From the Publisher: Deadline Novelist 

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• Courtesy
• Margot Harrison

Vermont moviegoers saw their last picture shows at the Palace 9 cinema in South Burlington last Thursday. Seven Days film critic Margot Harrison marked the occasion with a loving tribute to her favorite spot to see the movies she reviews weekly for this newspaper — an essential part of our culture coverage since 2007. Ask yourself: How many media outlets still employ a local film critic who is every bit as insightful as the New Yorker's Anthony Lane?

After noting some of the multiplex's positive practical attributes — "cavernous, easy to park at and seldom crowded" — she gets into the good stuff. "If I had to explain why I love movie theaters, I'd say they're liminal spaces, gateways to dreams and nightmares," Margot wrote in the piece published Saturday. In a few well-observed paragraphs, she captures the appeal of choosing from "all those possible worlds" and the shared experience of watching movies with other people.

She also explains what doomed this particular venue. Among other things: During the pandemic, many of the older folks who regularly patronized the Palace 9 developed a habit of streaming movies at home.

Margot's piece was beautiful and sad and smart, just like a good movie. But I didn't expect reading it would make me cry. Cinemas aren't going away — Merrill Jarvis III still owns Burlington's Roxy Cinemas and the Majestic 10 in Williston — but like so many things I hold dear, this all-American activity is on the endangered species list. We embrace the couch at the cost of local commerce and community.

The Palace 9 meant even more to Margot, who writes fiction when she is not working for Seven Days. The multiplex movie theater inspired a short story earlier in her literary life as well her most recent young adult thriller — Only She Came Back — which comes out this week.

It's the fourth book she's written in the 16 years we've been colleagues. There's at least one suspicious death in all of them. In this one, the heroine works at a fictional cinema Margot calls the "Grand 9."

Although she reviews a film and wrangles everything else in the movie section each week, Margot works primarily as a culture section editor at Seven Days. Did I mention she has a PhD in English? Whenever there is a debate about grammar in our pages, Margot provides a detailed explanation of the rule. When a story idea comes up that we have pursued in years past, she often recalls exactly who wrote it and when.

Juggling that 30-hour-a-week newspaper job with an ambitious writing career requires organization, drive and lots of midnight oil. I know Margot often works all night. In that way, she's a lot like her sister, Eva Sollberger, who produces the Seven Days video series "Stuck in Vermont": Both women are creative, hardworking, prolific. To reach her young readers, Margot has mastered the art of book promotion on Instagram and TikTok.

She's reading from her new novel on Thursday, November 16, at Phoenix Books in Burlington, exactly one week after she bid adieu to the Palace 9. Better than a movie, it's happening in real life. We couldn't be prouder of her.