MARTHA FRANKEL
Executive director of Woodstock Bookfest
Martha Frankel is a writer and storyteller. She’s the executive director of Woodstock Bookfest, a yearly gathering of readers and writers, taking place this year on March 21-24 at the Bearsville Theater. Martha believes that reading and writing are central to our inner lives. As a kid, she and her sister took turns making up stories to amuse their parents. Laughter was the currency of the realm. Long ago Frankel’s real life surpassed even her wildest stories. Frankel’s writing career started at the original Details magazine with her column on plastic surgery, called Knifestyles of the Rich and Famous. She went on to write book reviews, essays and celebrity profiles for Details other magazines, such as Movieline, Cosmopolitan and Redbook. Her memoir, Hats & Eyeglasses, chronicling her family’s lifelong love affair with gambling and her own later addiction to online gambling, was published in 2008 (Tarcher/Penguin Group). Martha has contributed essays to several anthologies, indulging the foreword to My Body, My Words, edited by Amye Archer and Loren Kleinman, Big Table Publishing. During Covid lockdown, she walked and thought and dreamed of standing in front of a live audience. Frankel writes, teaches and lives in the Hudson Valley with her husband, the artist Steve Heller. Look for her during the Woodstock Bookfest, shuttling writers to and fro, hauling books from one venue to the other, telling a story or two, and loving every minute of her life.
