More and more it changed from one person’s story to a book that was about larger issues, about how we live in community, how we live in our houses, how our houses affect us.”

Erica Bauermeister, Author of “House Lessons: Renovating a Life”

March is dubbed the official “Reading Month” of Port Townsend. And the 16th annual Community Read – an event led by Friends of the Port Townsend Public Library – will occupy the calendar in celebration. 

Designed to promote bonding among the community, Community Read offers a shared experience through reading, discussing, and exploring the same literary work.

This year’s Community Read selected book is “House Lessons: Renovating a Life” from New York Times bestselling author and Port Townsend resident, Erica Bauermeister. 

A memoir-in-essays, “House Lessons” takes readers on a journey, a literary exploration of the psychology of architecture, to discover the ways our spaces affect us. Follow the author as she renovates a “trash-filled house in eccentric Port Townsend, Washington” in this tribute to the homes we live in and love in. 

“It was a book that took me a long time, almost 20 years, to write and get published,” the author explained.

“It changed a lot over that period of time,” Bauermeister said. “More and more it changed from one person’s story to a book that was about larger issues, about how we live in community, how we live in our houses, how our houses affect us.

“To have that taken to the next step of being something that would be shared by a community is just a wonderful thing. It feels like a perfect capstone to that experience,” she added.

Port Townsend Library Director Melody Sky Eisler described this year’s event as a celebration of homes, the renovation of historical homes, and the dream of everyone being housed. 

“The library has done such a fantastic job of providing a wide-range of activities,” Bauermeister said of the Community Read event, “I love how there is something different for everybody which is how these community events work, but it’s wonderful to watch it happen with my own book.”

A story about the power of home, “House Lessons” details the renovation of not only an abode, but of a family, a marriage, a life.

“I think both the concept of community and the concept of home is so incredibly important,” Bauermeister said. 

Home is something she described as “the place where we feel safe, or natured, because home is, first of all, protection … [Home] is an opportunity for us to look at the places where we live and see how we can use them to encourage ourselves to be better people, to be more creative, to be more loving, to be more social – all the things that a house, simply by its layout, can teach you to be,” she added.

The mostly virtual event will kick off its first week with a screening of the Port Townsend Film Festival’s Pics March selection, “Community First, A Home for the Homeless,” a documentary directed by Layton Blaylock. The film depicts the story of the Community First! Village in Austin, Texas and how the development is transforming the lives of the homeless through the power of community. Available to stream March 1 through March 7, PTFF will provide the film to pair with Bauermeister’s memoir, further emphasizing the importance of home.

A special art exhibit inspired by “House Lessons” will be on display at the Grover Gallery from March 4 through March 28. Entitled “Spirit of Home,” the exhibit will feature artists Max Grover, Liz Reutlinger, and Joe Wuts. 

The rest of the month will be filled with more events centered around Community Read. Two library-led book discussions will be held via Zoom along with an outdoor StoryWalk at Kah Tai Lagoon and a weekend memoir writing webinar with the author. 

“It’s much like a class I’ve taught at Writers’ Workshoppe in the past,” explained Bauermeister.

“It’s an introduction to memoir writing, both for those people who have never done it but also for some people who maybe are stuck part way through or need a jumpstart. We’ll be talking about, ‘What is a memoir?’, ‘What makes them come alive on a page?’, ‘How do you decide what it is you’re going to write about?’, ‘How do you find the story inside your own life?’”

On Thursday, March 25, the series of programs will conclude with a meet-the-author virtual event in the home Bauermeister renovated. 

She will discuss the memoir, the processes of renovating and writing, all the while responding to questions from the audience.

Participants can learn how the book can be applied to their own houses even on the smallest scale. Certain topics will be discussed like how we can look at our houses as more than just rooms; how we can renovate a house and work with our home to make it a place that encourages our best selves; and how we can do the same with our relationships.

“Because that’s the other part of the book,” Bauermeister explained, “We renovated our marriage. I had to renovate how I parented. And all of those things are woven together both as a book and I think in our lives.”

All Community Read events during the month of March are free and open to the public. “House Lessons: Renovating a Life” is available for check out at the library along with a brochure containing points of discussion and guided reading questions. Extra copies of the book are free to the public and are available at the library or around the community. Everyone is encouraged to pass on their finished copies to be read and re-read by others. Prepare for discussions about the book within your own group or lend your voice to other groups.

“I love the idea of discussing this book before the world starts opening up again, before we go back to our old behaviors, while we’re still at this point where we’re paying attention so that those good things can be translated into behaviors that go forward,” Bauermeister said of the COVID-era Community Read.

“We have looked at the places where we live in an entirely new light in the past 12 months,” Bauermeister continued.

“As you do with a renovation, you want to keep the good bones. There has been a lot of bad in this experience, but there have been some good things,” she said. “And one of those good things has been really looking at where we live and thinking about how it molds who we are and how it creates the relationships that exist within it.” 

To learn more about Community Read and all upcoming events, go to ptpubliclibrary.org.

For more information about the author, visit ericabauermeister.com.