Guest Speakers
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September 18, 2021: Celia Rabinowitz
Family, documents, silence, and history: Writing about ourselves and others
Celia Rabinowitz is Dean of Mason Library and Interim Director of the Cohen Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Keene State College. Celia has a BA in Classics & Religious Studies from Beloit College, MA in Religious Studies from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, PhD in Theology from Fordham University, and an MLS from Rutgers University. She joined Keene State College in 2014. Mason Library includes Special Collections and Archives which include collections connected to the Holocaust, New Hampshire poets, the filmmaker Louis de Rochement, and other social justice materials. She participated in the recent trip to China organized by the Monadnock Pastoral Poets & Writers group, has helped organize recent teach-ins on the Keene campus, and is an avid runner.
Location: Peterborough Town Library
Masks are required by the library.
October 16, 2021: MacDowell Fellows
For the sixth year, Monadnock Writers’ Group will meet at MacDowell, thanks to the generosity of the MacDowell staff and the willingness of two current writers in residence to share their process and work with us.
DIRECTIONS: Driving directions from the Peterborough Town Hall (the Intersection of Grove Street and Main Street) to MacDowell, 100 High Street, Peterborough. (Total distance from Town Hall to MacDowell is ONE mile.)
From the intersection of Grove and Main Streets:
- Go WEST on Main Street for 2/10 mile to VINE Street.
- Turn RIGHT on VINE Street then an IMMEDIATE LEFT onto HIGH Street.
- In 3/10 mile the road forks; STAY RIGHT AT THE FORK, STAY on HIGH Street.
- In 4/10 mile MacDowell is on the LEFT. TURN LEFT to parking.
WHERE TO PARK: Parking will be in the main lot along the pine trees off High Street, with some parking available at the Library located to the left behind the main building.
Location: James Baldwin Library on the MacDowell campus, 100 High Street, Peterborough, NH 03458
MacDowell requires proof of COVID vaccination and masks for all attendees.
November 20, 2021: Bonnar Spring
Novelist Bonnar Spring learned to read in kindergarten and never stopped. Her second novel, Disappeared, is due out from Oceanview Publishing in September 2021. Ms. Spring writes eclectic and stylish mystery-suspense novels with an international flavor. An inveterate traveler, she hitchhiked across Europe at sixteen and joined the Peace Corps after college. For twenty-five years, Bonnar has been teaching ESL—English as a Second Language—at a community college. She currently divides her time between tiny houses in NH and Abaco.
Location: Peterborough Town Library
Please Note: Given concerns about the rising cases of COVID-19 in the Monadnock Region, the MWG Board has added two more safety precautions for the in-person November 20th meeting at the Peterborough Town Library at 9:45 AM.
In addition to masks being required inside by the library:
- MWG will hold the meeting in the larger 1833 room on the second floor to allow for social distancing between seating
- MWG will require attendees to bring proof of COVID-19 vaccination to the meeting
Also, if you wish to attend this meeting by Zoom instead of in person, the Board is planning for that option as well. Details will be provided via email closer to the meeting date.
December 18, 2021: Biannual Members Read-Around
At our December meeting, members of the Monadnock Writers’ Group will read excerpts of their own work for up to ten minutes each. Every year, this is an inspirational opportunity to enjoy the creative talents of our members. The public is welcome to attend.
Location: Peterborough Town Library
Masks are required by the library. MWG requires that attendees also bring proof of COVID-19 vaccination to the meeting.
January 15, 2022: Timothy Boudreau
The Craft of Writing Short Stories
Timothy Boudreau lives in Sugar Hill, New Hampshire with his wife, Judy. His recent work appears in MonkeyBicycle, New World Writing, Retreat West, Ellipsis, and X-R-A-Y, and has been nominated for Best Microfiction and the Pushcart Prize. His collection Saturday Night and other Short Stories is available through Hobblebush Books.
Find him on Twitter at @tcboudreau or at timothyboudreau.com.
Location: Peterborough Town Library
Masks are required by the library. MWG requires that attendees also bring proof of COVID-19 vaccination to the meeting.
February 19, 2022: Gary Sampson and Inez McDermott
New Hampshire Now: A Photographic Diary of Life in the Granite State
Photographer Gary Samson and art historian Inez McDermott will discuss the publication of New Hampshire Now: A Photographic Diary of Life in the Granite State, published in October 2021 by the New Hampshire Historical Society: “Inspired by the Farm Security Administration photography documenting life in America during the Great Depression, the New Hampshire Society of Photographic Artists and the New Hampshire Historical Society joined forces to undertake a three-year project to photographically record daily life in the state. This book is the result of nearly 50 photographers covering the seven regions of the Granite State, making thousands of images that create a 21st-century portrait of the people, places, culture, and events in New Hampshire. “
Gary Samson is the former Artist Laureate of New Hampshire and has played an active role in in the state’s art and education communities for 45 years. He has received numerous awards, grants and fellowships for his work. Gary has taught photography courses and workshops regionally and internationally since 1981 and his career in photography started in 1971 at the University of New Hampshire where he served as the University Filmmaker and Manager of Photography.
Inez McDermott is an art historian and educator who has curated several photography exhibitions throughout her career. Inez has coordinated a lecture series which is intended to help audiences make important connections between the New Hampshire Now project and the tradition and impact of documentary photography in American history.
Location: Gary and Inez will be presenting via Zoom. You can attend from home on your own computer or see them on a large screen at the library.
Masks are required by the library. MWG requires that attendees also bring proof of COVID-19 vaccination to the in-person meeting.
Instructions for attending the Zoom meeting will be provided a few days before the presentation.
March 19, 2022: Howard Mansfield
Renowned author Howard Mansfield of Hancock will talk about his new book, Chasing Eden. Howard Mansfield sifts through the commonplace and the forgotten to discover stories that tell us about ourselves and our place in the
world. He writes about history, architecture, and preservation. He is the author of a dozen books, including In the Memory House, The Bones of the Earth, The Same Ax, Twice, and Dwelling in Possibility: Searching for the Soul of Shelter, which The Boston Globe called “a wholly original meditation that’s part observation of the contemporary built environment, part cultural history, part philosophical account, and at times something like a Whitmanian poetic survey.”
To learn more about Howard Mansfield, please visit: https://www.howardmansfield.com
Location: Peterborough Town Library
Masks are optional and not currently required by the library. And MWG no longer requires proof of COVID-19 vaccination at its meetings.
April 16, 2022: Becky Sakellariou and Henry Walters
Becky Dennison Sakellariou was born and raised in New England and has lived all of her adult life in Greece. Recently, she has been “making her way home” to New Hampshire in the United States, where she now spends half of every year.
Over the past twenty years, she has published in a wide variety of journals, and in 2005, her chapbook, The Importance of Bone, was published by Blue Light Press. Earth Listening was volume II in the Hobblebush Granite State Poetry Series. Her third book, What Shall I Cry?, was published by Finishing Line Press. In 2014, Hobblebush Books published The Possibility of Red, a bilingual edition of her poems translated into Greek by poet Maria Laina. Her latest book is Undressing the Earth published by Kelsay Books. Becky has won numerous prizes from individual small presses and has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Poetry Anthology.
Henry Walters was born in Chicago in 1984 and grew up in Clinton, Michigan. After studying Latin and Greek as an undergraduate at Harvard University, he worked as a falconer in Ireland and a beekeeper in Sicily. His first book of poems, Field Guide A Tempo was a finalist for the 2016 Kate Tufts Discovery Award. A second volume, The Nature Thief is due out from The Waywiser Press in Spring, 2021. His poems, essays, reviews, and translations have appeared in journals such as Asymptote, The Iowa Review Online, Orion, and The Threepenny Review. He lives in New Hampshire with his young family.
Location: Peterborough Town Library
Masks are optional.
May 21, 2022: Biannual Members Read-Around
Our second biannual Members Read-Around this season will be held in May rather than June. Members of the Monadnock Writers’ Group will read excerpts of their own work for up to ten minutes each. Every year, this is an inspirational opportunity to enjoy the creative talents of our members. The public is welcome to attend.
Location: Peterborough Town Library
Masks are optional.
June 18, 2022: Jack Davis
Harrisville summer resident Jack E. Davis, historian, author, and winner of the Pulitzer Prize in History for The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea, will talk about his new book The Bald Eagle: The Improbable Journey of America’s Bird. His previous book, An Everglades Providence: Marjory Stoneman Douglas and the American Environmental Century, a dual biography of America’s premier wetlands and the woman who led a movement to save it, won the gold medal in nonfiction from the Florida Book Awards.
Location: Bass Hall, Monadnock Center for History and Culture, 19 Grove St, Peterborough
Please check the Monadnock Center’s website for their COVID policy on the day of the meeting.
Bass Hall is not equipped for Zoom, so this will be a live meeting only.
Monadnock Writers' Group 