CategoryReading Events

April 7, 2024: Larkin Pazanova and Celia Jeffries

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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.

February 11, 2024: Norma Sims Roche and Rich McKeown

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Gallery of Readers presents Norma Sims Roche and Rich McKeown reading from their work.
Sunday, February 11, 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.

Norma Sims Roche
Norma Sims Roche

Norma Sims Roche grew up on Cape Cod, but has lived in Northampton since graduating from UMass in 1977. She recently retired from her work as an editor of college textbooks on biology and geology, through which she learned many amazing things about our planet, and even remembers a few of them. She is grateful to all the attendees at Robin Barber’s Wednesday workshop, who have told her wonderful stories and kept her writing over the last 15 years. She writes mainly memoir, personal essays, poems, and fiction based on true events. She will paddle into her retirement years keeping the advice of her whitewater kayaking instructors in mind: “Keep your hips relaxed, lean downstream, and look where you want to go.”

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Richard McKeown
Richard McKeown

Richard McKeown is a visual artist and musician as well as a writer. He has recently retired from a long career working with people with substance use disorders. As he began to explore in writing his mixed feelings about retirement, the narrative quickly changed course when he received a diagnosis of Parkinson’s Disease. He plans to read from his memoir of Parkinson’s, tentatively called “Shoulder Season.” He lives in Southampton with his wife Carolyn, dog Jonas, and cat Max. Rich’s words to live by are, “You can never have too many guitars.” He has eleven.

January 14, 2024: cAROLYN mCKEOWN & pRIL COBB

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Gallery of Readers presents Carolyn McKeown and Pril Cobb reading from their work.
Sunday, January14 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.

cAROLYN mCkEOWN

Despite being a flute major in a previous life and having a degree in Environmental Journalism, Carolyn McKeown spent 40 years as a billing manager for hospitals and large group medical practices. After retiring two and a half years ago, she was shocked to find her fantasies of a spotlessly clean house, an immaculate garden and hours of free time to read the classics she never got to, would never be fulfilled. The house is in a perpetual state of dust and disarray, the garden is full of weeds and although she expects to surpass last year’s record of 116 books read, most of them have been from the 21st century. Carolyn writes, reads, knits and procrastinates in Southampton with her husband, Rich, their redbone coonhound, Jonas, and Max, the world’s most expensive cat who has used up three of his nine lives.  

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Pril Cobb
Pril Cobb

Pril Cobb has been writing first drafts of stories, poems and non-fiction off and on for the last fifty years or so.  Since retiring from the practice of law in 2019, she has devoted more time to writing and aspires to complete second, third and fourth drafts.  Pril has participated in Robin Barber’s weekly workshop for the past three years and has taken classes at Grub Street in Boston, her local writing center.  

DecEMBER 17, 2023: Lisa Ekus and Kathie Fiveash

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Gallery of Readers presents Lisa Ekus and Kathie Fiveash reading from their work.
Sunday, December 17 at 4 PM
Florence Civic Center
90 Park Street, Florence, MA

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.

Lisa Ekus

Lisa Ekus majored in American literature at Barnard College (’79) and worked in a literary agency, followed by stints at Random House and Crown Publishers in Manhattan. She founded The Ekus Group, LLC in Hatfield in 1983, a full-service culinary agency. Lisa has represented a diverse selection of food personalities, writers, cookbooks, restaurants, and food products. She also is the proud owner of more than 7,000 cookbooks. The Guinness Book of World Records recently awarded Lisa the honor of having the largest personal cookbook collection in the world. Lisa is deeply committed to volunteerism and donates her time to several non-profit organizations in the hunger, health, and humanitarian arenas. .

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Kathie Fiveash
Kathie Fiveash

Kathie Fiveash divides her year equally between Northampton, Massachusetts and Isle au Haut, a remote, unbridged island in Penobscot Bay, Maine. She is a naturalist, writer, teacher, mother, grandmother, and a faithful friend. Her book Island Naturalist, a collection of essays about natural history on the coast of Maine, won the Maine Writers and Publishers John N. Cole award for Maine-based nonfiction in 2015. A recent book of poems, Human/Nature, was published in 2022. Both are available from Penobscot Books.

November 19, 2023: Eileen P. Kennedy and Barbara A. Rouillard

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Sunday, November 19, 2023, 4 PM
Northampton Friends Meeting Hall 
43 Center Street, Suite 202
Northampton, MA

Free and open to the public. Please come join us, all are welcome!

For those how 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.

Eileen P. Kennedy

Eileen P. Kennedy is the author of two collections of poetry: Banshees (Flutter Press, 2015), which was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and won Second Prize in Poetry from the Wordwrite Book Awards, and Touch My Head Softly (Finishing Line Press, 2021) which Literary Titan has described as “emotionally-charged poetry that explores life with observant poems that will appeal to anyone who loves inspired poetry.” It was a finalist for the International Book Awards in General Poetry. She lives in Amherst, MA with the ghost of Emily Dickinson. More at EileenPKennedy.com.

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Barbara A. Rouillard

Barbara A. Rouillard, of Springfield, Massachusetts, has over eighty-five publishing credits to her name and was the recipient of both a NEH Fellowship and a Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant. She received her MA in English in 2007. She was a special education teacher at West Springfield High School for thirty-two years. In her retirement, she studies French, writes, and travels with her husband William. 

Gallery of Readers