Identity, Nature & the Environment Wednesday, March 1, 2017, 7:00 PM Coolidge Museum Our identities - our race, ethnicity, gender, class - are vital to how we see nature. In this event, we explore how identity intersects with history and politics to shape our interactions with and understanding of the environment around us. READERS: Mistinguette Smith writes across boundaries between race and culture, urban and rural, academic and vernacular. She is a poet, essayist and director of The Black/Land Project, which uses narrative research and community workshops to understand the nature of race, land and place. Her poems and essays have appeared in black LGBT anthologies including Does Your Mama Know, and Other Countries: Voices Rising and literary journals, including Pluck! A Journal of Affrilachian Arts and Culture. Her creative non-fiction about race, land and place has appeared in YES! Magazine, Belt Magazine, The Common Online and in the textbooks The Colors of Nature: A Teaching Guide and Wildness: Relations of People and Place forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press in 2017. As a public scholar she has co-authored critical theory about race, geography and collaboration for academic journals including Departures in Critical Qualitative Research, American Quarterly, and Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education and Society. Tracing memory threads Lauret Edith Savoy’s life and work: unearthing what is buried, re-membering what is fragmented, shattered, eroded. A woman of African American, Euro-American, and Native American heritage, she writes about the stories we tell of the American land’s origins and the stories we tell of ourselves in this land. Her books include Trace: Memory, History, Race, and the American Landscape; The Colors of Nature: Culture, Identity and the Natural World; Bedrock: Writers on the Wonders of Geology; and Living with the Changing California Coast. Trace was a finalist for both the 2016 PEN American Open Book Award and Phillis Wheatley Book Award, as well as shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. Lauret is a professor of environmental studies and geology at Mount Holyoke College, a photographer, and pilot. Winner of Mount Holyoke’s Distinguished Teaching Award, she has also held fellowships from the Smithsonian Institution and Yale University. She is a Fellow of the Geological Society of America. Naila Moreira is a writer, journalist, and naturalist whose work often focuses on the natural world. Her 2014 poetry chapbook Gorgeous Infidelities was published as an art book in collaboration with photographer Paul Ickovic. Her latest chapbook,Water Street was published by Finishing Line Press. Set in an old converted farmhouse apartment by the Mill River, it explores the conflict between freedom and domesticity, reflected in the natural world. She has written for the Boston Globe, Seattle Times, Science News and Detroit Free Press, appeared in literary magazines including The Cape Rock, Pirene’s Fountain and the Naugatuck River Review, and contributes a monthly environment column to the Daily Hampshire Gazette. She teaches at Smith College with a focus on science and nature writing. She is the Writer in Residence at Forbes Library. For questions concerning access or to request accommodations, please contact 413-587-1017 or info@forbeslibrary.org. Two weeks notice requested.
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The Forbes Library reading series, The Modern Real and Surreal: Writers and Artists on Our Age, is in its second season. The series explores contemporary themes on the premise that libraries offer vibrant spaces to engage with and explore our era's most pressing questions – that in their surprises and contradictions can be understood through either a realistic lens, or through fantasy, science fiction and the surreal. The series invites the community to join us in examining how story and art can provide empathy and insight in our accelerating world. The series will feature writers in genres ranging from fiction to nonfiction to poetry. National and international politics, challenges in science and the environment, and social justice from incarceration to refugee issues will be important themes this year. And, of course, some art is meant just to entertain - and the series will have a smattering of pure fun. Curated and moderated by Forbes writer in residence Naila Moreira, the series meets in the Coolidge Museum on the first Wednesday of each month. Naila Moreira is an essayist, poet, and science journalist. Her work frequently focuses on themes of science and nature, drawing on her past experiences in the sciences, including her doctoral work in geology. Her articles and essays, including nonfiction for children, have been published numerous venues, including The Boston Globe, The Seattle Times, Science News, The Common Online, and Science News for Students. She is the author of the poetry chapbook Gorgeous Infidelities, an art book published by Impossible Dream Editions in collaboration with internationally recognized photographer Paul Ickovic. She works at Smith College as a lecturer in the English Department and a writing instructor in the Jacobson Writing Center, and teaches a science and nature writing course for high school girls in Smith’s Summer Science and Engineering Program. She recently completed her first children’s novel and is at work on a novel for adults.
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Mystery, Horror, and the Northampton State Hospital
Wednesday, October 5, 7:00 pm
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Political Poetry
Wednesday, November 2, 7:00 pm
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Literature From and About Prison
Wednesday, December 7, 7:00 pm
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Celebration of Local Novelists
Wednesday, January 11, 7:00 pm
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Literature and Poetry of Brazil Wednesday, February 1, 7:00 pm
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Identity, Nature, and the Environment
Wednesday, March 1, 7:00 pm
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War, Conflict, and Refugees: The Literature of Crisis
Wednesday, April 12, 7:00 pm
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Writers as Climate Activists
Wednesday, May 10, 7:00 pm
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