Brattleboro First Wednesdays

The pandemic year of 2020 challenged every aspect of modern community, including our visions of equality, civility, health, and democracy. Stuart Comstock-Gay, former president of the Vermont Community Foundation, discusses how civic engagement can help us rebuild our communities and reclaim our dreams. (Registration required.) Read More »

The current renaissance of picture books and graphic novels written by and about marginalized communities provides new ways to engage with history. Latinx scholar Laura Jiménez describes how contemporary authors and illustrators use visual literature to center narratives previously unseen in mainstream publishing. (Registration required.) Read More »

Jarvis Green, founder of the Black theatre company JAG Productions, invites us to reflect individually and collectively on the afterlives and the legacies of the transatlantic slave trade. Green will explore how Black queer and feminist artists have created ways to honor this history and heal ancestral trauma. Registration required. Read More »

The oldest and largest slave cemetery in the United States is located in the shadow of Wall Street. Actor and poet David Mills reads from and discusses his award-winning poetry collection, Boneyarn, featuring groundbreaking poems about slavery in New York City, a topic rarely addressed. (Registration required.) Read More »

Singer and historian Linda Radtke, in period garb and a “Votes for Women” sash, celebrates the centennial of the passage of the 19th Amendment, which gave the right to vote to white women. Read More »

Poets and writers Diana Whitney and Shanta Lee Gander join Christal Brown, associate professor of Dance at Middlebury College, in a conversation that explores how girlhood and womanhood in America are manifested across the boundaries of poetry, dance, and lived experience. Read More »

From Dickens to Game of Thrones, stories told in piecemeal style have shown their power to command a reader’s attention. In this apt talk for “Star Wars Day,” author Anne Moore examines how Star Wars’ serialized structure encourages readers to fill the gaps between installments with their own imaginative play. Read More »