Events

In 1837, a young Henry David Thoreau sets out to lead an extraordinary life in Concord, Massachusetts, combating formidable obstacles. He struggles to find work as a teacher, to discover his voice as a writer, and to realize true friendship and romantic love, battling all the while against the “family disease” that threatens his health.…

What does it mean to write the story of women whose lives were lived in relation—to each other, to their families, and to their cultural moment? Historian Kate Culkin takes up this challenge in her new book Emerson’s Daughters, the first full-length biography of Ellen Tucker Emerson and Edith Emerson Forbes, daughters of Ralph Waldo and Lidian Jackson…

A Book Talk with Jen Tota McGivney Register to Attend In-Person The hero for our time is someone few people get right. Thoreau wasn’t a hermit in the woods. He lived during a time like ours, of rapid technological and economic changes, political division, and a pandemic. Thoreau, like us, reassessed his priorities: What does…

Join author Kristen Case for a reading and conversation drawn from her new book, Henry David Thoreau’s Kalendar (Milkweed Editions), an exploration of Thoreau’s final work. Focusing on the chapter “Gossamer Days,” Case reflects on Thoreau’s return to his seasonal charts in the final months of his life, when illness confined him to his house on Main…

Join us for a lively and luminous evening with celebrated poet, scholar, and memoirist Dr. Barbara Mossberg, as she brings to life her latest work, Clown Cantos: Everything Is Alive In Its Own Way, Singing. Inspired by Radiotopia’s Everything Is Alive, Dolly Parton, Dante, Dickinson, Einstein, Emerson—and always, Thoreau—Mossberg invites us to hear the hidden music of the…

No story is like yours — and your telling it is powerful and necessary. Join this workshop to find your woods and tell your story. In this two-day workshop, national memoirist & distinguished teacher Dr. Barbara Mossberg invites you “to the woods” — a place to find focus, inspiration, connection, and support for developing your…

Dr. Julie Brown will share her ideas about Thoreau’s place on the autism spectrum.  She believes that his neurobiology influenced the content, themes, and style of his writing.  Walden functions not only as a type of autistic memoir, but as a “self-help” guide that could be of great value to others on the spectrum. Through…

Join Linda Coombs (Aquinnah Wampanoag) as she discusses her ground-breaking Young Adult book, Colonization and the Wampanoag Story, part of the Race to the Truth Series published by Penguin Random House that seeks to correct some of the long-standing myths about American history. The book has attracted many readers for its compelling story of a young…