Whose Woods These Are: A History of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, 1926-1992

Sponsored by Middlebury College in Vermont, the annual two-week Bread Loaf Writer's Conference has attracted many of America's most prestigious authors, both as students and as faculty. Bain ( Aftershocks ) provides an interesting historical overview of the conference, anecdotal rather than evaluative. He generally emphasizes the positive aspects of Bread Loaf, where writers such as Howard Fast, Anne Sexton and Joan Didion were nurtured at the beginning of their careers. But he also touches on the feuds that poet Robert Frost, the ``spiritual godfather'' of Bread Loaf, conducted with other faculty member, and covers poet John Ciardi's last tempestuous years as conference director. Excessive alcohol consumption has seemed intrinsic to every conference. The book's reminiscences of Bread Loaf participants accompanies 300 black-and-white photos. Duffy, the wife of co-editor Bain, is a painter and curator. (Sept.)