July 19th, 2025

Welcome to our Festival of Correspondence brought to you by Letters Trellis at the Winchester Farmers Market.

This initiative echoes an annual weekend in honor of Madame de Sévigné, a celebrated French letter writer of the seventeenth century.  Each summer her legacy is remembered in a four-day festival in Grignan, France where she addressed hundreds of letters to her daughter.  These missives are but a part of the volumes of her epistolary writings that have been collected and published.  

Grignan is a medieval village situated in the Drôme department of southeastern France centered by a grand chateau.  Throughout the encircling streets of this structure are some 20 writing areas (chambres d’écriture) furnished with writing paper, envelopes, pen and ink.  Visitors are invited to write a letter to be stamped and posted as a service to festival attendees.  

In addition to the presentations, each year features a market for literature, music and expositions.  Other surprises may also arise, as in 2002, a costumed courier arrived on his bicycle to deliver pre-written letters to “a person who is celebrating a birthday”, “someone wearing red clothing”, “a visitor who is engaged to be married” or some other likely category of visitor who might enjoy receiving a letter.  

The “Festival de la Correspondance de Grignan” was begun in 1996.  In the following 28 years, the program has featured the collected letters of notable personalities, with lectures, art, music, theatre and films on a variety of themes.  Themes have included Letters in Exile, Family Letters, Letters from Belgium, Letters in one’s Youth, Letters of Love and Hate, and Letters from our Heroes. 

This year the festival centered on the search for meaning and the sacred.

Letters Trellis also selects a theme each month.  This July  we present a unique opportunity to bring back the art of written correspondence by taking a seat with pen and paper to write a letter to a loved one or friend.  

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