Welcome to the inaugural event of the Dare to Read annual speaker series!

Join celebrated author Colin Woodard to discuss his groundbreaking work on how the regional political cultures of the United States pull us apart – and how we might pull together again.

May 7, 2026 – 7:00 pm
Exeter Town Hall – Exeter, NH

Free to the Public

Register Today!

Books are now available at Water Street Bookstore and the Exeter Public Library. Professor Woodard will be signing books following the program.

The Exeter Public Library will also host a book discussion group at 10:00am on May 7 with special guest Joe Pace, Executive Director of the American Independence Museum.

COLIN WOODARD is a New York Times bestselling author, historian and award-winning journalist. He is the author of seven books that have been translated into a dozen foreign languages and inspired an NBC television drama. He is currently Director of Nationhood Lab at the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Affairs at Salve Regina University. As State and National Affairs Writer at Maine’s Portland Press Herald, he won a 2012 George Polk Award and was a finalist for a 2016 Pulitzer Prize. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico, The Economist, Smithsonian and dozens of other major publications.

A native of Maine, he has reported from more than 50 countries and seven continents and lived for more than four years in Eastern Europe during the collapse of the Soviet empire and the transition that followed. A graduate of Tufts University and the University of Chicago he is past Pew Fellow in International Journalism at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, a recipient of the Jane Bagley Lehman Award for Excellence in Public Advocacy, and a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.