The Friends invite you to a garden party fundraiser in West Brattleboro on Saturday, August 28th, 2-5pm; rain date: Sunday, August 29th. Enjoy homemade treats in a splendid wooded garden setting at 744 Meadowbrook Rd., West Brattleboro. Tickets are $20 in advance (call the library at 802-254-5290 to RSVP and get directions). Tickets are $25 on the day.

Our late-summer fundraisers - Garden Party and Ice Cream Social - were a great success, together raising close to $5,000 to help support the library. Many thanks to Sharon Myers for hosting the Garden Party and to the Brattleboro Food Coop and Circus Minimus for their contributions to the Ice Cream Social!

Presenter: Jane Beck, founder of the Vermont Folklife Center
Time: October 6th, 7pm, via Zoom

Folklorist Jane Beck shares the story of the Turner family, a saga that spans four generations and two centuries. This rare account of the Black experience in New England covers the capture in Africa, the middle passage, two generations of enslavement, escape from bondage, and eventually a family farm on a Vermont hilltop. Jane Beck is the author of Daisy Turner's Kin, an African American Family Saga, based on sixty interviews with Turner, the daughter of enslaved people.

To register for this online talk, visit https://www.vermonthumanities.org/event/digital-daisy-turners-kin/

Presenter: Stuart Comstock-Gay, former president of the Vermont Community Foundation
Time: November 3, 7:00pm, via Zoom

The pandemic year of 2020 challenged every aspect of modern community, including our visions of equality, civility, health, and democracy. Stuart Comstock-Gay, who has spent his career addressing issues of community, democracy and civil rights, discusses how civic engagement can help us rebuild our communities and reclaim our dreams.

To register for this online talk, visit https://www.vermonthumanities.org/event/digital-philanthropy-and-civil-society-in-challenging-times/

Presenter: Laura Jiménez
Time: December 1st, 7:00pm, via Zoom

Dr. Laura Jiménez, Department Chair for Language and Literacy Education at Boston University, studies literature and literacy through a social justice lens. The current renaissance of picture books and graphic novels written by and about marginalized communities provides new ways to engage with history. Jiménez describes how contemporary authors and illustrators use visual literature to center narratives previously unseen in mainstream publishing.

To register for this online talk, visit

Presenter: Jarvis Green
Time: January 5, 7:00pm
Place: Brooks Memorial Library (in person)

Jarvis Green, founder of the Black theater company JAG Productions, invites us to reflect individually and collectively on the afterlives and the legacies of the transatlantic slave trade. Green will explore how Black queer and feminist artists have created ways to honor this history and heal ancestral trauma.

Presenter: David Mills
Time: February 2, 7:00pm, online

The oldest and largest slave cemetery in the United States is located in the shadow of Wall Street. Actor and poet David Mills reads from and discusses his award-winning poetry collection, Boneyarn, featuring groundbreaking poems about slavery in New York City, a topic rarely addressed.

David Mills holds MFAs from both New York University and Warren Wilson College and is a cum laude graduate of Yale University. He has published two full-length poetry collections in addition to Boneyarn: The Dream Detective and The Sudden Country.

To register for this online talk, visit https://www.vermonthumanities.org/event/digital-boneyarn-new-york-slavery-poems/