“Beard’s stories feel lived, even alive, as if they are still happening…The boundaries between her and her characters (best friends, strangers, family members, husbands, murderers, ducks, dogs, herons) are as porous as the ones between her writing and her readers. You keep falling in. Other people’s memories accrue power until they’re your memories.”

—Rachel DeWoskin, Los Angeles Review of Books

“A book so good you have to put it down, then pick it back up…Most of the stories in Festival Days are essays, recounting true events…But within those essays are feats and flights of imagination: Beard placing herself inside other people’s brains in the midst of high drama…I can’t think of a writer who puts words to our most difficult moments as adroitly as Beard.”

—Dan Kois, Slate

“Vivid prose…Beard’s keen eye for novelistic detail subtly transforms pure fact into art…Her stories undeniably resonate with the feeling of truth.”

—Harvey Freedenberg, Shelf Awareness

“Jo Ann Beard is a straight-up genius when it comes to observing and rendering observations with a twist…We read about the crappiness of ex-husbands, the salvation of friendship. All are threaded with a killer sense of humor and a continual ability to delight.”

—Karen Schechner, The Millions

“An impressive return. Beard’s topics range from the quotidian to the fantastic, but all are anchored by observant, beautifully written prose that’s sure to rank among the year’s best.”

—Town and Country

“This imaginative and precise collection shows Beard at her best. The nine entries vary in scope and subject, but loss and melancholy bridge the collection…These sharp essays cement Beard’s reputation as a master of the form.”

—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“In Festival Days, Beard renders her own life and the lives of others with characteristic precision…With each piece, she presses the essay form into new, more intimate territory.”

—Poets and Writers