Building on the tradition of 19th century authors like Mark Twain—who appeared at The Music Hall—remarkable contemporary writers will visit the region for a new author series kicking off at The Music Hall this year, in collaboration with New Hampshire Public Radio.

Writers on a New England Stage will debut Saturday, Dec. 10 and will feature as its first guest Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. Goodwin and program host Laura Knoy, who is also known as the host for NHPR’s “The Exchange,” will talk about Goodwin’s award-winning books on American presidents, including her most recent biography of Abraham Lincoln, which goes on sale Oct. 25.

Writers on a New England Stage takes the concept of the author-speaking program and infuses it with the energy of live music and the levity of a live radio program performed in front of an audience. Seacoast-based rock band Dreadnaught will be the house band, performing throughout the show.

Patricia Lynch, executive director of The Music Hall, conceived of the program after she joined the Music Hall in 2004 and “surveyed the regional characteristics of the area,” she says. Citing the grand literary tradition of the Seacoast that includes James T. Fields, the famous 19th-century editor of the Atlantic Monthly who lived in Strawberry Banke, and his friends, Seacoast poets Celia Thaxter and Sarah Orene Jewett, Lynch wanted to create a program that would marry this tradition with the performance sensibilities of The Music Hall. The result is a live radio broadcast that will celebrate “the life of the mind,” she says. Above all, Lynch expects the original program “to be fun.”

Doris Kearns Goodwin, who participated in another prominent author series produced by Lynch in the Twin Cities, will be in the midst of a national tour to promote her newest book, “Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.” Though the book has yet to hit book stores, it is expected to be a best seller and director Stephen Spielberg has plans to make it into a movie. Kearns-Goodwin won the Pulitzer Prize in history for “No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II.” She is also the author of the bestsellers “Wait Till Next Year,” “The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys,” and “Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream.”  

Writers on a New England Stage will continue in the spring with a writer who will be announced later in the season, says Lynch. The program completes a triumvirate of trademark programs, the others being the music series Intimately Yours and the Telluride by the Sea film series, that, Lynch says, “reflect The Music Hall’s commitment to the literary and cultural life” of this region.