It’s “Goodie Bag Week” in Martha Frankel’s house. The dining table in her Olive home—usually a place for friends to gather over good food and conversation—is buried under stacks of bags, each soon to be filled with gifts for writers arriving in town for the Woodstock Bookfest.
Books spill from every corner of her living room. Artwork, eclectic and personal, hangs on the walls. The kitchen’s muted chartreuse cabinets complement the soft pink backsplash above the stove, and a gray couch invites conversation. It’s a kind of controlled chaos, but it’s one she thrives in—a space shaped by years of stories, both lived and told.
At 74, Frankel is unflinchingly honest. She wasn’t always this way.
“I was an addict since my dad died when I was 14, and it involved a lot of lying and a lot of making things look better than they were,” she says, pausing for coffee. “Now I’m done with that. I get up in the morning and I have nothing to hide. And for somebody like me, it’s a great feeling.”
Frankel and her husband, the artist Steve Heller, have nurtured this space into a home since 1983, their five decades together evident in each thoughtful detail. They met in 1974 at Joyous Lake, a legendary former Woodstock music venue, and moved in together the next day.
Preparation for the 2025 Woodstock Bookfest is in full swing, and Frankel is in her element. She’s been at this for 15 years, building the festival into a uniquely Woodstock event—an intimate, no-frills, high-energy celebration of storytelling where literary stars and newcomers mingle and share stories in packed venues. “There’s no VIP room in Woodstock,” she says. “If you’re here for the Bookfest, you’re going to walk around town. There’s no other place to be.”
This year’s festival includes panels on everything from memoir and “The Gilmore Girls” to love and heartbreak, along with a Saturday keynote conversation between Martha and actor and author Griffin Dunne, whose bestselling family memoir, “The Friday Afternoon Club,” has drawn acclaim for its mix of humor and grief. There’s also a raffle of the famous Elliott Landy photo of Bob Dylan, outside his Byrdcliffe home in Woodstock, 1968, and of course, pizza parties.
“I feel like the Bookfest is like my big dinner party,” Frankel says. “We treat our writers like rock stars. That’s all I can do—treat you well, introduce you to other writers, and create a place where stories matter.”
And then there’s the Story Slam—held at the Woodstock Playhouse this year—which Frankel sees as both an extension of the festival and something all its own. “We’ve had some weird shit happen at the Story Slams,” she admits. “But that’s what makes it great. People are daring to tell their stories.”
Sari Botton, a writer, longtime participant and moderator at the festival, sees it as an essential part of the literary landscape. “Everything that celebrates books and writing is important, especially now when there’s so much censorship and banning of books. The Woodstock Bookfest is a key event in our local culture.”
A Life Lived in Books—And a Few Other Things
Frankel grew up in the Bronx and Queens before moving to Miami for college, where she studied writing—until a professor told her she’d never make it. “So I quit college,” she says.
She landed in Woodstock in 1971, left for a time, then came back for good in 1974. Six months later, she met Steve. “I met him on a Tuesday night and moved in Wednesday morning.”
At first, she helped run Steve’s woodworking business, then joined the Olive Fire Department—one of the first women in Ulster County to do so. “I was at the bar one night, and people told Steve he should join the fire department. I said, ‘I want to join, too.’ They told me to join the Women’s Auxiliary. I said, ‘No, I want to be a firefighter.’”
Everything changed when a vacation to Vieques, Puerto Rico introduced her to Annie Flanders, editor of Details magazine. “She told me, ‘You’re a good writer because I’ve read your letters. You could either be a stockbroker or a writer.’ And I said, ‘I’d rather be a writer.’”
That was the start. It was the mid-eighties. Frankel wrote a book column, Book ’Em, for Details, then moved into celebrity profiles—Elizabeth Taylor, Robert De Niro, Sean Penn. Condé Nast bought the magazine in 1988, for what some reports suggest was $2 million. Frankel spent the next five years continuing to write celebrity profiles for national and international magazines. But as the magazine world shrank, so did the assignments.
Then she found poker.
Research for a screenplay led her into high-stakes poker rooms, then the World Series of Poker. She was good—until online poker nearly ruined her. “I lost more money than this house is worth,” she says.
She hid it from everyone, including Steve. “The way he found out? I gave him the manuscript.”
Her 2008 memoir, “Hats & Eyeglasses,” chronicled her addiction. The book paid off her debts but didn’t fix everything. “It didn’t address my issue, which was that I was an addict.”
In 2013, she got sober. “That was life-changing,” she says. She also met a mentor who changed her view on money: “The first thing you do every day is look at your bank account.”
A Festival Like No Other
The Woodstock Bookfest began in 2010 with a simple idea: a group of writers wanted to save The Golden Notebook, the town’s beloved bookstore. “We thought, let’s put on a show and save the bookstore,” Frankel says. The bookstore survived. The festival became a tradition.
Over the years, Cheryl Strayed, Ruth Reichl, Gail Straub, Ann Hood, Colm Tóibín, and Susan Orlean have all headlined. Tóibín, in fact, was chauffeured from New York City to Woodstock by a local Irishman, Philip Marshall, who rented a car at Frankel’s insistence. “She said, ‘You’re Irish. You’re driving Colm next Saturday. Get a nice car.’”
Tóibín, Marshall recalls, was “a pure delight” and “one of the most interesting men I’ve ever met.” As they pulled into Woodstock, a violinist from the Buenos Aires Symphony turned to Tóibín and said, “You have time for everybody.” Tóibín’s response?
“The alternative is just bad manners.”
Frankel isn’t the type to sugarcoat things, but she’s genuine and warm. Writer Nick Flynn, who performed at the Bookfest, puts it simply: “I got to perform my poems at the Woodstock Bookfest with my band, The Shaker. Woodstock is that kind of town. Martha has created something very special.”
The Lasting Legacy
Frankel admits “I have to say, a lot of the Bookfest is personality driven, and it’s my personality.” Nan Tepper, who has worked on the festival’s branding and website for years, agrees. She sees Frankel as the heart of it all. “Martha is like nobody else. She gets it done. She is Bookfest.”
She adds, “She’s funny. She’s irreverent. And she’s got a really quick brain.” For now, the festival remains hers—run with an encyclopedic knowledge of authors, a phone full of contacts, and a dining room filled with goodie bags.
Would she ever hand the reins to someone else? “No one’s ever asked,” she says. Then, with a grin: “If you want it, honey, let’s form an LLC.”
For now, Frankel is focused on this year’s festival—making sure every writer and reader feels welcome.
Goodie Bag Week is in full swing. The Woodstock Bookfest takes place on April 3-6, 2025. And in Martha Frankel’s world, the party is just beginning.
Noah Eckstein is the editor-in-chief of The Overlook. Send correspondence to noah@theoverlooknews.com.
