Ellyn Gaydos, author of Pig Years at Left Bank Books

Pig Years, Ellyn’s debut memoir, tells the story of Gaydos’s life as an itinerant farmer in upstate New York and Vermont, where she lived hand to mouth but fell in love with the land and creatures.

Ellyn’s lyrical prose has been compared to the agrarian writing of Annie Dillard and Wendell Berry. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Russo says of Pig Years that it reflects the “rhythms of nature of life itself and, yes, death, too. No wonder the book, with its slow burn of uncomfortable facts and sober truth, burrows under the reader’s skin.”

Elly was born and raised in Vermont and, although not from a farming family, she was drawn to the “gentle bovines with big wet brown eyes” and started working on a beef and vegetable farm when she was eighteen.

We’re greatly looking forward to meeting Ellyn and hope you can join us. Seating is limited; please contact Left Bank Books to reserve your space—and copy of Pig Years—now.