Ben Shattuck's most recent book, The History of Sound (Viking, 2024) was the winner of the Story Prize Spotlight Award and the 2025 Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award -- and was shortlisted for the 2024 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. His film adaptation of the title story premiered at the 2025 Cannes film festival. His first book, Six Walks: In the Footsteps of Henry David Thoreau (Tin House, 2022), was a New Yorker Best Book of 2022, a Wall Street Journal Best Book of Spring, a New York Times Best Book of Summer, a New England Bestseller, and was nominated for the Massachusetts Book Award. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and winner of the PEN Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers and a Pushcart Prize. He lives with his wife and daughter on the coast of Massachusetts, where he owns and runs Davol’s General Store, the oldest general store in America, built in 1793. 

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Introducing the Tiverton Library Foundation 2026 Speaker Series. Each program will be held at 6:30 PM at the Tiverton Library at 34 Roosevelt Ave in Tiverton. There is no cost for admission but the space is limited and advance reservations are required. Please register at your earliest convenience if you are able to attend. Please see our events calendar for a full list of 2026 speakers.