The critically acclaimed author and award-winning photographer will discuss their book, one of the most heartwarming Christmas stories of our time. Each year a New York family looks forward to the day in early December when the Woodcutter arrives with his Christmas trees on the sidewalk below their apartment.

Featuring elegant black-and-white photographs by an award-winning photographer, The Woodcutter’s Christmas takes readers on a reflective journey, blending the serene beauty of Vermont winters with the bustling streets of Manhattan. Seen through the eyes of a man who nurtures Christmas trees, this story explores the contrast between nature’s slow, steady rhythms and the fleeting, disposable culture of modern society. When the Woodcutter sees the trees he lovingly raised discarded on city curbs after the holiday season, his perspective shifts. After a chance meeting in Manhattan with a kindred spirit, the lessons, spirit, and meaning of Christmas is beautifully reinforced in Kessler’s lovely text.

Brad Kessler is a critically acclaimed novelist whose work has been translated into several languages. He won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize in Fiction for his novel Birds in Fall (2006), a Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as a Whiting Writer’s Award. His work has appeared in many publications including the New York Times Magazine, The Kenyon Review, The New Yorker, and Lit Hub. He’s received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and the Lange-Taylor Prize from Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies.

Dona Ann McAdams studied photography at the San Francisco Art Institute and has an M.F.A. in Visual Arts from Rutgers University and a B.A. in Cultural Anthropology from Empire State College. McAdams has exhibited at many places, nationally and internationally, including the Museum of Modern Art, NYC; The Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC, and The International Center for Photography. She is the author of Black Box: A Photographic Memoir (Saint Lucy Books 2024), a book of performance photography, Caught in the Act (Aperture 1996) and The Woodcutter’s Christmas (Council Oak Book, Fall 2001).