Gallery of Readers presents Opal Gayle & Rachel Hass reading from their work.
Sunday, April 13, 2025, at 4 PM
Florence Civic Center
90 Park Street
Florence, Massachusetts
Free and open to the public. Please come join us, all are welcome!
For those who can’t or prefer not to attend in person, a Zoom session will be available from 3:45 p.m. EDT on the day of the reading. (Be aware no admittance to the Zoom session after 4:05 p.m. for security purposes). Contact Robin or Carol — or one of the readers — for secure access to the zoom link.
Opal Gayle
Opal Gayle grew up in rural Jamaica. She is the recipient of the 2019 St Botolph’s Club Foundation Emerging Artist Grant and a finalist in the 2021 Miami Book Fair Emerging Writers Fellowship. A member of Gallery of Readers, Valley Society, and Boston Writers of Color, she writes memoir, essays, short stories, and poetry. Her personal essays have appeared in the Write Angles Journal, WOW: Women on Writing, Stargazing Stories, and Switch. She lives in New England where she works as a world language teacher. Follow her on instagram @opalgayle78.
Rachel Hass
Rachel Hass has published short stories in The Louisville Review, The Jabberwock Review and The Vermont Literary Review. An excerpt from a longer work of fiction Sand, was selected for an honorable mention in the Santa Fe Writer’s Project Literary Awards Program. Currently at work on a novel set in Berlin during the Second World War, the story is based on parts of her own German Jewish family history and inspired by her great-grandfather, who hid throughout the war, and survived, and helped other Jews to hide. Born in London, and raised in Cambridge, MA, Rachel Hass first came to Western MA to attend Hampshire College where she studied writing with Nina Payne and Andrew Salkey. A graduate of the MFA in writing program at Vermont College, Rachel has lived in Northampton for more than 30 years.