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/

Last chance:  if you missed the Book Sale in November, you can still shop for remainders, on sale during regular library hours until January 8th. In addition to books, you'll find CDs, DVDs, and puzzles - all in good condition and sale priced!

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/

Presenters: Diana Whitney, Shanta Lee Gander, Christal Brown
Time: April 6, 7:00pm
Place: Brooks Memorial Library (in person)

Poets and writers Diana Whitney and Shanta Lee Gander join Christal Brown, associate professor of Dance at Middlebury College, in a conversation that explores how girlhood and womanhood in America are manifested across the boundaries of poetry, dance, and lived experience.

Diana Whitney’s edited work "You Don’t Have to Be Everything: Poems for Girls Becoming Themselves" ranges across intersectional, intergenerational, and gender-fluid voices.

In "GHETTOCLAUSTROPHOBIA: Dreamin of Mama While Trying to Speak Woman in Woke Tongues" Shanta Lee Gander navigates between formal and vernacular styles to examine butterflies and female sexuality, vulnerability, classical Greek myths, and more.

Christal Brown’s original dance piece “The Opulence of Integrity” was inspired by the public life and inner searching of Muhammad Ali, boxing’s outspoken superstar.

Presenter: Anne Moore
Time: May 4, 7:00pm
Place: Brooks Memorial Library (in person)

From Dickens to Game of Thrones, stories told in piecemeal style have shown their power to command a reader’s attention. In this apt talk for “Star Wars Day,” author Anne Moore examines how Star Wars’ serialized structure encourages readers to fill the gaps between installments with their own imaginative play.

Anne Moore is the author of After the Break: Serials, Fandom, and the Feeling of Reading, slated for publication by MacFarland Press in 2022.

Come take part in the Friends' Annual Meeting on May 18, 4:30pm (via Zoom*) to discuss and vote on the 2022-2023 Proposed Budget. It will be our biggest budget ever. Highlights include: Adult Programs ($4,000) enabling more programs in anticipation of the library opening up Children's Room ($4,800) same as above, plus more materials Young […]

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