A crowd waited eagerly outside the Bethlehem Area Public Library March 26 to attend the Lehigh Valley Book Festival. Intended as an annual event for the last weekend in March, it was postponed in March of 2020 due to the COVID-19 shutdowns. Last year’s event was virtual and now 2022 is live with a full day of award-winning writers, illustrators, published authors and readers.

The program started with keynote speaker Dorothy Wickenden, the executive editor of the New Yorker and the host of its weekly podcast “Politics and More,” discussing her latest book, “The Agitators: Three Friends Who Fought for Abolition and Woman’s Rights.”

“The Agitators” tells American history prior to the Civil War and after as seen through the lives of Harriet Tubman, Francis Seward, and Martha Wright – three women from different backgrounds brought together in Auburn N.Y, with a common passion for women’s rights and the abolitionist movements. Wickenden explained the agitators, Tubman, Seward and Wright, were part of “necessary trouble”.

Auburn has special significance for Wickenden, who remembers her grandmother telling her that’s where, as a girl, she saw Harriet Tubman. This sparked Wickenden’s curiosity as to Tubman’s relationships in Auburn and the role the Underground Railroad played in all three women’s lives.