Hitch Haikoo: Reading and Author Talk with Jerry Kelly
Date: 11/12/2025
Time: 06:00 pm-07:00 pm
Location: The Brown Family Environmental Center, 9781 Laymon Road, Gambier OH 43022
Organizer: Public Library of Mount Vernon and Knox County
Cost: Free
Contact and more info:
knoxwrites1@gmail.com
https://www.knox.net/
About the event:
HITCH HAIKOO:
READING & AUTHOR TALK WITH JERRY KELLY
Wednesday, November 12th, 2025.
6:00 P.M. – 7:00 P.M.
The Brown Family Environmental Center
9781 Laymon Road, Gambier OH 43022
A hitchhiking memoir by writer, scholar, and publisher Jerry Kelly, who began hitching at age 12 to and
from the beach near his Long Island home in the early 1960s. Later, as a means of cheap or free travel for
a young impoverished student, hitchhiking had practical value and, offered opportunities for road
adventures in a widening world. “Hitch Haikoo” began as a long series of short poems written while the
writer was hitchhiking around Ireland, in 2000. Layered upon those poems (which appear at the end of the
book) is a series of essays relating experience and observation of a once-common transit practice that
diminished when public imagination and culture bean embracing fear and mistrust of others. For the writer and for countless others, hitchhiking, while arduous, was replete with happy memories of trips fueled by human kindness and connection. This book relates how that once was, not so long ago.
A limited number of complimentary copies of Hitch Haikoo will be available on a first-come, first-served
basis at the Mount Vernon Library on Monday, November 3rd, 2025. The book giveaway continues while
supplies last.
As with all Library programs this event is free and open to the public. Recommended for ages 18 +. For
more information visit www.knox.net, email knoxwrites1@gmail.com or call (740) 392-BOOK extension
8259.
To request AV equipment setup email Chris or Jessica
To request recording of events, email Chris or Jessica