mathematics, an M.S. in Operations Research, and a Ph.D. from Syracuse University in Information Studies. Her first job after graduating from college in 1960, with a major in mathematics, was as a computer programmer with an engineering group for General Electric Company. She proceeded to advance in her career in technology firms taking-on positions as a systems analyst, manager, and research director.