WDA Heather Cox Richardson Watch Party Brings a National Democracy Event to Bank Square Books
WDA Heather Cox Richardson Watch Party brings a nationwide Writers for Democratic Action event to Bank Square Books in Mystic on Saturday, September 19, as historian and bestselling author Heather Cox Richardson receives the inaugural Gitlin-Auster Defender of Democracy Award.
The local gathering begins at 2:30 p.m. with refreshments, conversation and an opportunity to submit questions before the national livestream starts at 3 p.m.
Richardson will receive the new award before sitting down for a conversation with novelist and essayist Siri Hustvedt, a founding member of Writers for Democratic Action and author of the 2026 memoir Ghost Stories.
Bank Square Books is one of a network of locations around the country holding what WDA calls Solidarity Watch Parties. The Mystic event adds a decidedly local component: a representative from the League of Women Voters of Southeastern Connecticut will be available to register voters and answer questions about voting in Connecticut’s upcoming elections.
Admission is free, but Bank Square Books is requesting advance registration.
A Watch Party Connected to a National Event
This isn’t a prerecorded author talk being shown at the bookstore.
Writers for Democratic Action is bringing together hundreds of its members online while people gather simultaneously at bookstores, libraries, homes, retirement communities and other locations around the country.
At 3 p.m. Eastern, those separate gatherings will join the same livestream honoring Richardson.
The national organization says the watch parties have a second purpose beyond recognizing her work. They also mark the launch of WDA’s Book the Vote campaign ahead of the November election.
Writers for Democratic Action describes itself as a national community of more than 4,000 writers committed to defending democracy, freedom of expression, truth and justice.
Its membership includes novelists, poets, journalists, essayists and other writers who have chosen to become actively involved in civic issues rather than keeping their political concerns separate from their literary work.
Saturday’s event puts one of the country’s most widely read historians at the center of that effort.
Heather Cox Richardson Has Turned the Daily News Into a History Lesson
Richardson is a professor of history at Boston College, but the audience for her work now extends far beyond a university classroom.
She’s a specialist in 19th-century American political and economic history whose academic work has examined the Civil War, Reconstruction, the Gilded Age, the American West and the development of the Republican Party.
Her books include The Death of Reconstruction, West from Appomattox, Wounded Knee: Party Politics and the Road to an American Massacre, To Make Men Free: A History of the Republican Party, How the South Won the Civil War and Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America.
But millions of readers know her primarily through Letters from an American.
Richardson began what became the newsletter in 2019 as she tried to explain rapidly developing political events by putting them into a larger historical context.
Rather than treating each day’s political news as an isolated story, she connects contemporary developments to earlier periods in American history.
A dispute over the power of the presidency might lead backward to Reconstruction.
A modern argument over voting rights can become a discussion of the post-Civil War amendments.
Political rhetoric can be traced across generations to show where ideas came from and how their meanings changed.
The approach turned an academic historian into a major national voice.
By 2026, Letters from an American had grown into an audience measured in the millions across Substack and social media.
Richardson’s Subject Is Increasingly Democracy Itself
Richardson’s academic specialty might be 19th-century America, but a common thread running through much of her recent public work is a much larger question:
How does a democracy survive?
Her 2023 bestseller Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America examines the historical forces Richardson argues brought the United States to its current political moment.
The book moves between the country’s founding, abolition, Reconstruction, the rise of modern political movements, the Nixon era and the events surrounding January 6, 2021.
Richardson’s central method is historical rather than predictive.
Today’s conflicts become easier to understand, she argues, when they’re placed beside earlier struggles over political power, economic opportunity, citizenship and who gets to participate in American government.
That combination of scholarship and public engagement has brought Richardson recognition beyond the academy.
She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2022 and has received the Authors Guild Award for literary activism.
On September 19, another award will be added to that list.
The First Gitlin-Auster Defender of Democracy Award
Writers for Democratic Action will present Richardson with its inaugural Gitlin-Auster Defender of Democracy Award during Saturday’s livestream.
The names behind the award are significant.
Todd Gitlin was a writer, sociologist, political activist and longtime commentator on American politics and culture. As a young man, he served as president of Students for a Democratic Society and later became a prominent scholar and critic.
Paul Auster was the acclaimed novelist, essayist, poet, screenwriter and filmmaker whose books included The New York Trilogy, Moon Palace, The Book of Illusions and 4 3 2 1.
Both were among the writers involved in creating Writers for Democratic Action.
Gitlin died in 2022.
Auster died in 2024.
Naming WDA’s new democracy award for them ties the organization’s present work to two writers who believed that literary and intellectual life could not always remain separate from public life.
Richardson becomes its first recipient Saturday.
Siri Hustvedt Joins Richardson for the Conversation
Following the award presentation, Richardson will be joined by Siri Hustvedt.
Hustvedt is a novelist, essayist and scholar whose work has frequently crossed boundaries among fiction, philosophy, psychology, neuroscience and art.
Her books include What I Loved, The Summer Without Men, The Blazing World and numerous collections of essays.
She’s also a founding member of Writers for Democratic Action.
The connection to Saturday’s award is particularly personal.
Hustvedt and Paul Auster were married for 43 years, until Auster’s death from lung cancer in April 2024.
Her latest book, Ghost Stories, published in May 2026, is a memoir of their life together and her experience of grief following his death.
The book incorporates previously unseen material from Auster, including letters and unfinished writing, while exploring memory, love, loss and what remains of a shared life after one person is gone.
That makes the pairing Saturday more than a conventional author interviewing another author.
Hustvedt is helping present an award that carries her late husband’s name, then joining its first recipient for a public discussion about the ideas that led WDA to create it.
Mystic’s Watch Party Has Its Own Civic Component
The livestream is national.
What happens around it at Bank Square Books is local.
Guests can arrive at 2:30 p.m., giving them about half an hour to mingle, have refreshments and submit questions before the livestream begins.
A representative of the League of Women Voters of Southeastern Connecticut will also be at the bookstore.
The League representative can help eligible residents register to vote and answer practical questions about voting and Connecticut elections.
That gives people an immediate way to move from a national discussion of democracy to one of its most basic local functions.
Connecticut’s next general election is Tuesday, November 3, 2026.
For someone uncertain about registration, election procedures or where to find reliable nonpartisan voting information, Saturday provides an opportunity to ask a person rather than sort through conflicting information online.
Bank Square Books Has Become a Gathering Place as Well as a Bookstore
The setting also fits the event.
Bank Square Books has served Mystic-area readers since 1988.
Its current location at 80 Stonington Road, Suite 8, gives the independent bookstore enough room to regularly hold author talks, signings, book clubs and other community programs.
That role matters in an era when books can be purchased without ever entering a bookstore.
An independent bookstore can sell the same book that arrives in a cardboard box on someone’s doorstep.
What it can do that the box can’t is put readers in the same room.
Saturday’s watch party takes that idea a step further.
The featured historian won’t physically be in Mystic. Neither will Hustvedt.
But the audience will.
Rather than watching the livestream individually at home, people can hear the same conversation together, discuss it and connect it to the civic work happening where they actually live.
That’s the entire idea behind WDA’s Solidarity Watch Parties.
You Can Arrive at 2:30 or Join for the Livestream at 3
Bank Square Books is inviting guests to arrive at 2:30 p.m. for the social portion of the event.
Refreshments will be available, and attendees can submit questions.
The national program begins at 3 p.m.
There is a slight discrepancy in the published ending time. Bank Square Books’ current event calendar lists the event from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m., while regional event calendars list the gathering through approximately 4 p.m. The national WDA schedule describes the livestream itself as running from 3 to 4 p.m.
Anyone attending should therefore plan on the main livestream running until about 4 p.m., with the bookstore’s event window potentially continuing afterward.
The event is free.
Advance registration is requested.
An Author Event Where the Book Isn’t the End of the Conversation
There’s an interesting inversion at the heart of Saturday’s event.
Richardson became famous in part by using history to explain politics.
Writers for Democratic Action is using writers to encourage political participation.
Bank Square Books is using a bookstore as a place for civic gathering.
And the League of Women Voters will be there to turn some of those conversations into the decidedly practical business of making sure people can vote.
Books are still at the center of it.
So are writers.
But the WDA Heather Cox Richardson Watch Party is built around the idea that reading about democracy and participating in one are related activities.
On Saturday afternoon, those two things meet at a bookstore in Mystic.
Details
Event: WDA Heather Cox Richardson Watch Party
Date: Saturday, September 19, 2026
Arrival/Mingling: 2:30 p.m.
National Livestream: 3 p.m.
Livestream End: Approximately 4 p.m.
Bank Square Books Calendar Window: 2:30–4:30 p.m.
Location: Bank Square Books
Address: 80 Stonington Road, Suite 8, Mystic, CT 06355
Admission: Free
Registration: Advance RSVP requested
Featured Guest: Heather Cox Richardson, historian, author and Boston College professor
Award: Inaugural Gitlin-Auster Defender of Democracy Award
Conversation: Heather Cox Richardson and Siri Hustvedt
Presented Nationally By: Writers for Democratic Action
Local Host: Bank Square Books
Local Civic Resource: League of Women Voters of Southeastern Connecticut representative available for voter registration and election questions
Before the Livestream: Mingling, refreshments and question submission
General Election: Tuesday, November 3, 2026
Bank Square Books Phone: 860-536-3795
More information is available at the Event Website link below.
To reserve your spot, click the Event Registration link below.
Featured image is an artistic representation inspired by the event and may not depict the actual people, location, or activities shown.
Resources
Writers for Democratic Action
Heather Cox Richardson – Boston College
Heather Cox Richardson – American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Democracy Awakening – Penguin Random House
Ghost Stories – Siri Hustvedt
Connecticut Voter Information