CategoryReading Events

Gallery of Readers presents Don Wheelock and Janine Roberts reading from their work.
Sunday, October 20, 2024, 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.

Janine Roberts

Janine Roberts, Professor Emerita, UMass, Amherst and former President, American Family Therapy Academy has authored 4 books including The Body Alters (chapbook with Slate Roof Press), others with HarperCollins and Norton Press, and over 70 personal essays and articles. An editor of four different journals, she has edited (in varied settings), thousands of papers, book chapters, dissertations, and poems. Her most recent op-ed in the Hampshire Gazette is entitled, Unraveling My Own White Supremacy. A native of Washington State, relocated to Leverett, MA via Kuwait, Mexico, Ghana, and other countries, she works with community groups on projects such as the Leverett Poetry Boxes, the Native Names boxes for Kestrel Trust, and most recently with students at Leverett Elementary on Flora and Fauna boxes out on hiking trails. Her creative programs often include community workshops on writing poetry. Her current favorite role is as Nene, grandmother to Cadence.

Don Wheelock

Composer Donald Wheelock, Irwin and Pauline Alper Glass Professor Emeritus of Music at Smith College, began writing poems in his twenties, often for the purpose of setting them to music. Many of his poems soon declared their independence from that purpose, however. In the last few years he has revived some of those early poems to add to the many he has recently written, successfully submitting them to publications that welcome formal poetry. His chapbook In the Sea of Dreams is availablethrough Gallery of Readers Press. It’s Hard Enough to Fly, his first full-length book of poems, was published by Kelsay Books in 2022. His second full-length book, With Nothing but a Nod, appeared last spring from David Robert Books.  Wheelock’s poems are reflective formal structures depicting landscapes, familiar experiences, and everyday encounters from the vantage point of a man later in life. Fanciful observations of the workings of the natural world rub up against memories of problematic human interaction. Words and music mingle here. Wheelock lives with his wife Anne in an old house on the edge of a hayfield in Whately, Massachusetts.

Gallery of Readers presents Doug Anderson and Rebecca Hart Olander reading from their work.
Sunday, September 29, 2024, at 4 PM

Florence Civic Center
99 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.

Doug Anderson

Doug Anderson’s first full length book of poems, The Moon Reflected Fire, won the Kate Tufts Discovery Award; Blues for Unemployed Secret Police won a grant from the Academy of American Poets. His third book, Horse Medicine, was published by Barrow Street, and his most recent book, Undress, She Said, was published by Four Way Books. Poems from these books have won two Pushcart Prizes, a fellowship from The National Endowment for the Arts, and grants from the Massachusetts Artists Foundation and Massachusetts Cultural Council. He won the Emily Balch Prize from the Virginia Quarterly Review. He has published poetry in the Massachusetts Review, Field, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, and many other literary journals.  His memoir, Keep Your Head Down, was published by W.W. Norton in 2009. 

Rebecca Hart Olander

Rebecca Hart Olander’s poetry and collaborative visual and written work has appeared in print, online, and in multiple anthologies. A winner of the Women’s National Book Association Poetry Award, her books include Dressing the Wounds (dancing girl press, 2019) and Uncertain Acrobats (CavanKerry Press, 2021), an Eric Hoffer Book Award Category Finalist and a Massachusetts Center for the Book “Must-Read” selection. Rebecca has taught writing at Amherst and Smith colleges, Westfield State University, and through Pioneer Valley Writers’ Workshop, and she works with poets in the Maslow Family Graduate Program in Creative Writing. She is the editor/director of Perugia Press.

Gallery of Readers presents Anna Pertzoff and Susan Cocalis reading from their work.
Sunday, June 2, 2024, at 4 PM

Eli’s Room at Northampton Center for the Arts
33 Hawley Street
Northampton, 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.

Susan Cocalis

Susan Cocalis, storyteller, comic, certified champion cruciverbalist, and a gratefully recovering academic, lives in Northampton, Massachusetts with her boxer. Susan’s hobbies may appear puzzling to some, but not if you know her well. She was born to be retired.

Anna Pertzoff

Anna Pertzoff holds an undergraduate degree in metalsmithing from The School of The Art Institute of Chicago and a Master’s of Education from Smith College. She is a fan of jigsaw puzzles, relishes exploring new cities and countries but hates the travel to get to them, loves to read Southern Gothic writers, non-fiction and poetry.  She is perpetually at least 6 months behind on The New Yorker and fears she’ll never catch up. She lives in Florence, Massachusetts with her amazing husband, Jeremy, and their All Things Small Sisters from Different Litters mutt pups, Penny and Peanut.

Gallery of Readers presents Elaine Buckley & Christine Lehner reading from their work.
Sunday, May 5, 2024, at 4 PM
Florence Civic Center
90 Park Street, Florence, MA
(next door to Lilly Library)

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.

Elaine Buckley

In Elaine’s last position before retiring, she was an advocate for people with disabilities. Her job was assisting people in long-term facilities to return to the community. Elaine is a life-long fiction writer. Her work has appeared in Peregrine, Bull Magazine and Allium. She is working on her memoir. 

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Christine Lehner

Christine Lehner was educated in Egypt, Massachusetts, California, Rhode Island, and Mexico. She has published three books, Expecting, What to Wear to See the Pope (short stories) and Absent a Miracle, and numerous short stories in assorted literary magazines. In the past, and maybe the future, she writes the blog, Sort Quench, and Dump: https://sortquenchdump.blogspot.com/ She is only truly fluent in one language, but still tries to gain fluency in others. She lives near the Hudson River with her husband, her dog and a few thousand bees.

Gallery of Readers presents Larkin Pazanova and Celia Jeffries reading from their work.
Sunday, April 7, 2024, at 4 PM
Florence Civic Center
90 Park Street, Florence, MA
(next door to Lilly Library)

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.

Celia Jeffries

Celia Jeffries is the author of the award-winning novel Blue Desert. Her work has appeared in numerous newspapers and literary magazines including Westview, Writer’s Chronicle, Solstice Literary Magazine, and Puerto del Sol, as well as the anthology Beyond the Yellow Wallpaper. Jeffries holds an MA from Brandeis and worked in news and educational publishing before earning an MFA from Lesley University. 

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Larkin Pazanova

Larkin Pazanova is a writer, visual artist and audio producer. She/they have narrated, recorded and produced two titles for Audible and recently began an adventure called Podcast for Spirit – a limited series podcast chronicling their journey with a friend to visit sacred sites connected to the divine feminine in Southwestern Europe. In between tinkering with sound files and researching healing practices in storytelling, Larkin loves crafts like quilting and paper cutting, gets her terrier puppy living his best life, and studies wisdom traditions such as Buddhism and Taiji, as well as Scandinavian and Slavic Folk medicine. They’re also thrilled to be the new host of a Gallery of Readers podcast currently in the works.