The FREE, Science, Art, and Music Festival SAMfest returns! 

Join us for the return of SAM Fest, the free Science, Art and Music Festival at Paul Smith’s VIC on Saturday, April 13!  This year’s theme is Earth Canvas: Art & Climate Change.  Immerse yourself in a day filled with  music, visual arts, and TED-style talks plus trivia, giveaways, and contests. New to this year’s festival will be an art show featuring an array of inspiring pieces on display and for sale. Enjoy live performances and presentations interacting with artists, scientists, poets, musicians and more.

The event features Martha Foley as MC and special guest presenter Suzanne S. Rancourt.

Martha Foley Smith retired from North Country Public Radio (NCPR) as News Director after a long career in the station’s news department. She was a familiar voice as morning co-host and for partnering with Dr. Curt Stager on weekly conversations exploring questions about the natural world. Natural Selections grew out of an idea from Ken Brown, first education director at the then-new VIC. She says those conversations were one of her favorite radio projects.

Her family has owned and operated Azure Mt. Power, a small, run-of-the-river hydro plant on the St. Regis River in St. Regis Falls since 1993. Azure Mt. supplies electricity to the VIC, as well as Paul Smiths College, through the green energy company, Northern Power and Light (NP&L).

Suzanne S. Rancourt is a poet and author with a diverse cultural background of Abenaki, Huron, Quebecois & Scottish descent. She is also a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Army. Rancourt was the May 2022 / 2023 guest artist at the University of Michigan’s New England Literature Program. She has been the featured writer for the Sundog Poetry Center’s VT event honoring the People of the Dawnland: Voices of Today and Tomorrow.

Her books include: Songs of Archilochus (Unsolicited Press, 2023); Old Stones, New Roads (Main Street Rag, 2021); murmurs at the gate (Unsolicited Press, 2019), winner of the 2023 Poetry of Modern Conflict Award; Billboard in the Clouds (Curbstone Books, 2004), awarded the Native Writers First Book Award.

Her poetry, non-fiction, and fiction have appeared in a host of journals and magazines, including: The Massachusetts Review, The Brooklyn Review, River Heron Review, Tupelo Press Native Voices Anthology, Bright Hill Press 25th Anniversary Anthology, Muddy River Poetry Review, Ginosko, Journal of Military Experience, and Callaloo.

Suzanne is also a multi-modal Expressive Arts Therapist with degrees in psychology, writing, Credentialed Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Counselor, Aikido and Iaido.

SAM Fest is proudly sponsored by NCPR.org and Northern Power & Light, Inc.