CategoryReading Events

Reading and Book Signing

October 7, 2023, 5 PM
Florence Civic Center
90 Park Street
Florence, MA

Free and open to the public.

Suzanne M. Smith

Suzanne M. Smith’s devotion to her writing life has, until now, been a well-kept secret. She has worked for many years in data analysis and program evaluation, with a focus on equity in higher education and social services. Currently, she is Director of Research and Evaluation as Massachusetts Department of Higher Education. She was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, the youngest of eight children in a lively, warm family, the source of her Ag and Gunner memoir. Ms. Smith earned her Bachelor’s degree in Economics from Smith College, and her Master’s in Economics from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. She has raised two sons, Jack and Liam. She currently lives in the hills of Western Massachusetts, drawn there by her love for green open spaces and big skies.

The Zoom meeting opens at 3:45 pm on Sunday, April 23, 2023. — Elizabeth and Barbara will each read for about 30 minutes.

Contact Robin or Carol — or one of the readers — for secure access to the zoom link.

Please arrive before 4 p.m. as no one will be admitted once the reading begins.

Elizabeth Resnick

Elizabeth Resnick is a chef, farmer, and writer based variably in western Massachusetts and upstate New York, although in past iterations she has also worn the hats of international peacebuilder, immigration paralegal, literary agent’s assistant, and costume designer. She holds a BA in Middle East Studies from Brown University and her writing has been published by Peace Insight, Sonima.com, Common Ground Blog, and The Brown Daily Herald. When not procrastinating with knitting, candle-making, fermenting large vats of vegetables, yoga, or reading other people’s writing, she is in the process of editing her first novel. 

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Barbara Lucey

A Holyoke native, Barbara Lucey spent her young working life in film production. Based in California and New York, she traveled to locations throughout the US and in Europe. Upon returning to Massachusetts, she specialized in nonprofit financial management at The Food Bank of Western Mass and the Five College consortium. She’s been writing since producing her first play at age 9. Barbara is the author of Meet Jimmy Fox for young readers, with illustrations by Nancy Haver, from Gallery of Readers Press. Her fiction has appeared in a dozen anthologies and she was awarded an OCARC writer’s residency in a Provincetown dune shack. These days Barbara is a part-time nonprofit financial consultant and editor. She loves to sing jazz standards and currently is studying jazz improvisation and theory.

The Zoom meeting opens at 3:45 pm on Sunday, March 26, 2023. — Vanessa and Robin will each read for about 30 minutes.

Contact Robin or Carol — or one of the readers — for secure access to the zoom link.

Please arrive before 4 p.m. as no one will be admitted once the reading begins.

Vanessa Adel

Vanessa Adel is a writer, educator, and performer. A long-time adjunct professor in sociology, she recently left academia to pursue independent research and writing, community climate education, and performance. She is the 2021 recipient of a climate justice award for her poem, “Yes We Must” from the virtual symposium, Creative Women Leading Climate Action. She has been writing with Gallery of Readers since 2017, and lives in Northampton with her partner and their teens.

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Robin Barber

76 years ago, Robin Barber was born a quarter mile from his present home in Northampton, Massachusetts. He co-directs Gallery of Readers with his wife Carol. He’s led Monday morning and Wednesday evening writing workshops for nearly thirty years, and he feels lucky to live in such a vibrant community of talented writers. During the 1970’s back-to-the-land movement, Robin made his home in a remote mountain valley in British Columbia, Canada. He’ll read selections from his writing about this adventure.

A recording of the reading is available here.

Meryl Cohn

Meryl Cohn is a two-time semifinalist for the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, a recipient of the Jane Chambers Playwriting Award, a finalist for the Massachusetts Cultural Council Playwriting Grant, a Lark Play Development Center semifinalist, and recipient of the Eventide Arts Kaplan Playwriting Award. She is the author of Do What I Say: Ms. Behavior’s Guide to Lesbian and Gay Etiquette, published by Houghton Mifflin, and a long-running humorous advice column about love, sex, and relationships. She lives in Northampton with her partner, the writer MB Caschetta, and their poodle, Baby Cass. 

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Nancy Barnes

Nancy Barnes was a devoted New Yorker for many years, teaching cultural anthropology and education at The New School and working in the “small school” reform movement in public high schools. Now she is happily living in Northampton, writing personal essays and stories. Her work has been published in Hippocampus, Public Seminar, Pangyrus and other journals.

A recording of the reading is available here.

Walker Resnick

Walker Resnick‘s work has appeared in UMass Jabberwocky and Landmark College Impressions. He is currently editing his first novel and teaching 7th and 8th grade English at Pioneer Valley Chinese Immersion Charter School in Hadley, MA. He lives in Amherst. 

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John M. Corbett

In his youth, John M. Corbett acquired the education of a working person and learned the lessons of parenthood. These experiences gave him the lens through which to see the world, and the language to speak of it. He writes fiction in order to relieve the alienation he feels knowing that most of the folly of life goes unnoticed. In addition, his fictional characters have their own agendas, a desire for existence and attention, and he wants to indulge them in that. John is the author of Bird Life (Gallery of Readers Press, 2017).