Featured Events in Winthrop in May, 2025 (July Updated)

“With heart and an acute sense of what it means to be displaced, Property of the Revolution explores the cost of leaving Cuba to come to America. This is a memoir filled with wisdom, history, joy, and the reverberating waves of grief. I wanted to sit with the viejos and all the love and chaos in their multi-generational home and hold on to Abuela and her stories forever.” –Marjan Kamali, author of The Lion Women of Tehran and The Stationery Shop Ana Hebra Flaster was six years old when her working-class family was kicked out of their Havana barrio for opposing communism. Once devoted revolutionaries themselves but disillusioned by the Castro government’s repressive tactics, they fled to the US. The permanent losses they suffered—of home, country, and loved ones, all within forty-eight hours—haunted her multigenerational family as they reclaimed their lives and freedom in 1967 New Hampshire. There, they fed each other stories of their scrappy barrio—some of which Hebra Flaster has shared on All Things Considered—to resurrect their lost world and fortify themselves for a daunting task: building a new life in a foreign land. Weaving pivotal events in Cuba–US history with her viejos’—elders’—stories of surviving political upheaval, impossible choices, and “refugeedom,” Property of the Revolution celebrates the indomitable spirit and wisdom of the women warriors who led the family out of Cuba, shaped its rebirth as Cuban Americans, and helped Ana grow up hopeful, future-facing—American. But what happens when deeply buried childhood memories resurface, demanding an adult’s reckoning? Here’s how the fiercest love, the most stubborn will, and the power of family put nine new Americans back on their feet. Ticketed attendees will receive 15% off of Ana's memoir. Information Source: The Purple Couch Bookshop | eventbrite

James Crews and Brad Peacock edited a beautiful anthology of compassionate poems of connection and affirmation that are a celebration of all kinds of love—romantic, family, friendship, self-love, and love for nature. The collection, called Love Is for All of Us: Poems of Tenderness and Belonging from the LGBTQ+ Community and Friends, is gathered from a diverse group of contemporary writers, both part of and allied with the LGBTQIA+ community, with a special focus on queer, nonbinary, and transgender poets. Your ticket price includes a copy of this new anthology. James Crews is the editor of numerous anthologies, including New England Book Award winner The Wonder of Small Things, The Path to Kindness, and How to Love the World, which has over 100,000 copies in print. He and his work have been featured on NPR’s Morning Edition and in People magazine, The Boston Globe, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. He is the author of four prize-winning books of poetry, and his poems have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Ploughshares, The Sun, The New Republic, and other journals. Crews recently joined the New York Zen Center as a faculty member in the Contemplative Medicine Fellowship Program. He teaches mindfulness and writing throughout the United States, and lives with his husband in the woods of southern Vermont. Brad Peacock is a veteran, writer, and long-time organic farmer from Shaftsbury, Vermont, whose passion is to bring people closer to one another and the natural world. His poems have been published in several anthologies, and his op-ed pieces have appeared in newspapers across the United States. He lives with his husband on forty rocky acres that they are restoring to a habitat for pollinators and native species. Jason O'Toole is co-founder and judge of the Anne Bradstreet Poetry Contest and was the 6th Poet Laureate of North Andover. He is a board member of the Independent Living Resource Center San Francisco and a hospital administrator in the Boston area. Jason was the vocalist for the 1980s NY Hardcore Punk band Life's Blood and continues to collaborate with musicians such as Alec. K. Redfearn Miro Snejdr (Herr Lounge Corps), and members of Siege. He earned his BA from Eugene Lang College and an MBA from St. Joseph's College of Maine. Alix Klingenberg is a poet, spiritual director, and creative dilettante. She describes herself as a cross between an ethereal woodland creature and an alternative 90’s girl stereotype and is only half-kidding. Alix graduated from Oberlin College in 2003 with a degree in Visual Art where she studied film and photography but also took way too many classes in Spanish literature and personality psychology to not have it count for something. She is obsessed with people dynamics, myth, philosophy, and imagination. Information Source: The Purple Couch Bookshop | eventbrite

A kaleidoscopic gem that adeptly showcases how the shameful misdeeds of the past reverberate into modern acts of violence... An emotional tour de force. David Jackson Ambrose, author of Unlawful Disorder Gabi Keefer flees Holocaust-era Germany with nothing but her husband, her nephew, and the clothes on her back, but that isn't the whole story. Over generations, her granddaughter, Lena, struggles with drug addiction and an unplanned pregnancy; her sort-of nephew, Zane, grieves for his wife three years after her death in an antisemitic mass shooting; and her great-niece, Miranda, advocates for Palestinian liberation against her family's wishes. Each character's tale begs the questions: What does it mean to be part of a family, what does it mean to survive, and is that enough? Trigger warning: Content in this book includes depictions or mentions of ableism, antisemitism, characters struggling with mental health, death and grief, drug abuse, domestic violence, gun violence, homophobia, misogyny, racism, statutory rape, suicide, xenophobia, and Zionism. Nicole Zelniker is the author of several books. They are represented by Daniele D. Hunter at McIntosh & Otis. Their newest book, FROM WHERE WE ARE, is available now at Bookshop, QueerBooks.com, and anywhere books are sold. Her first YA novel, ALL I KNOW SO FAR, publishes May 2025. Learn more at https://nicolezelniker.com/. Registration is free. Ticketed attendees will receive 15% off of From Where We Are. Information Source: The Purple Couch Bookshop | eventbrite