Browse this complete list of our upcoming digital and in-person events. Visit the Attend page to find links to events that are sorted by program.
March 27
One biography each year is awarded a Pulitzer Prize, but these character studies wouldn’t count – each is a Pulitzer-winning work of fiction, with portions based on one person’s real life story. All the King’s Men is a 1946 novel by Robert Penn Warren. Its title is drawn from the nursery rhyme “Humpty Dumpty”.
April 1
Bring a friend or family member to share a short story about finding yourself in new places or situation. Your story will be edited by teens and shared with the wider community as part of our 2023 Vermont Reads Programming about “The Most Costly Journey.” Prompts and easy-to-follow instructions will be available, along with help from a youth librarian.
April 1
A round table discussion facilitated by Dr. Alan Berolzheimer, Project Historian and Assistant Director at The Flow of History, will lead conversation centered on the human experience explored in The Most Costly Journey.
April 2
This series invites readers to learn more about Robert Frost’s life and the diversity of his writings. Robert Frost is commonly regarded as America’s greatest poet. Among his many honors are four Pulitzer Prizes and an appointment as Consultant in Poetry at the Library of Congress.
April 2
The First Amendment prevents Congress from passing any laws that abridge the freedom of speech. But what does that actually mean? Professor Meg Mott considers the history of speech laws in the United States, how states and municipalities have tried to curb offensive speech, and how the Supreme Court has ruled on those efforts.
April 4
Through Whitman’s poetry and letters, actor Stephen Collins helps us experience the poet’s growth into a mature artist who is at peace about “himself, God and death.”
April 5
National Book Award finalist Kekla Magoon discusses her award-winning nonfiction book, Revolution in Our Time: The Black Panther Party’s Promise to the People. The Vermont author also considers the importance of reading as a tool for social change, and our individual and collective power to transform our communities.
April 5
Jolivette Anderson-Douoning shares the lived experience of Mrs. Goldleana, whose story illuminates the role Black women played as laborers in the Louisiana cotton and timber industries—and in their own families—in the 1940s and 50s. She also highlights geographical differences in Black migration: some left the South while others remained.
April 5
Poet Keiselim (Keysi) Montás discusses how to read the traditional Japanese poetic form of haiku, illustrated with works from his haiku collection, Like Water.
April 5
For 100 years—from the 1850s to the 1950s—Vermont was the most Republican state in the nation. But today it is the most Democratic. Journalist Chris Graff considers some factors behind the switch from “red to blue,” including interstate highways, the arrival of IBM in Vermont, and the reapportionment of the Vermont House.
April 5
Author and Middlebury professor Gloria Estela Gonzalez Zenteno discusses her new novel Arribada, about a woman pushed to confront her role in environmental and social injustice, and a well-to-do family’s realization that their comfortable position rests on crimes against the natural world, their town, and their loved ones.
April 5
Celebrated cartoonist Alison Bechdel discusses her work as an illustrator and memoirist, including her most recent book, The Secret to Superhuman Strength, a graphic memoir about her lifelong love affair with exercise that won the 2021 Vermont Book Award.
April 5
This presentation examines the many meanings of maple sugaring. Maple is enormously important to Vermont’s economy, ecology, and heritage. Champlain College professor Michael Lange will discuss sugaring ethnographically, based on over five years of research among sugarmakers all over the state, to learn from them what sugaring really means to Vermont.
April 6
Selected by President Obama as the fifth inaugural poet in US history, Richard Blanco is the first Latino, immigrant, and gay person to serve in such a role. Born in Madrid to Cuban exile parents and raised in Miami, the negotiation of cultural identity characterizes his four collections of poetry.
April 7
In this free live-streamed presentation for Vermont middle and high school students, poet Richard Blanco reads from and discusses his work.
Selected by President Obama as the fifth inaugural poet in US history, Blanco is the first Latino, immigrant, and gay person to serve in such a role. Born in Madrid to Cuban exile parents and raised in Miami, the negotiation of cultural identity characterizes his four collections of poetry.
April 7
Join us for “The Line Becomes a River” by Francisco Cantu book discussion at the Bugbee Senior Center. We will also be looking at ‘The Most Costly Journey.”
April 12
Middlebury College professor Kemi Fuentes-George traces the development of pan-African political theory in the early 20th century and discusses how Afro Caribbean “rebel music” helped these ideas challenge established assumptions about nonwhite people and global relations.
April 12
Disability, as part of the human condition, has always been with us. But considering disability to be negative is a new concept, shaped by recent history. Professor of philosophy, author, and disability activist Patrick Standen unravels the complicated, fascinating, and controversial history of the concept of disability.
April 13
Come join in an interesting and informative community book discussion of The Most Costly Journey, a Vermont Reads book drawn by New England cartoonists.
April 15
In this interactive speaking event Vermont’s leading non-profit group fighting for farmworkers rights, Migrant Justice, will discuss the Milk With Dignity campaign. Migrant Justice will be giving an informational talk about the campaign while providing attendees functional tools and call to actions for supporting the rights of Vermont’s migrant farmworker population.
Poet Sarah Audsley joined us at the Taconic Mountains Ramble State Park for Words in the Woods.
Humanities Camps are filled with reading and writing projects, field trips, and outdoor activities.
We won a 2020 Schwartz Prize for best public humanities programming in the U.S. for Vermont Reads 2019: “March: Book One.”
We supported Historic New England’s “More than a Market” project that explored the experiences of new Americans through food markets.
Our free public events help bring the power of the humanities to communities across Vermont.
