Upcoming Author Events & Readings
3 upcoming author events and readings from Needham Free Public Library, with dates, venues and ticket links taken from the organization’s own pages and refreshed weekly. All readings in Greater Boston →
Tue Oct 20 · 7:30pm
Sherri Stepakoff discusses Sanctuary at Unity Farm, her debut poetry collection, drawn from her time as the first poet-in-residence at Unity Farm Sanctuary, a refuge for farmed animals in Sherborn; in "poems of grace and humor" she writes about the animals she visited there. Her work has appeared in Passagers and Off the Coast. Kathy Halamka, who cofounded the Sanctuary in 2016 with her husband John Halamka, joins her.
Tue Nov 17 · 7pm
Nathaniel Philbrick discusses The Rush: California Gold, the Civil War, and the Making of the Modern World, which begins with the 1848 strike at Sutter’s Mill and traces how California’s rise “helped push a fractured nation toward war.” Philbrick, whose In the Heart of the Sea won the National Book Award, talks with Randall MacLowry, the filmmaker behind The Gold Rush for PBS’s American Experience.
Sun Nov 22 · 2pm
Bill Leeman, a professor at Salve Regina University, discusses The Long Road to Annapolis and the story of John Paul Jones, the Scottish émigré who became a Revolutionary War sea captain and argued for better education and training for American naval officers. Largely forgotten afterward, Jones was reclaimed as “Father of the American Navy” by Theodore Roosevelt, who was building support for a larger navy.
