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Master of ceremonies Sue Katz reports:

Our annual book party - once again the biggest event of our calendar – was a celebration of the 22 authors who published books in the past year: 10 novels, 10 non-fiction, and 2 poetry. At least sixty-five folks enjoyed the six intense, brilliant readings &ndash and then ran to the book table to buy the books, tantalized by the profound talent. Charles Coe and Sue Katz provided the introductions to the readers and to our guest speaker Andre Dubus III (see below. Want to know more about the books? Check them out here .

The potluck table was swiftly relieved of its bounty and the socializing breaks were raucous. Member Carrie Dearborn summed it up best: "It was a blast! Whoever would have dreamed that a bunch of quiet writers would ever have made that much noise? What I liked was that you could cut right through the BS and get to the important stuff fast. Like, what are you working on? And know you'll be heard."

For those who were unable to make it to the Book Party and so missed our amazing keynote speaker, co-chair Barbara Beckwith reports:

Book party guest speaker Andre Dubus III riffed on what the Internet is doing to our brains. "We're like gerbils," he said, "so much are we stuck in our gadget treadmills." Dubus is all for the "democratization of access to knowledge," but at the same time he resents the frequent hyperlinks that interfere with reading any online writing all the way through. While he praised the Kindle and e-books in general for increasing the number of books being read, he worried about being buried in email."People now check their email 40 to 50 times," said Dubus, "and that's 40 to 50 times an hour." Debus recommends that we read up on the Internet-as-distraction debate, especially David Shields's Reality Hunger and David Carr's The Shallows.

Dubus is the author of House of Sand and Fog, The Garden of Last Days and the memoir Townie (forthcoming in February) about growing up in a depressed, drug and crime-ridden Massachusetts mill town. To protect himself against the violence, he learned to "use his fists so well that he was even scared of himself."

"It was writing that saved my life," said Dubus, who picked up his pen at age 21. He quoted Grace Paley: "You write to find out who you are," and Tolstoy: "Art is transferring feeling from one heart to another."

"What I love about writing is what it does to our minds," said Dubus. "It makes us listen, watch, be more disciplined and less judgmental." He ended with what he considers a hopeful sign. He'd seen a man on the T wearing earbuds, carrying a cellphone and holding an open laptop, but deeply engaged in – a book!