Latest Events in South Hadley(July Updated)

About the BookFrom the author of The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven, an atmospheric novel about family, friends, and falling in love, as a young man tries to find purpose on a struggling Icelandic cattle farm Growing up on his family’s cattle farm in western Iceland, young Orri has gained an appreciation for the beauty found in everyday things: the cavorting of a newborn calf, the return of birdsong after a long winter, the steadfast love of a good (or tolerably good) farm dog. But the outer world still beckons, so Orri leaves his no-nonsense Lithuanian Jewish mother and his taciturn father, Pabbi, to attend university in Reykjavík. Pabbi is no stranger to cycles of life and death, growth and destruction. He is pursued by the memory of a volcanic eruption and its aftermath, and so many years of hardscrabble farming have left their mark. Jaded, and no longer able to find joy in his way of life, Pabbi falls into a depression soon after Orri goes away to school. Orri, feeling adrift and aimless at the end of his first semester, comes home. For the first time, Pabbi allows Orri to help him run the farm. Despite their conflicting attitudes, Orri and Pabbi must learn to work together. Meanwhile, Orri meets a kindred spirit on the internet: Mihan, a part-time student. Over time—and countless texts and phone calls—their connection deepens. By year’s end, Orri must decide whether he wants to—or should—return to university, and what a future with Mihan would hold, if she’ll have him. With his signature blend of humor and tenderness, Nathaniel Ian Miller’s Red Dog Farm is about the bonds forged and tested between family, friends, and lovers—and the act of building a home, together. About the AuthorNathaniel Ian Miller is the author of the critically acclaimed debut novel The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven, which was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and has been translated into five languages. A former journalist for newspapers in New Mexico, Colorado, Wisconsin and Montana, he now lives with his family on a farm in Vermont. Information Source: Odyssey Bookshop | eventbrite

About the BookA brilliant queer dystopian novel from the author of Yours for the Taking, following a cast of characters on the margins of a strange and exclusive new society. The year is 2041, and it's a dangerous time to be a woman driving across the United States alone. Deadly storms and uncontrollable wildfires are pummeling the country while political tensions are rising. But Kelly's on the road anyway; she desperately needs to get back to her daughter, who she left seven years ago for a cause that she's no longer sure she believes in. Almost 40 years later, another mother, Ava, and her daughter Brook are on the run as well, from the climate change relief program known as The Inside Project, where they've spent the past 22 years being treated as lab rats. When they encounter a woman from Ava’s past on the side of the highway, the three continue on in a journey that will take them into the depths of what remains of humanity out in the wilderness. At the same time, way up North, weather conditions continue to worsen and a settlement departs in search of greener pastures, leaving behind only two members, drawn together by a circumstance and a mystery they are destined to unravel together. Set in the world of Gabrielle Korn's Yours for the Taking, The Shutouts tells the captivating story of those who have been shut out from Inside, their fight to survive, and an interconnectedness larger than all of them. About the AuthorGabrielle Korn is the author of three books and the former editor in chief of Nylon Media. Her debut memoir Everybody (Else) Is Perfect (Atria, '21) was named the number one LGBTQ+ book of the year by Oprah Magazine and the best Jewish memoir of the year by Hey Alma. Her second book, the dystopian science fiction novel Yours For The Taking (St. Martin's Press, '23), was an Indie Next pick and a New York Times best book of the month. Its recent sequel, The Shutouts (December '24), has been called another winner by Publishers Weekly and a perfect blend of sadness and hope by Kirkus. Her writing has appeared across the internet for fifteen years, with bylines in Elle, McSweeney's, The Millions, Literary Hub, InStyle, Refinery29, Oprah Magazine, Autostraddle, and more, as well as several anthologies. Originally from Providence, Rhode Island, she lived in New York for over 20 years before moving to LA with her wife, where together they run the Pink Door Artist & Writer residency. Information Source: Odyssey Bookshop | eventbrite

Join us on Thursday, March 13 at 7 PM as Tom Weiner and Amilcar Shabazz present their new book, In Defiance: 20 Abolitionists You Were Never Taught in School. About the BookInspiring stories of 20 abolitionists who risked their lives so others would be free. In Defiance is a corrective. American history has historically suffered from the systematic effort of many in power to suppress the stories of those whose lives serve as models for those who came after—models of conscience, activism, and dedication to the cause of the abolition of enslavement. Following an introduction to the history of enslavement in the Americas, twenty people’s lives, Black and white, men and women, are profiled in order to convey the monumental commitment—its source and its expression—they carried with them throughout their lives. Those people—and the circumstances that influenced, inspired, and motivated them to risk their well-being and their lives for the freedom and equality of enslaved people—are conveyed in vivid vignettes, often including their own words. Their stories are an antidote to the numerous attempts being made to deny, suppress, erase, and whitewash the actual people and events that occurred and that, in the telling, can cause discomfort. These stories need to be shared and recounted in classrooms. They are intended “to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted” as Black and white people will experience them differently, a significant reason for the authors’ choice to write the book together. The book’s other primary purpose is to inspire and embolden readers to make John Lewis’s “good trouble” and Drew Gilpin-Faust’s “necessary trouble” in the face of on-going racism, now 160 years after the proclamation that accomplished at least some of the defiant quest of the men and women whose stories the book contains. The authors bring their life experiences and activism into the telling of the stories and into the decisions about what to focus upon in the telling. It is their hope that readers will benefit from the two voices and see the importance of having such stories resonate with all people, regardless of race. As you read, consider the obstacles faced by the people profiled and then imagine what it will take for you to become an advocate for racial justice. Then take whatever action you deem necessary and remember those who came before. About the AuthorsTom Weiner is a Northampton-based writer, educator, and anti-racism activist who taught for 40 years at Smith College Campus School and co-facilitated workshops on developing healthy boys. He also initiated efforts for a Reparations Commission in Northampton, MA. Dr. Amilcar Shabazz is a professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and former president of the National Council for Black Studies. A renowned scholar and commentator, he has worked internationally and guided Amherst’s African Heritage Reparations Assembly in establishing one of the U.S.’s first funded reparative justice processes. Information Source: Odyssey Bookshop | eventbrite

About the BookEmma Donoghue, the “soul-stirring” (Oprah Daily) nationally bestselling author of Room, returns with a sweeping historical novel about an infamous 1895 disaster at the Paris Montparnasse train station. Based on an 1895 disaster that went down in history when it was captured in a series of surreal, extraordinary photographs, The Paris Express is a propulsive novel set on a train packed with a fascinating cast of characters who hail from as close as Brittany and as far as Russia, Ireland, Algeria, Pennsylvania, and Cambodia. Members of parliament hurry back to Paris to vote; a medical student suspects a girl may be dying; a secretary tries to convince her boss of the potential of moving pictures; two of the train’s crew build a life away from their wives; a young anarchist makes a terrifying plan, and much more. From an author whose “writing is superb alchemy” (Audrey Niffenegger, New York Times bestselling author), The Paris Express is an evocative masterpiece that effortlessly captures the politics, glamour, chaos, and speed that marked the end of the 19th century. About the AuthorBorn in Dublin in 1969, Emma Donoghue is an Irish emigrant twice over: she spent eight years in Cambridge doing a PhD in eighteenth-century literature before moving to London, Ontario, where she lives with her partner and their two children. She migrates between genres, writing literary history, biography, stage, and radio plays, as well as fairy tales and short stories. She is best known for her novels, which range from the historical (The Wonder, Frog Music, Slammerkin, Life Mask, The Sealed Letter) to the contemporary (Stir-Fry, Hood, Landing). Her international bestseller Room was a New York Times Best Book of 2010 and was a finalist for the Man Booker, Commonwealth, and Orange Prizes. She also wrote the screenplays for Room and The Wonder. Information Source: Odyssey Bookshop | eventbrite

From award-winning novelist and journalist Omar El Akkad comes a powerful reckoning with what it means to live in a West that betrays its fundamental values On October 25, 2023, after just three weeks of the bombardment of Gaza, Omar El Akkad put out a tweet: “One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.” This tweet has been viewed more than 10 million times. As an immigrant who came to the West, El Akkad believed that it promised freedom. A place of justice for all. But in the past twenty years, reporting on the War on Terror, Ferguson, climate change, Black Lives Matter protests, and more, and watching the unmitigated slaughter in Gaza, El Akkad has come to the conclusion that much of what the West promises is a lie. That there will always be entire groups of human beings it has never intended to treat as fully human—not just Arabs or Muslims or immigrants, but whoever falls outside the boundaries of privilege. One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This is a chronicle of that painful realization, a moral grappling with what it means, as a citizen of the U.S., as a father, to carve out some sense of possibility in a time of carnage. This is El Akkad’s nonfiction debut, his most raw and vulnerable work to date, a heartsick breakup letter with the West. It is a brilliant articulation of the same breakup we are watching all over the United States, in family rooms, on college campuses, on city streets; the consequences of this rupture are just beginning. This book is for all the people who want something better than what the West has served up. This is the book for our time. About the AuthorOMAR EL AKKAD is an author and journalist. He was born in Egypt, grew up in Qatar, moved to Canada as a teenager, and now lives in the United States. He is a two-time winner of both the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award and the Oregon Book Award for fiction. His books have been translated into thirteen languages. His debut novel, American War, was named by the BBC as one of one hundred novels that shaped our world. Information Source: Odyssey Bookshop | eventbrite

Join us on Tuesday April 8 at 7 PM as Sehba Sarwar, MHC '86, talks about her novel, Black Wings. She will be in conversation with Kavita Ramdas. About the BookSpanning two continents, BLACK WINGS is the story of Laila and Yasmeen, a mother and daughter, struggling to meet across the generations, cultures, and secrets that separate them. Their shared grief, as well as the common bond of unhappiness in their marriages, allows them to reconnect after seventeen years of frustration, anger and misunderstandings. About the AuthorMount Holyoke alumna Sehba Sarwar (’86) is the author of (Black Wings (Veliz Books) and poet and essayist whose work has appeared in Asia: Magazine of Asian Literature, Poetry in English from Pakistan, Callaloo, New York Times and elsewhere. Her short stories are anthologized in Feminist Press, Akashic Books, and Harper Collins India. While at MHC, Sarwar was part of the anti-Apartheid movement that succeeded in pushing the trustees to divest funds from South Africa. She is a recipient of multiple artist awards, her papers are archived at the University of Houston, and she serves as Altadena co-Poet Laureate (2024-26). She was born and raised in an activist home in Karachi, Pakistan. About Kavita Ramdas Kavita N. Ramdas is a globally recognized advocate for gender equity and justice. She is currently a Richard von Weisäcker Fellow of the Bosch Academy in Berlin, Germany. Her research looks at the adoption of feminist foreign policy in Germany as well as other European countries and its impact on domestic politics in Europe as well as engagement with the rest of the world. Kavita recently completed a term as the Activist in Residence at the Global Fund for Women and a semester as a visiting professor at Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA). Kavita is a speaker and thought commentator on the challenges facing philanthropy and civil society as they seek to advance goals of equitable, sustainable, and gender just development. She provides high-level consulting advice and guidance on initiatives to defend democracy and protect human rights both within the US and across the globe. In 2023, Kavita served as a senior advisor to an independent assessment of the United Nations ability to deliver on Gender Equality as part of the Sustainable Development Goals. During her tenure as Director of the Women’s Rights Program at the Open Society Foundations, the foundation made its largest ever investment in gender justice with a $100 million commitment to the Generation Equality Forum in July 2021. She is the former President and CEO of the Global Fund for Women and has served as Senior Advisor on Global Strategy to Darren Walker, President of the Ford Foundation, and was the foundation’s Representative in its South Asia office in Delhi, India. Kavita is the Principal of KNR Sisters, a consulting venture to support social justice movements and philanthropy. Information Source: Odyssey Bookshop | eventbrite

Join us on Tuesday, April 15 at 7 PM as Amity Gaige talks about her new novel, Heartwood. She will be joined in conversation by Catherine Newman. About the Book “A riveting wilderness suspense novel by a novelist at the height of her powers” (Jennifer Egan, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Candy House ), Heartwood takes you on a gripping journey as a search and rescue team race against time when an experienced hiker mysteriously disappears on the Appalachian Trail in Maine. In the heart of the Maine woods, an experienced Appalachian Trail hiker goes missing. She is forty-two-year-old Valerie Gillis, who has vanished 200 miles from her final destination. Alone in the wilderness, Valerie pours her thoughts into fractured, poetic letters to her mother as she battles the elements and struggles to keep hoping. At the heart of the investigation is Beverly, the determined Maine State Game Warden tasked with finding Valerie, who leads the search on the ground. Meanwhile, Lena, a seventy-six-year-old birdwatcher in a Connecticut retirement community, becomes an unexpected armchair detective. Roving between these compelling narratives, a puzzle emerges, intensifying the frantic search, as Valerie’s disappearance may not be accidental. Heartwood is a “gem of a thousand facets—suspenseful, transporting, tender, and ultimately soul-mending,” (Megan Majumdar, New York Times bestselling author of A Burning ) that tells the story of a lost hiker’s odyssey and is a moving rendering of each character’s interior journey. The mystery inspires larger questions about the many ways in which we get lost, and how we are found. At its core, Heartwood is a redemptive novel, written with both enormous literary ambition and love. About the Author Amity Gaige is the author of four previous novels, O My Darling, The Folded World, Schroder , and Sea Wife . Sea Wife was a 2020 New York Times Notable Book and a finalist for the Mark Twain American Voice Award. Schroder was also a New York Times Notable Book and a best book of 2013 according to The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal , among others, and was shortlisted for UK’s Folio Prize in 2014. Her work has been translated into eighteen languages. In 2018, Amity was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Fiction. She lives in West Hartford, Connecticut, with her family and teaches creative writing at Yale. About Catherine Newman Catherine Newman has written numerous columns, articles, and canned-bean recipes for magazines and newspapers, and her essays have been widely anthologized. She is the author of the novels Sandwich and We All Want Impossible Things ; the memoirs Waiting for Birdy and Catastrophic Happiness; the middle-grade novel One Mixed-Up Night ; and the bestselling kids’ life-skills books How to Be a Person and What Can I Say? She lives in Amherst, Massachusetts. Information Source: Odyssey Bookshop | eventbrite

Join us on Tuesday, April 15 at 7 PM as Amity Gaige talks about her new novel, Heartwood. She will be joined in conversation by Catherine Newman. About the Book“A riveting wilderness suspense novel by a novelist at the height of her powers” (Jennifer Egan, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Candy House), Heartwood takes you on a gripping journey as a search and rescue team race against time when an experienced hiker mysteriously disappears on the Appalachian Trail in Maine. In the heart of the Maine woods, an experienced Appalachian Trail hiker goes missing. She is forty-two-year-old Valerie Gillis, who has vanished 200 miles from her final destination. Alone in the wilderness, Valerie pours her thoughts into fractured, poetic letters to her mother as she battles the elements and struggles to keep hoping. At the heart of the investigation is Beverly, the determined Maine State Game Warden tasked with finding Valerie, who leads the search on the ground. Meanwhile, Lena, a seventy-six-year-old birdwatcher in a Connecticut retirement community, becomes an unexpected armchair detective. Roving between these compelling narratives, a puzzle emerges, intensifying the frantic search, as Valerie’s disappearance may not be accidental. Heartwood is a “gem of a thousand facets—suspenseful, transporting, tender, and ultimately soul-mending,” (Megan Majumdar, New York Times bestselling author of A Burning) that tells the story of a lost hiker’s odyssey and is a moving rendering of each character’s interior journey. The mystery inspires larger questions about the many ways in which we get lost, and how we are found. At its core, Heartwood is a redemptive novel, written with both enormous literary ambition and love. About the AuthorAmity Gaige is the author of four previous novels, O My Darling, The Folded World, Schroder, and Sea Wife. Sea Wife was a 2020 New York Times Notable Book and a finalist for the Mark Twain American Voice Award. Schroder was also a New York Times Notable Book and a best book of 2013 according to The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, among others, and was shortlisted for UK’s Folio Prize in 2014. Her work has been translated into eighteen languages. In 2018, Amity was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Fiction. She lives in West Hartford, Connecticut, with her family and teaches creative writing at Yale. About Catherine Newman Catherine Newman has written numerous columns, articles, and canned-bean recipes for magazines and newspapers, and her essays have been widely anthologized. She is the author of the novels Sandwich andWe All Want Impossible Things; the memoirs Waiting for Birdy and Catastrophic Happiness; the middle-grade novel One Mixed-Up Night; and the bestselling kids’ life-skills books How to Be a Person and What Can I Say? She lives in Amherst, Massachusetts. Information Source: Odyssey Bookshop | eventbrite

About the BookSocial Justice Dialogues in the Classroom demonstrates how pre-service and in-service teachers can initiate and hold conversations about social justice and liberation with youth of all ages in their classrooms. Educators and practitioners are facing unprecedented national challenges in the work of supporting youth around issues of social justice, making it even more important to learn how to navigate these conversations in order to support students. This book showcases how pre-service and in-service teachers can have and hold challenging conversations in the classroom, particularly around issues of race, gender, disability, classism, multilingualism, and youth oppression. Each chapter of this book features a vignette of a social justice topic, along with discussion questions and the language needed for classroom teachers to navigate these discussions. The book also has featured dialogues and examples of conversations that uphold social justice and equity ideals in the classroom, as well as examples of dialogue moments that went successfully, and how to recover from unsuccessful and unforeseen moments in dialogue. This book approaches those difficult conversations with humor, hope, and joy, showing readers that fruitful and generative conversations about social justice are possible. This book can be used in teacher preparation programs and in equity and inclusion courses, as well as by scholars interested in social justice. About the AuthorDr. Jackson Matos is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology and Education at Mount Holyoke College. His research has a broad focus on social justice with publications on Latinx student and community assets in education and transgender parent and educator pedagogies. He has published in Equity and Excellence in Education, Journal of Latinos and Education, Journal of College and University Student Housing, Journal of Queer and Trans Studies in Education, Current Opinion in Psychology, and Research in Social Issues Management. He holds a B.A. and M.A.T. from Smith College and an Ed.D. from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Matos is a licensed Massachusetts State 5-12 ELA teacher, member of the South Hadley School Committee, and lives in South Hadley with his wife, three children, and array of pets. Information Source: Odyssey Bookshop | eventbrite

About the BookFor readers of All the Light We Cannot See and In Memoriam, a moving and deeply humane story about a trans man who must relinquish the freedoms of prewar Berlin to survive first the Nazis then the Allies while protecting the ones he loves In 1932 Berlin, Bertie, a trans man, and his friends spend carefree nights at the Eldorado Club, the epicenter of Berlin’s thriving queer community. An employee of the renowned Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld at the Institute of Sexual Science, Bertie works to improve queer rights in Germany and beyond, but everything changes when Hitler rises to power. The institute is raided, the Eldorado is shuttered, and queer people are rounded up. Bertie barely escapes with his girlfriend, Sofie, to a nearby farm. There they take on the identities of an elderly couple and live for more than a decade in isolation. In the final days of the war, with their freedom in sight, Bertie and Sofie find a young trans man collapsed on their property, still dressed in Holocaust prison clothes. They vow to protect him—not from the Nazis, but from the Allied forces who are arresting queer prisoners while liberating the rest of the country. Ironically, as the Allies’ vise grip closes on Bertie and his family, their only salvation becomes fleeing to the United States. Brimming with hope, resilience, and the enduring power of community, The Lilac People tells an extraordinary story inspired by real events and recovers an occluded moment of trans history. About Milo ToddMilo Todd is a Massachusetts Cultural Council grantee and a Lambda Literary Fellow. His work has appeared in Slice Magazine and elsewhere. He is co–editor in chief of Foglifter and teaches creative writing to queer and trans adults. Information Source: Odyssey Bookshop | eventbrite

Join us on Saturday, May 10th at 3PM for an author talk with middle grade author Lisa Stringfellow! Lisa will read from her new fantasy adventure novel Kingdom of Dust and discuss how she became a writer as well as the inspiration behind her stories. This event will be followed by a Q&A and book signing. This event is part of ​Mass Kids Lit Fest and is presented in partnership with the Massachusetts Center for the Book. For a full schedule of events, please visit https://www.makidslitfest.org/. About the Book:Author of A Comb of Wishes Lisa Stringfellow returns with a West African–inspired fantasy about a girl who is determined to return both magic and justice to her people—and whose destiny holds more surprises than she could ever imagine. About the Author:Lisa Stringfellow writes middle grade fiction and has a not-so-secret fondness for fantasy with a dark twist. She is the author of two books for young readers, Kingdom of Dust and A Comb of Wishes, which Newbery Award–winning author Kelly Barnhill called “one of the most promising works of fiction in a long time.” Lisa writes for her twelve-year-old self, the kid waiting to be the brown-skinned hero of an adventure, off saving the world. Her work often reflects her West Indian and Black southern heritage. Lisa is a middle school teacher and lives in Boston, Massachusetts, with her children and bossy cat. Information Source: Odyssey Bookshop | eventbrite

Join us on Wednesday, May 21 at 7 PM as Jemimah Wei talks about her debut novel, The Original Daughter. This is the May selection of the First Editions Club. About the BookIn this dazzling debut, Stegner Fellow Jemimah Wei explores the formation and dissolution of family bonds in a story of ambition and sisterhood in turn-of-the-millennium Singapore. Before Arin, Genevieve Yang was an only child. Living with her parents and grandmother in a single-room flat in working-class Bedok, Genevieve is saddled with an unexpected sibling when Arin appears, the shameful legacy of a grandfather long believed to be dead. As the two girls grow closer, they must navigate the intensity of life in a place where the urgent insistence on achievement demands constant sacrifice. Knowing that failure is not an option, the sisters learn to depend entirely on one another as they spurn outside friendships, leisure, and any semblance of a social life in pursuit of academic perfection and passage to a better future. When a stinging betrayal violently estranges Genevieve and Arin, Genevieve must weigh the value of ambition versus familial love, home versus the outside world, and allegiance to herself versus allegiance to the people who made her who she is. In the story of a family and its contention with the roiling changes of our rapidly modernizing, winner-take-all world, The Original Daughter is a major literary debut, rife with emotional clarity and searing social insight. About the AuthorJEMIMAH WEI was born and raised in Singapore, and is currently a 2022-2024 Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. She is the recipient of fellowships, scholarships, and awards from Columbia University, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, Singapore’s National Arts Council, and more. Her fiction has won the William Van Dyke Short Story Prize, been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and has been published in Guernica, Narrative, and Nimrod, among other publications. She was recently named one of Narrative’s “30 below 30” writers, recognized by the Best of the Net Anthologies, and is a Francine Ringold Award for New Writers honouree. For close to a decade, prior to moving to the US to earn an MFA at Columbia University where she was a Felipe P. De Alba Fellow, she worked as a host for various broadcast and digital channels, and has written and produced short films and travel guides for brands like Laneige, Airbnb, and Nikon. Information Source: Odyssey Bookshop | eventbrite

Join us on Friday, May 23 at 7 PM as Rebecca Brenner Graham presents her new book, Dear Miss Perkins: A Story of Frances Perkins's Efforts to Aid Refugees from Nazi Germany. About the BookThis outstanding, inspiring new narrative of the first woman to serve in a president’s cabinet reveals the full, never-before-told story of her role in saving Jewish refugees during the Nazi regime. She was the first woman to serve in a presidential cabinet, the longest-serving Labor Secretary, and an architect of the New Deal. Yet beyond these celebrated accomplishments there is another dimension to Frances Perkins’s story. Without fanfare, and despite powerful opposition, Perkins helped save the lives of countless Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany. “Immigration problems usually have to be decided in a few days. They involve human lives. There can be no delaying,” Perkins wrote in her memoir, The Roosevelt I Knew. In March 1933, at the height of the Great Depression, Perkins was appointed Secretary of Labor by FDR. As Hitler rose to power, thousands of German-Jewish refugees and their loved ones reached out to the INS—then part of the Department of Labor—applying for immigration to the United States, writing letters that began “Dear Miss Perkins . . .” Perkins’s early experiences working in Chicago’s famed Hull House and as a firsthand witness to the horrific Triangle Shirtwaist fire shaped her determination to advocate for immigrants and refugees. As Secretary of Labor, she wrestled widespread antisemitism and isolationism, finding creative ways to work around quotas and restrictive immigration laws. Diligent, resilient, empathetic, yet steadfast, she persisted on behalf of the desperate when others refused to act. Based on extensive research, including thousands of letters housed in the National Archives, Dear Miss Perkins adds new dimension to an already extraordinary life story, revealing at last how one woman tried to steer the nation to a better, more righteous course. About the AuthorRebecca Brenner Graham is author of Dear Miss Perkins: A Story of Frances Perkins's Efforts to Aid Refugees from Nazi Germany, published by Kensington in 2025. The project began as her senior honors thesis at Mount Holyoke College in 2015. Rebecca has a PhD in history from American University. She is a postdoctoral research associate at Brown University. In 2023, she was awarded a Cokie Roberts Fellowship from the National Archives Foundation and a Rubenstein Center Research Fellowship from the White House Historical Association. Her writing has been published in the Washington Post, Time, Slate, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. Information Source: Odyssey Bookshop | eventbrite

Join us on Thursday, May 29 at 7 PM as Margot Clark-Junkins presents her book, Following the Front: The Dispatches of World War II Correspondent Sidney A. Olson. About the BookFollowing the Front is a compilation of WWII dispatches written by Sidney A. Olson for TIME and LIFE magazines, 1944-1945. Olson, who joined Time Inc. in 1939 and served as a senior editor there, asked to be assigned overseas as a war correspondent. In mid-December, 1944, he received his accreditation from the War Department and sailed for London. Attached to the European Theater of Operations (ETO), Olson followed the Allied Forces as they pushed the Nazis back into Germany. He typed up his reports and cabled them to his editors in New York. Following the front meant being on the move constantly. In late January, Olson made his way to Paris, flew to Brussels, then drove to the battlefront in Holland. From that time forward, he never really stopped moving. He would race ahead and circle back, hopping from one military division to the next, gradually making his way across Germany and into Austria. His dispatches illustrate--line by line, battle by battle--the extraordinary Allied effort to defeat Hitler. About the AuthorMargot Clark-Junkins attended Mount Holyoke College (class of ‘86) and received a MA in Design & Curatorial Studies from the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. She has worked as an independent curator, art reviewer and art educator. Since 2023, she has been writing a monthly Substack column called “Following the Front” and is also at work on a book of short stories. Information Source: Odyssey Bookshop | eventbrite

Join us on Wednesday, June 4 at 7 PM as Richard Russo talks about his new essay collection, Life and Art. He will be joined in conversation by Joan Grenier. About the BookA marvelous new essay collection from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Somebody's Fool and The Destiny Thief Life and Art—these are the twin subjects considered in Richard Russo’s twelve masterful new essays—how they inform each other and how the stories we tell ourselves about both shape our understanding of the world around us. In “The Lives of Others,” he reflects on the implacable fact that writers use people, insisting that what matters, in the end, is how and for what purpose. How do you bridge the gap between what you know and what you don’t, and sometimes can’t, know? Why tell a story in the first place? What we don’t understand, Russo opines, is in fact the very thing that beckons to us. In “Stiff Neck,” he writes of the exasperating fault lines exposed within his own family as his wife’s sister and her husband—proudly unvaccinated—develop COVID. In “Triage,” he details with heartbreaking vividness the terror of seeing his seven-year-old grandson in critical condition. And in “Ghosts,” he revisits Gloversville, the town that gave rise to the now-legendary fictional town of North Bath, and confronts the specter of its richly populated past and its ghostly present. Sharp, tender, extraordinarily intimate reflections on work, culture, love, and family from one of the great writers of our time. About the AuthorRICHARD RUSSO is the author of nine novels, most recently Somebody's Fool, Chances Are . . . , Everybody’s Fool, and That Old Cape Magic; two collections of stories; and the memoir Elsewhere. In 2002 he received the Pulitzer Prize for Empire Falls, which, like Nobody’s Fool, won multiple awards for its screen adaptation, and in 2023 his novel Straight Man was adapted into the television series Lucky Hank. In 2017 he received France’s Grand Prix de Littérature Américaine. He lives in Port­land, ME. Information Source: Odyssey Bookshop | eventbrite

Join us on Wednesday, June 11 at 7 PM as Betsy Small presents her new book, Before Before: A Story of Discovery and Loss in Sierra Leone. She will be joined in conversation by Polly Byers. About the BookSierra Leone is often sensationalized as a place of extreme violence and suffering—of blood diamonds, child soldiers, war amputations, and Ebola and now the highly addictive drug Kush. Before Before captures daily life in a different country, one Betsy Small first encountered as a Peace Corps worker between 1984–1987, and then rediscovered when she returned decades later with her daughter. Living in Tokpombu, a remote community of forty rice-farming families, the author faced struggles that changed her forever and witnessed the growing tensions in this rainforest village—between the young and old, between the traditions of oral history and honoring the ancestors valued by the elders and the siren call of the illicit diamond mines faced by the youth. Before Before offers a rare portrait of everyday people, with particular focus on the lives of women and girls, before the brutal war of 1991 tore the country apart. Through Small’s account of immersion in another world as she witnessed injustice and was welcomed as a friend, readers are invited to explore the shared ground of our humanity. About the AuthorBetsy Small served in the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone from 1984 to 1987. For over thirty years, she has worked with divided communities both in the US and abroad. This experience inspired her to write Before Before: A Story of Discovery and Loss in Sierra Leone. Betsy holds master's degrees in cross-cultural counseling psychology and special education from Teachers College, Columbia University, and North Carolina Central University. Throughout her career she has taught and provdied couneling to families and youth in schools and universities and various non profit organizations. In addition, she has served as Executive Director for global peace-building organizations, and most recently, she has collaborated with teams of peace-builders in Israel, Palestine and Cyprus and Northern Ireland. About Polly ByersPolly Byers recently stepped down as the Executive Director of Karuna Center for Peacebuilding, based in Amherst Mass, and has more than 30 years of experience working both within and outside of government channels to support peacebuilding practices and to increase local collaboration and ownership of aid and peace processes. In a career working for the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Department of State, the Congressional Select Committee on Hunger, and a range of international and non- governmental organization, she has focused on collaborative approaches to increase local engagement and ownership of aid and peacebuilding efforts. Ms. Byers holds an MA from Yale University in International Relations, a BA from Wesleyan University, and served as a PeaceCorps Volunteer in Morocco. Information Source: Odyssey Bookshop | eventbrite

Following a tight-knit, eccentric Jewish family, the Rosenbergs, over four decades, Unfinished Acts of Wild Creation combines the madness of motherhood with the manic absurdity of grief in a stunning tale for fans of Allegra Goodman and Rebecca Makkai. The night after fleeing her mother's funeral, cellist Louise Rackoff meets aspiring therapist Leon Rosenberg at a Rosh Hashanah dinner in 1974. Over the next two decades, they build a marriage and a family based on honesty, argument, and a shared appreciation of the absurd. But that rock-solid foundation crumbles when Louise is diagnosed with a rare degenerative disease--the same one responsible for her mother's slow, agonizing passing. Determined to spare Leon and their daughter Lydia from her messy decline, Louise makes the simultaneously selfish and altruistic decision to leave her family and die on her own terms. Her disappearance forces the Rosenbergs to grapple with how to find meaning in the face of mortality--a manic and mystical quest that sends them careening across the globe, colliding into tattoo artists, Chasidic Jews, playworkers, and witches. And finally, back into each other. Bursting with humor and heartbreak, and inspired by Yahm's own experience as a disabled author facing the existential terror of parenting while ill, Unfinished Acts of Wild Creation leaps into the trials of motherhood, the impossibility of adolescence, the hopelessness of grief, and all the wild beauty and hilarity that makes life worth living anyway. About the AuthorSarah Yahm has worked as an educator, oral historian, documentarian, and writer. She’s taught at colleges and universities, and in public parks and elementary schools. She’s published in Slate, Bellevue Literary Review, and placed pieces on NPR and affiliates, among others. In her work as a writer and an academic, she’s focused on the lived experience and social meaning of illness and disability. She lives in the woods in Central Vermont with her family. Information Source: Odyssey Bookshop | eventbrite

About the BookWhen a tight-knit family moves from Brooklyn to Maine, their lives are upended by an event that will alter their new community forever in this bighearted, sparkling debut for fans of Now Is Not the Time to Panic, Pineapple Street, and Schitt's Creek Hazel Blum, please report to the principal's office. Hazel Blum. When Hazel Blum's father gets a tenured job at a prestigious college, she and her family relocate from the hustle and bustle of Brooklyn to a middle-of-nowhere college town in Maine. With her mother, Claire, a clothing designer, and her father, Gus, an American Studies professor, Hazel and her eleven-year-old brother, Wolf, spend the summer at the town pool, where they acclimate to their new lives and connect with the town's sprawling community. That is, until a dramatic fallout on the very first day of her senior year tips the fickle balance of idyllic Riverburg and impacts everyone in her family. Tracking through the perspectives of each member of the Blum family, this relatable fish-out-of-water story handles big issues with great empathy and humor, capturing the love that unites one unforgettable family and the essence of life in small-town Maine. Emotionally deft, authentic, and compulsively readable, Hazel Says No is a debut novel not to be missed. About the AuthorJessica Berger Gross is the author of the memoir Estranged: Leaving Family and Finding Home. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Cut, Longreads, and many other publications. She lives in Maine with her husband and teenage son. Hazel Says No is her first novel. Information Source: Odyssey Bookshop | eventbrite

Join us on Tuesday, June 24 at 7 PM as Heather Clark presents her novel, The Scrapbook. She will be in conversation with Amanda Golden. About the Book From the award-winning author of Red Comet : The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath , a stunning debut novel: the story of an intense first love haunted by history and family memory, inspired by the startling WWII scrapbook of Clark’s own grandfather, hidden in an attic until after his death The traumas of the past and the aftershocks of fascism echo and reverberate through the present in this story of a lifechanging seduction. Harvard, 1996. Anna is about to graduate when she falls hard for Christoph, a visiting German student. Captivated by his beauty and intelligence, she follows him to Germany, where charming squares and grand facades belie the nation’s recent history and the war’s destruction. Christoph condemns his country’s actions but remains cryptic about the part his own grandfather played. Anna, meanwhile, cannot forget the photos taken by her American GI grandfather at the end of the war, preserved in a scrapbook only she has seen. As Anna travels back and forth to Germany to deepen her relationship with the elusive Christoph, her perspective is powerfully interrupted by chapters that follow both of their grandfathers during the war. One witnesses the plight of Holocaust victims in the days after liberation and helps capture Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest, while the other fights for Nazi Germany. Their fragmented stories haunt Anna and her lover two generations later—and may still tear them apart. Not a “World War Two novel” in the traditional sense, The Scrapbook delivers a consuming tale of first love, laced with a backstory of dark family legacies and historical conscience. About the Author HEATHER CLARK earned her bachelor’s degree in English Literature from Harvard University and her doctorate in English from Oxford University. Her recent awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship; the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism; the Slightly Foxed Prize for Best First Biography; a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar Fellowship; a Leon Levy Biography Fellowship at the City University of New York; and a Visiting U.S. Fellowship at the Eccles Centre for American Studies, British Library. A former Visiting Scholar at the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing, she is the author of Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath; The Grief of Influence: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes; and The Ulster Renaissance: Poetry in Belfast 1962-1972 . Red Comet was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the LA Times Book Prize in Biography, and was a New York Times Top Ten Book of 2021. Red Comet was also a “Book of the Year” in The Guardian , The Times (London), The Daily Telegraph , The Boston Globe , Lit Hub , The Times of India , Trouw (Netherlands), and elsewhere, and has been translated into five languages. Her work has appeared in publications including The New York Times , Harvard Review, Time, Air Mail, Lit Hub, and The Times Literary Supplement. She lives outside of New York City. About Amanda Golden Amanda Golden is Associate Professor of English at New York Institute of Technology and a Research Affiliate at Smith College. She is currently co-editing The Poems of Sylvia Plath with Karen V. Kukil. Golden is the author of Annotating Modernism: Marginalia and Pedagogy from Virginia Woolf to the Confessional Poets. She is co-editor of The Bloomsbury Handbook to Sylvia Plath and editor of This Business of Words: Reassessing Anne Sexton. Information Source: Odyssey Bookshop | eventbrite

About the BookFrom the award-winning author of Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath, a stunning debut novel: the story of an intense first love haunted by history and family memory, inspired by the startling WWII scrapbook of Clark’s own grandfather, hidden in an attic until after his death The traumas of the past and the aftershocks of fascism echo and reverberate through the present in this story of a lifechanging seduction. Harvard, 1996. Anna is about to graduate when she falls hard for Christoph, a visiting German student. Captivated by his beauty and intelligence, she follows him to Germany, where charming squares and grand facades belie the nation’s recent history and the war’s destruction. Christoph condemns his country’s actions but remains cryptic about the part his own grandfather played. Anna, meanwhile, cannot forget the photos taken by her American GI grandfather at the end of the war, preserved in a scrapbook only she has seen. As Anna travels back and forth to Germany to deepen her relationship with the elusive Christoph, her perspective is powerfully interrupted by chapters that follow both of their grandfathers during the war. One witnesses the plight of Holocaust victims in the days after liberation and helps capture Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest, while the other fights for Nazi Germany. Their fragmented stories haunt Anna and her lover two generations later—and may still tear them apart. Not a “World War Two novel” in the traditional sense, The Scrapbook delivers a consuming tale of first love, laced with a backstory of dark family legacies and historical conscience. About the AuthorHEATHER CLARK earned her bachelor’s degree in English Literature from Harvard University and her doctorate in English from Oxford University. Her recent awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship; the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism; the Slightly Foxed Prize for Best First Biography; a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar Fellowship; a Leon Levy Biography Fellowship at the City University of New York; and a Visiting U.S. Fellowship at the Eccles Centre for American Studies, British Library. A former Visiting Scholar at the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing, she is the author of Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath; The Grief of Influence: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes; and The Ulster Renaissance: Poetry in Belfast 1962-1972. Red Comet was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the LA Times Book Prize in Biography, and was a New York Times Top Ten Book of 2021. Red Comet was also a “Book of the Year” in The Guardian, The Times (London), The Daily Telegraph, The Boston Globe, Lit Hub, The Times of India, Trouw (Netherlands), and elsewhere, and has been translated into five languages. Her work has appeared in publications including The New York Times, Harvard Review, Time, Air Mail, Lit Hub, and The Times Literary Supplement. She lives outside of New York City. Information Source: Odyssey Bookshop | eventbrite

Welcome aboard for an unforgettable evening of **Networking on Board**! Join us on Wednesday, June 25, 2025, at 6:30 PM at The Lady Bea River Cruises for a unique networking experience. Connect with professionals from various industries while enjoying scenic views along the river. This is the perfect opportunity to make new connections, exchange ideas, and expand your network in a relaxed and casual setting. Don't miss out on this fantastic event - secure your spot now! Your hosts, Tatiana Cole of Free to Flourish, LLC and Kisha Zullo of the Women in Business Summit are thrilled to have you! Network on Board is partially funded by the Springfield Creative Cities Collective. Funds were made possible by Mass Development/TDI and the Barr Foundation as part of the broader TDI Creative cities initiative to boost the arts-based economic development. Sail the Connecticut River on the Lady Bea! Host- Tatiana Cole, MEd | Business Connector & Coach Free to Flourish, LLC Host- Kisha Zullo, MBA, CMP Events of Joy, LLC Founder, Women In Business Summit Information Source: Tatiana Cole | eventbrite

Join us on Thursday, June 26 at 7 PM as Madeline Thien and Jonas Hassen Khemiri talk about their new books, The Book of Records and The Sisters, respectively. About The Book of RecordsA novel that leaps across centuries past and future, as if different eras were separated by only a door. Lina and her father arrive at an enclave called The Sea, a staging post between migrations, with only a few possessions. In this mysterious and shape-shifting place, a building made of time, pasts and futures collide. Lina befriends her neighbors: Bento, a Jewish scholar in seventeenth-century Amsterdam; Blucher, a philosopher in 1930s Germany fleeing Nazi persecution; and Jupiter, a poet of Tang Dynasty China. Memory, political revolution, generational change, and the ethical imagination are at the heart of Lina’s illuminating conversations with her fellows in the Sea: how we come to believe what we believe, and how every person is an irreplaceable, unique vessel of history. Through the guidance of these great thinkers, Lina equips herself to reckon with difficult questions of guilt, responsibility, and the possibility of redemption when her ailing father begins to reveal his role in their family’s tragic past. As Lina confronts her father’s troubling admissions, she begins to reconceptualize the world around her, gaining a deeper understanding of how our individual futures are shaped by our political circumstances, and she relies on the collective joy of art and intellectual endeavors to carry her through difficulty. A novel that voyages between centuries, generations, and ideas, The Book of Records is an indelible testament to the migratory nature of humanity and our ceaseless search for a home—in the physical world, in cyberspace, in history, and in the imagination—in the wake of catastrophe. About Madeline ThienMadeleine Thien is the author of The Book of Records, one of Publishers Weekly’s Top 10 Literary Fiction titles for spring 2025. Her novel Do Not Say We Have Nothing was a finalist for the Booker Prize, the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, and the Folio Prize and won the Giller Prize and the Governor General's Literary Award. Her work, which has appeared in the New Yorker, Granta, and the New York Review of Books, among others, has been translated into 25 languages. Born in Vancouver, she currently lives in Montreal. About The SistersAn addictively entertaining, internationally bestselling family saga by a National Book Award finalist. Meet the Mikkola sisters: Ina, Evelyn, and Anastasia. Their mother is a Tunisian carpet seller, their father a mysterious Swede who left them when they were young. Ina is tall, serious, a compulsive organizer. Evelyn is dreamy, magnetic, a smooth talker. And Anastasia is moody, chaotic, a shape-shifting presence, quick to anger. Ina meets her future husband when she’s dragged to a New Year’s rave by her sisters, only to suffer the ultimate betrayal. Evelyn drifts through life before embarking on a wild career as an actress. And Anastasia runs off to Tunisia, where she falls in love with a woman who, years later, will transform her life. Following the sisters from afar is Jonas, the son of a Swedish mother and a Tunisian father. Over the course of three decades, his life intersects with the sisters, from a chance encounter in Tunis to the scene of a fighter jet crash in Stockholm. When Evelyn disappears on a trip to New York, Jonas manages to track her down—and helps her to break the curse that has been looming over the Mikkolas for decades. In the process, a shocking revelation changes everything about who they think they are. Narrated in six parts, each spanning a period ranging from a year to a day to a single minute, Jonas Hassen Khemiri's The Sisters is a big, vivid family saga of the highest order—an addictively entertaining tour de force. About Jonas Hassen KhemiriJonas Hassen Khemiri is the author of six novels; seven plays; and a collection of his plays, essays, and short stories. His work has been translated into more than 30 languages and his plays have been performed by more than a hundred international companies. His next book, The Sisters, will be published in English in June 2025. Information Source: Odyssey Bookshop | eventbrite

Join us on Tuesday, July 1 at 7 PM as Helen Whybrow presents her new memoir, The Salt Stones. About the book Helen Whybrow is a to-the-bone writer, and this is a to-the-bone book--beautiful, real, full of life. --Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature Sheep have helped me become a good shepherd, not just to them, but to a place that is my sustenance and joy as well as my unending labor and worry. In the heart of Vermont's Green Mountains, Helen Whybrow and her partner set out to restore an old two-hundred-acre farm. Knowing that belonging more than anything requires participation, they begin to intertwine their lives with the land. But soon after releasing a flock of Icelandic sheep onto the worn-out fields, Whybrow realizes that the art of shepherding extends far beyond the flock and fences of Knoll Farm. In prose both vivid and lean, The Salt Stones offers an intimate and profoundly moving story of what it means to care for a flock and truly inhabit a piece of land. The shepherd's life unfolds for Whybrow in the seasons and cycles of farming and family--birthing lambs, fending off coyotes, rescuing lost sheep in a storm, and raising children while witnessing her mother's decline. Exploring the interdependence of animals, as well as of the earth and ourselves, Whybrow reflects on the ways sheep connect her to place and to the ancient practice of shepherding. Evocative, affectionate, and illuminating, The Salt Stones sings of a way of life that is at once ancient and entirely contemporary, inspiring us all to seek greater intimacy and a sense of belonging wherever our home place may be. About the AuthorHelen Whybrow is the author of A Man Apart: Bill Coperthwaite's Radical Experiment in Living and Dead Reckoning: Great Adventure Writing from 1800-1900. She is also the editor of many anthologies, including Hearth: A Global Conversation on Community, Identity, and Place and Coming to Land in a Troubled World. Her writing has appeared in Cagibi, Hunger Mountain, EatingWell, and Orion. She is a visiting professor at Middlebury College and has taught at the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers' Conference. She lives in the Green Mountains of Vermont, where she shepherds a two-hundred-acre organic farm.Wren Fortunoff grew up farming and loves very long trail runs in the mountains. She has illustrated on paper bags, T-shirts, dead trees, feet, and walls. This is her first book. Information Source: Odyssey Bookshop | eventbrite

Join us on Thursday, July 10 at 7 PM as Stephen Hall talks about his new book, Slither: How Nature’s Most Maligned Creatures Illuminate Our World. He will be joined in conversation by Patricia Brennan. About the BookIn this wise and wondrous (David Quammen) exploration, a science writer reintroduces readers to The Snake, encouraging our initial reaction to the slithery creature to be one of awe rather than disgust. For millennia, depictions of snakes as alternatively beautiful and menacing creatures have appeared in religious texts, mythology, poetry, and beyond. From the foundational deities of ancient Egypt to the reactions of squeamish children today, it is a historically commonplace belief that snakes are devious, dangerous, and even evil. But where there is hatred and fear, there is also fascination and reverence. How is it that creatures so despised and sinister, so foreign of movement and ostensibly devoid of sociality and emotion, have fired the imaginations of poets, prophets, and painters across time and cultures? In Slither, Stephen S. Hall presents a naturalistic, cultural, ecological, and scientific meditation on these loathed yet magnetic creatures. In each chapter, he explores a biological aspect of The Snake, such as their cold blooded metabolism and venomous nature, alongside their mythology, artistic depictions, and cultural veneration. In doing so, he explores not only what neurologically triggers our wary fascination with these limbless creatures, but also how the current generation of snake scientists is using cutting-edge technologies to discover new truths about these evolutionarily ancient creatures—truths that may ultimately affect and enhance human health. About the AuthorStephen S. Hall has been reporting and writing about the intersection of science and society for more than 40 years. In addition to numerous cover stories in the New York Times Magazine, where he also served as a Story Editor and Contributing Writer, his work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, National Geographic, New York Magazine, Wired, Science, Nature, Scientific American, Discover, The Sciences, Hip-pocrates, Smithsonian, and more. He is also the author of six critically acclaimed non-fiction books about contemporary science. Among other honors, he has received the Walter Sullivan Award for Excellence in Science Journalism from the American Geophysical Union (2011); the Best Magazine Story of the Year from the American Association for the Advancement of Science-Kavli Foundation in 2017; and an honorary doctorate from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in 2023. He also received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2012. Since 2007 Hall has served as an adjunct professor of journalism at New York University, where he taught a core-curriculum graduate-school seminar in science writing at NYU’s Science, Health, and Environmental Reporting Program (SHERP) for ten years. He previously taught graduate seminars in science writing and explanatory journalism at Columbia University. Since 2009, he has also conducted hundreds of Science Communication Workshop sessions for scientists and doctors at NYU, Rockefeller University, Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. About Patricia Brennan Patty obtained her undergraduate degree in Marine Biology in her native Colombia. After she graduated she joined the R/V Odyssey, a 98 foot ketch doing research on marine mammal populations around the Galapagos Islands She came to the USA to pursue a PhD., and after being accepted at Cornell University in the Neurobiology and Behavior program, she decided to switch from working on marine mammals to working with birds. She worked on the elusive Great Tinamous (Tinamus major) for her PhD. She started studying bird genitalia and has now expanded to examine snakes in collaboration with Dr. Rachel Keeffe, bats- a project led by Dr Teri Orr when she was a post-doc in her lab, dolphins, a project led by her previous post-doc collaborator Dr. Dara Orbach, sharks and more recently snakes. She lives in Amherst, MA at the beautiful Amethyst Farm. She teaches at Mount Holyoke College. Information Source: Odyssey Bookshop | eventbrite

Join us on Thursday, July 17 at 7 7PM as Kate Russo talks about her new novel, Until Alison. She will be joined in conversation by Margot Douaihy. About the Book The night Alison was murdered, Rachel could have stopped it. When Rachel Nardelli finds out Alison Petrucci—her childhood rival—is found dead in Pleasant Pond, the same place the two girls had first said goodbye to each other back in eighth grade, the town of Waterbury is outraged by the fear of losing one of their own—the heir to Maine’s largest construction company. But it’s a little more complicated for Rachel. She saw Alison the night she died. Callous, she said something she shouldn’t have. She stirred up the past. The next morning, Alison was gone. Plagued by the complicated memories around Alison, Rachel joins her journalism crew to investigate the murder. But as she revisits their fraught relationship, she falls into a web of cruelties that threaten to undo everything she understood about her past. An explosive literary thriller from the acclaimed Kate Russo, Until Alison is a brilliantly incisive and resonant novel that is at once about class, gender, and the arbitrary nature of violence. About the Author Kate Russo is the author of Super Host and Until Alison. She grew up in Maine but now divides her time between there and the United Kingdom. Also an artist, she exhibits in both the US and UK. About Margot Douaihy Margot Douaihy lives in Northampton, MA, and teaches creative writing at Emerson College. She is the author most recently of the crime novel Blessed Water , and of Scorched Grace , which were both named a best crime novel of the year by The New York Times . Her third mystery in the Sister Holiday series, Divine Ruin , will be released January 2026. Information Source: Odyssey Bookshop | eventbrite

Join us on Thursday, July 17 at 7 7PM as Kate Russo talks about her new novel, Until Alison. About the BookThe night Alison was murdered, Rachel could have stopped it. When Rachel Nardelli finds out Alison Petrucci—her childhood rival—is found dead in Pleasant Pond, the same place the two girls had first said goodbye to each other back in eighth grade, the town of Waterbury is outraged by the fear of losing one of their own—the heir to Maine’s largest construction company. But it’s a little more complicated for Rachel. She saw Alison the night she died. Callous, she said something she shouldn’t have. She stirred up the past. The next morning, Alison was gone. Plagued by the complicated memories around Alison, Rachel joins her journalism crew to investigate the murder. But as she revisits their fraught relationship, she falls into a web of cruelties that threaten to undo everything she understood about her past. An explosive literary thriller from the acclaimed Kate Russo, Until Alison is a brilliantly incisive and resonant novel that is at once about class, gender, and the arbitrary nature of violence. About the AuthorKate Russo is the author of Super Host and Until Alison. She grew up in Maine but now divides her time between there and the United Kingdom. Also an artist, she exhibits in both the US and UK. Information Source: Odyssey Bookshop | eventbrite

Join us on Tuesday, July 27 at 7 PM as Polly Ingraham talks about her new book, Unconverted: Memoir of a Marriage. About the BookAs soon as Polly and Rob meet, there is electricity between them, despite the fact that Rob is a devout Divinity student and Polly does not practice a religion. When they fall in love, she begins to wonder if their union can survive their theological differences. Over time, they build a multilayered life of family and community, and Polly manages to create a comfortable space as a clergy wife. In lyrical prose that is reflective, candid, and warm, this is the story of how an extroverted nonbeliever remained true to herself through three decades of marriage, three children, and four relocations. As Polly’s husband rose through the ranks to become an Episcopal bishop, she stayed steadfast in her love of literature, sports, nature, and her family, while deepening her understanding of herself, her husband, and marriage itself. About the AuthorPolly Ingraham has had a career working primarily in high schools, both as an English teacher and (currently) a school-to-work coordinator. She graduated from Dartmouth and then earned a Masters from the Bread Loaf School of English. In 2018, she completed the year-long Grub Street Memoir Incubator program in Boston, finishing with a first draft of her book. She and her husband, Bishop Rob Hirschfeld ’83 live in Hopkinton, NH. They enjoyed living in Shutesbury, raising their three children, between 2001 - 2013, when Rob served as the Rector of Grace Church in Amherst. Back in 2011, Polly launched her Wordpress blog, The Panorama of a Pastor's Wife, keeping it going until her recent move to Substack, where she now writes Side by Side. Information Source: Odyssey Bookshop | eventbrite