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Reading with Andrea Werblin
A reading, discussion, and book signing with acclaimed poet Andrea Werblin to celebrate the publication of her new collection, Sunday With the Sound Turned Off (Lost Horse Press). Barbara Cully calls it "a lyrical relation to the self in the world, and the self with other selves." Werblin received her MFA in poetry from the University of Arizona. Her debut collection, Lullaby for One Fist (Wesleyan University Press) received rave reviews in Foreword and Publisher's Weekly.
Find out more »Reading with Andrea Werblin
A reading, discussion, and book signing with acclaimed poet Andrea Werblin to celebrate the publication of her new collection, Sunday With the Sound Turned Off (Lost Horse Press). Barbara Cully calls it "a lyrical relation to the self in the world, and the self with other selves." Werblin received her MFA in poetry from the University of Arizona. Her debut collection, Lullaby for One Fist (Wesleyan University Press) received rave reviews in Foreword and Publisher's Weekly.
Find out more »Reading with Andrea Werblin
A reading, discussion, and book signing with acclaimed poet Andrea Werblin to celebrate the publication of her new collection, Sunday With the Sound Turned Off (Lost Horse Press). Barbara Cully calls it "a lyrical relation to the self in the world, and the self with other selves." Werblin received her MFA in poetry from the University of Arizona. Her debut collection, Lullaby for One Fist (Wesleyan University Press) received rave reviews in Foreword and Publisher's Weekly.
Find out more »Reading with Andrea Werblin
A reading, discussion, and book signing with acclaimed poet Andrea Werblin to celebrate the publication of her new collection, Sunday With the Sound Turned Off (Lost Horse Press). Barbara Cully calls it "a lyrical relation to the self in the world, and the self with other selves." Werblin received her MFA in poetry from the University of Arizona. Her debut collection, Lullaby for One Fist (Wesleyan University Press) received rave reviews in Foreword and Publisher's Weekly.
Find out more »James Russell
JAMES RUSSELL discusses his book, Social Insecurity. Free and open to the public. A retirement crisis is looming. In 2008, as the 401(k) fallout rippled across the country, holders watched 25% of their funds evaporate. But before the recession, signs were mounting that few people could accumulate enough wealth for a secure retirement. James Russell explains that this do-it-yourself system isn’t working. Social Insecurity details a massive retirement robbery transferring wealth from everyday workers to Wall Street financiers via hidden fees. Enraging…
Find out more »James Russell
JAMES RUSSELL discusses his book, Social Insecurity. Free and open to the public. A retirement crisis is looming. In 2008, as the 401(k) fallout rippled across the country, holders watched 25% of their funds evaporate. But before the recession, signs were mounting that few people could accumulate enough wealth for a secure retirement. James Russell explains that this do-it-yourself system isn’t working. Social Insecurity details a massive retirement robbery transferring wealth from everyday workers to Wall Street financiers via hidden fees. Enraging…
Find out more »James Russell
JAMES RUSSELL discusses his book, Social Insecurity. Free and open to the public. A retirement crisis is looming. In 2008, as the 401(k) fallout rippled across the country, holders watched 25% of their funds evaporate. But before the recession, signs were mounting that few people could accumulate enough wealth for a secure retirement. James Russell explains that this do-it-yourself system isn’t working. Social Insecurity details a massive retirement robbery transferring wealth from everyday workers to Wall Street financiers via hidden fees. Enraging…
Find out more »James Russell
JAMES RUSSELL discusses his book, Social Insecurity. Free and open to the public. A retirement crisis is looming. In 2008, as the 401(k) fallout rippled across the country, holders watched 25% of their funds evaporate. But before the recession, signs were mounting that few people could accumulate enough wealth for a secure retirement. James Russell explains that this do-it-yourself system isn’t working. Social Insecurity details a massive retirement robbery transferring wealth from everyday workers to Wall Street financiers via hidden fees. Enraging…
Find out more »Harvard Review at Porter Square Books: The Roundtable Reading Series
Harvard Review presents readings by Mako Yoshikawa, Suzanne Matson, and Susan Barba, Monday, November 3, at 7 pm at Porter Square Books in Cambridge.
Find out more »Harvard Review at Porter Square Books: The Roundtable Reading Series
Harvard Review presents readings by Mako Yoshikawa, Suzanne Matson, and Susan Barba, Monday, November 3, at 7 pm at Porter Square Books in Cambridge.
Find out more »Harvard Review at Porter Square Books: The Roundtable Reading Series
Harvard Review presents readings by Mako Yoshikawa, Suzanne Matson, and Susan Barba, Monday, November 3, at 7 pm at Porter Square Books in Cambridge.
Find out more »Harvard Review at Porter Square Books: The Roundtable Reading Series
Harvard Review presents readings by Mako Yoshikawa, Suzanne Matson, and Susan Barba, Monday, November 3, at 7 pm at Porter Square Books in Cambridge.
Find out more »Book Launch
Linda K. Wertheimer, a veteran journalist and former Boston Globe education editor, launches her first book, Faith Ed., Teaching About Religion In An Age of Intolerance (Beacon Press).
Find out more »Book Launch
Linda K. Wertheimer, a veteran journalist and former Boston Globe education editor, launches her first book, Faith Ed., Teaching About Religion In An Age of Intolerance (Beacon Press).
Find out more »Book Launch
Linda K. Wertheimer, a veteran journalist and former Boston Globe education editor, launches her first book, Faith Ed., Teaching About Religion In An Age of Intolerance (Beacon Press).
Find out more »Book Launch
Linda K. Wertheimer, a veteran journalist and former Boston Globe education editor, launches her first book, Faith Ed., Teaching About Religion In An Age of Intolerance (Beacon Press).
Find out more »Poetry Reading: A.J. Odasso & Matthew Sisson
Event date: Wednesday, September 30, 2015 - 7:00pm Event address: Porter Square Books 25 White St. Cambridge, MA 02140
Find out more »Rebecca Okrent, Boys of My Youth, and Deborah Gorlin, Life of the Garment
“Okrent’s voice is intelligent and perceptive . . . This is a deeply felt book.”—Linda Pastan Meditations on nature cohabit with explorations of family entanglements giving insight, empathy, and wit to our experiences. Rebecca Okrent rescues significance from the ordinary accumulation of days and losses that mark the passage of time, recapturing the reverence felt in childhood when everything held meaning. The poems emerge from moments when nature and experience insist: “I have something to tell you.” Rebecca Okrent graduated…
Find out more »Rebecca Okrent, Boys of My Youth, and Deborah Gorlin, Life of the Garment
“Okrent’s voice is intelligent and perceptive . . . This is a deeply felt book.”—Linda Pastan Meditations on nature cohabit with explorations of family entanglements giving insight, empathy, and wit to our experiences. Rebecca Okrent rescues significance from the ordinary accumulation of days and losses that mark the passage of time, recapturing the reverence felt in childhood when everything held meaning. The poems emerge from moments when nature and experience insist: “I have something to tell you.” Rebecca Okrent graduated…
Find out more »Dale Peterson, Where Have All the Animals Gone
From the biographer of Jane Goodall comes an eccentric blend of travels and adventures based on the underlying story of two men, sometime friends and allies, who uncover through personal experience the tragedy of animal extinctions in Africa and Asia. By turns ironic, funny, and tender, it contemplates changing landscapes and a vanishing world. Over the last 15 years, nature historian Dale Peterson has collaborated with photographer Karl Ammann to produce three books about apes, elephants, and giraffes. For this…
Find out more »Writers Paula Whyman and Joanna Rakoff at Porter Square Books
Paula Whyman discusses her debut story collection, You May See a Stranger, with Joanna Rakoff, bestselling author of My Salinger Year and A Fortunate Age. Miranda Weber is a hot mess. In Paula Whyman's debut collection of stories, we find her hoarding duct tape to ward off terrorists, stumbling into a drug run with a crackhead, and enduring the bad behavior of unavailable men. Miranda can be lascivious, sardonic or maddeningly self-destructive, but, no matter what befalls her, she never loses…
Find out more »“A Young Black Man’s Education” at Porter Square Books
How do you learn to be a black man in America? For young black men today, it means coming of age during the presidency of Barack Obama. It means witnessing the deaths of Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Akai Gurley, and too many more. It means celebrating powerful moments of black self-determination for LeBron James, Dave Chappelle, and Frank Ocean. In Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching: A Young Black Man's Education, Mychal Denzel Smith, contributing writer at The Nation,…
Find out more »Sebastian Junger on Tribes, at Porter Square Books
We have a strong instinct to belong to small groups defined by clear purpose and understanding--"tribes." This tribal connection has been largely lost in modern society, but regaining it may be the key to our psychological survival. Combining history, psychology, and anthropology, Sebastian Junger's book, Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging, explores what we can learn from tribal societies about loyalty, belonging, and the eternal human quest for meaning. This event is free and open to the public.
Find out more »Raul the Third: Kid’s Lit at Porter Square Books
The lovable trio from the acclaimed Lowriders in Space are back: Lupe Impala, Elirio Malaria, and El Chavo Octopus are living their dream at last. They're the proud owners of their very own garage. But when their beloved cat Genie goes missing, they need to do everything they can to find him. Little do they know the trail will lead them to the realm of Mictlantecuhtli, the Aztec god of the Underworld, who is keeping Genie prisoner. With cool Spanish phrases…
Find out more »“Choose Your Own Misery” at Porter Square Books
Porter Square Books welcomes Jilly Gagnon, author of CHOOSE YOUR OWN MISERY: THE OFFICE. Hungover and stuck at a job you hate, will you show up for your big presentation, or duck out with Debby, the HR rep with an FDR fetish? Play the weird lump on your back for office-wide sympathy, or dive into an internet spiral that can only end in ten kinds of cancer? From two comedy writers and former contributors to the Onion comes a parody of a…
Find out more »Get Lost Among the Birds at Porter Square Books.
Porter Square Books welcomes Neil Hayward, author of LOST AMONG THE BIRDS, ACCIDENTALLY FINDING MYSELF IN ONE BIG YEAR. In 2013, Boston birder Neil Hayward traveled almost 250,000 miles by plane, car, boat, and kayak. As well as almost 10 feet vertically up a tree (where, you’ll be glad to hear, he successfully navigated his way back down). His quixotic quest: to see birds. His peregrinations took him to the corners of this vast continent: Barrow in the leaden, frozen north;…
Find out more »On the Art and Craft of Making Your First Feature
Porter Square Books welcomes Federico Muchnik, long-time filmmaker and author of The Strategic Producer: On the Art and Craft of Making Your First Feature. Today's technologies and economic models won t settle for a conventional approach to filmmaking. The Strategic Producer: On the Art and Craft of Making Your First Feature combines history, technology, aesthetics, data, decision-making strategies, and time-tested methods into a powerful new approach to producing. An ideal text for aspiring filmmakers, The Strategic Producer orients the reader's…
Find out more »Vivas to Those Who Have Failed
In this powerful new collection of poems, Martín Espada articulates the transcendent vision of another, possible world. He invokes the words of Whitman in Vivas to Those Who Have Failed, a cycle of sonnets about the Paterson Silk Strike and the immigrant laborers who envisioned an eight-hour workday. At the heart of this volume is a series of ten poems about the death of the poet's father. "El Moriviví" uses the metaphor of a plant that grows in Puerto Rico to…
Find out more »Gail Carriger’s IMPRUDENCE
Porter Square book is pleased to welcome New York Times bestselling author Gail Carriger reading from her anticipated sequel to PRUDENCE. Rue and the crew of the Spotted Custard return from India with revelations that shake the foundations of England's scientific community. Queen Victoria is not amused, the vampires are tetchy, and something is wrong with the local werewolf pack. To top it all off, Rue's best friend Primrose keeps getting engaged to the most unacceptable military types. Gail Carriger is an award-winning and…
Find out more »On Music and Loss
Porter Square Books is pleased to welcome Maya Pindyck and Gwen Romagnoli, authors of Emoticoncert. Emoticoncert follows intensities and absences across different bodies and scales. Broken up into musical movements, each section serves as its own composition. As a whole, the book works as a concert of intensities associated with loss, nationalism, and the slippery boundary between human and animal. Moving across both real and dreamed terrains, Emoticoncert is a dislocated kind of traveling linked by a sense of musicality and a desire…
Find out more »A Night of Poetry at Porter Square Books
Porter Square Books is pleased to welcome poets, Tess Taylor, Steph Burt, and Joseph Massey for a discussion of Taylor's new book, WORK & DAYS. In 2010, Tess Taylor was awarded the Amy Clampitt Fellowship. Her prize: A rent-free year in a cottage in the Berkshires, where she could finish a first book. But Taylor -- outside the city for the first time in nearly a decade, and trying to conceive her first child -- found herself alone. To break…
Find out more »Punk Rock Storytime with Eric Morse
What Is Punk? is a must-read pop-culture primer for children--an introduction to the punk revolution, recreated in vivid 3-D clay illustrations and told through rhyming couplets. From London's Clash and Sex Pistols to the Ramones' NYC protopunk, from Iggy Pop to the Misfits, this volume depicts some of our culture's seminal moments and iconic characters. A delightful read for kids and parents alike, illustrated in a truly unique visual style, What Is Punk? lays the groundwork for the next generation of little punks.
Find out more »Fly-Fishing and Friendship at Dartmouth
Porter Square Book is pleased to welcome Phil Odense, author of THE CONFLUENCE: FLY-FISHING AND FRIENDSHIP IN THE DARTMOUTH COLLEGE GRANT. Seven lifelong friends head north each June to a remote cabin at the confluence of the Dead Diamond and Swift Diamond Rivers. What started as a single fishing trip has evolved over twenty-plus years into an annual retreat to the mystical environs of the Dartmouth College Grant, far from the workaday world and vibrant with brotherhood, creativity and reflection. Fishing is…
Find out more »The Cocktail Hour Garden at Porter Square Books
Porter Square Books welcomes C. L. Fornari, professional speaker, radio host, and author of THE COCKTAIL HOUR GARDEN. At the end of the day, what better place is there kickback, relax, and escape world concerns than in your own backyard garden? Plant and cocktail lover Fornari shows how easy it is to create a garden atmosphere that sets the mood for private relaxation or festive occasions with friends. With a wise and witty text, mood-setting plant lists, botanical drink recipes and luscious photographs,…
Find out more »A Reading from Porter Square Books’ Baristas and Booksellers
Enjoy the words and music of the people who sell you your books and serve you your coffee at Porter Square Books and Cafe Zing. A selection of our bookseller-authors and barista-musicians will read and perform their original works. Free!
Find out more »Dead in Good Company: A Celebration of Mount Auburn Cemetery
Porter Square books welcomes local contributors to the anthology Dead in Good Company: A Celebration of Mount Auburn Cemetery. Dead in Good Company is a collection of essays, poems and wildlife photographs of Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Sweet Auburn, as it is affectionately known, is America's first garden cemetery and one of the country's most distinguished burial grounds. Readers include New York Times bestselling author William Martin, naturalist Kim Nagy, and radio personality, Upton Bell.
Find out more »Jacqueline Woodson Interviewed by Callie Crossley
Porter Square books welcomes acclaimed New York Times-bestselling and National Book Award-winning author Jacqueline Woodson (BROWN GIRL DREAMING) in conversation with WGBH's Callie Crossley. Woodson will be discussing first adult novel in twenty years: ANOTHER BROOKLYN. Running into a long-ago friend sets memory from the 1970s in motion for August, transporting her to a time and a place where friendship was everything until it wasn't. For August and her girls, sharing confidences as they ambled through neighborhood streets, Brooklyn was a place where they believed that…
Find out more »Falling: A Daughter, a Father, and a Journey Back
Porter Square Books is pleased to welcome Elisha Cooper, author of Falling: A Daughter, a Father, and a Journey Back. Elisha Cooper spends his mornings creating children's books and his afternoons playing with his two daughters. But when he discovers a lump in five-year-old Zoe's midsection as she sits on his lap at a Chicago Cubs game, everything changes. With the observant eye of an artist and a remarkable sense of humor, Elisha captures his family's journey through a perilous time…
Find out more »Two journalists on Political History and the 2016 Election
Porter Square Books is pleased to welcome Michael Cohen & Sarah Jaffe. In American Maelstrom, Michael A. Cohen captures the full drama of this watershed election, establishing 1968 as the hinge between the decline of political liberalism, the ascendancy of conservative populism, and the rise of anti-government attitudes that continue to dominate the nation's political discourse. In this sweeping and immersive book, equal parts compelling analysis and thrilling narrative, Cohen takes us to the very source of our modern politics of division.…
Find out more »The Story behind FDR’s “Gatekeeper”
Porter Square Books is pleased to welcome Kathryn Smith, author of The Gatekeeper, the first biography of arguably the most influential member of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's administration: Marguerite "Missy" LeHand. Missy was FDR's de facto chief of staff, and has been misrepresented and overlooked throughout history until now. The Gatekeeper is a thoughtful, revealing unsung-hero story about a woman ahead of her time, the true weight of her responsibility, and the tumultuous era in which she lived and a long overdue tribute to one…
Find out more »How to Raise Human Beings
Porter Square Books is pleased to welcome renowned child psychologist and New York Times-bestselling author Dr. Ross Greene, author of Raising Human Beings. In his latest book, Dr. Ross Greene offers a detailed and practical guide to raising kids in a way that enhances relationships, improves communication, and helps kids learn how to resolve disagreements without conflict. Through his well-known model of solving problems collaboratively, parents can forgo time-out and sticker charts, stop badgering, berating, threatening, and punishing, allow their kids to…
Find out more »Jef Czekaj’s Dog Rules
Porter Square Books is pleased to welcome Somerville-based Jef Czekaj, author and illustrator of Dog Rules. Dog Rules is an interactive picture book that will have kids barking, growling, and chirping -- but mostly laughing out loud. A companion to the popular Cat Secrets, also by Czekaj. In summary: Two dogs must teach their new puppy to be a good dog. The puppy has to learn to growl . . . but it keeps tweeting. Roll over . . . but it eats worms. Will…
Find out more »Peter Ho Davies and Celeste Ng discuss THE FORTUNES
Porter Square Books welcomes bestselling authors Peter Ho Davies and Celeste Ng to discuss Davies's new novel, The Fortunes. Sly, funny, and artfully structured, The Fortunes recasts American history through the lives of a multigenerational Chinese American immigrant family. The novel inhabits four lives -- a railroad baron's valet who unwittingly ignites an explosion in Chinese labor, Hollywood's first Chinese movie star, a hate-crime victim whose death mobilizes Asian Americans, and a biracial writer visiting China for an adoption -- and, capturing over a century of…
Find out more »All Set for Black, Thanks: A New Look at Mourning
Porter Square Books is please to welcome Miriam Weinstein, author of All Set for Black, Thanks. When Miriam Weinstein's good friend died unexpectedly, and other losses followed close behind, it led to a year of introspection and black outfits. All Set For Black, Thanks ditches the sanctimony to give us the help, and the laughs, that we actually need in times of mourning and grief. She explores such topics as how we keep our dead with us even as we learn to…
Find out more »Dan Barry, The Boys in the Bunkhouse
With this Dickensian tale from America's heartland, New York Times writer and columnist Dan Barry tells the harrowing yet uplifting story of the exploitation and abuse of a resilient group of men with intellectual disability, and the heroic efforts of those who helped them to find justice and reclaim their lives. In the tiny Iowa farm town of Atalissa, dozens of men, all with intellectual disability and all from Texas, lived in an old schoolhouse. Before dawn each morning, they…
Find out more »Do Parents Matter?
American parents drive themselves crazy trying to raise perfect children. There is always another news article or scientific finding proclaiming the importance of some factor or other, but it's easy to miss the bigger picture: that parents can only affect their children so much. In their decades-long study of global parenting styles, Harvard anthropologists (and grandparents themselves) Robert A. LeVine and Sarah LeVine reveal how culture may affect children more than parents do. Japanese children co-sleep with their parents well…
Find out more »Ferrante Night Fever
Celebrate the release of Elena Ferrante's new novel, Frantumaglia with a panel of local authors discussing the works, significance, and controversy around Elena Ferrante. The authors on the panel will include: Anne Korkeakivi and Virginia Pye. All paid orders for Frantumaglia now through the event will be 20% off - - - - - This book invites readers into Elena Ferrante’s workshop. It offers a glimpse into the drawers of her writing desk, those drawers from which emerged her three early standalone novels and…
Find out more »Paula Bennett, Imagining Ichabod
Prompted by a serendipitous visit to a bookstore, an epiphany leads Paula Bennett and her husband, Harvey, to southern Maine where they spontaneously buy the General Ichabod Goodwin House with its original nine-over-six windows, wide-plank painted wood floors, early Georgian moldings, and an 8-ft wide hearth perfect for cooking. While learning about 18th-century decor to inform the furnishing of her historic home, Paula diligently researches the house's first inhabitants. She begins to imagine daily life in 18th-century New England, specifically…
Find out more »Indies First Day at Porter Square Books
November 25th is Small Business Saturday. Start your holiday shopping at local business Porter Square Book where Cambridge-area authors will appearing as guest booksellers all day. Authors include: Josh Funk, Val Wang (BEIJING BASTARD), Chris Boucher (HOW TO KEEP YOUR VOLKSWAGEN ALIVE), Molly Antopol (THE UNAMERICANS), and Camille DeAngelis (BONES & ALL).
Find out more »The Roundtable at Porter Square Books
Porter Square Books and Salamander are please to host Joan Wickersham and Sonya Larson for a reading from their latest works. Joan Wickersham is the author of The News from Spain: Seven Variations on a Love Story (Knopf 2012). Her memoir The Suicide Index: Putting My Father's Death in Order (Harcourt 2008) was a National Book Award Finalist. Her fiction has appeared in Agni, Glimmer Train, The Hudson Review, Ploughshares, Story, and has been published in The Best American Short Stories. She has received the Ploughshares Cohen Award for Best…
Find out more »Caring for Red: A Daughter’s Memoir
Porter Square Book is pleased to host a reading with MINDY FRIED, author of Caring for Red. Caring for Red is MINDY FRIED's moving and colorful account of caring for her ninety-seven-year-old father, Manny -- an actor, writer, and labor organizer -- in the final year of his life. This memoir chronicles the actions of two sisters as they discover concentric circles of support for their father and attempt to provide him with an experience of "engaged aging" in an assisted living…
Find out more »A Night of Poetry at Porter Square Books
Join REBECCA MORGAN FRANK, JENNIFER MILITELLO, AND KATHLEEN OSSIP for readings from their latest collections. Magicians, wig makers, sculptors, perfumers, choreographers, and composers all help conjure the worlds of Frank's second collection, The Spokes of Venus. These poems offer a landscape shaped by the tensions between the act of making and the art of observing. If music and art are the sisters of poetry, this collection is a chorus a glorious one of siblings arguing and singing. Militello's third full-length…
Find out more »KAITLYN GREENIDGE: We Love You, Charlie Freeman
Porter Square Books welcomes KAITLYN GREENIDGE for a discussion of her acclaimed novel, We Love You, Charlie Freeman. The Freeman family--Charles, Laurel, and their daughters, teenage Charlotte and nine-year-old Callie--have been invited to the Toneybee Institute in rural Massachusetts to participate in a research experiment. They will live in an apartment on campus with Charlie, a young chimp abandoned by his mother. The Freemans were selected for the experiment because they know sign language; they are supposed to teach it to…
Find out more »Savor TOM NEALON’s History of Food Fights and Culture Wars
Porter Square Books welcomes TOM NEALON for a discussion of Food Fights and Culture Wars: A Secret History of Taste. In this eclectic book of food history, NEALON takes on such overlooked themes as carp and the Crusades, brown sauce and Byron, and chillies and cannibalism, and suggests that hunger and taste are the twin forces that secretly defined the course of civilization. Through war and plague, revolution and migration, people have always had to eat. What and how they…
Find out more »Best New England Crime Stories
Join contributors CHRISTINE BAGLEY, RUTH MCCARTY, SHANNON DAYNARD, AND JANET HALPIN at Porter Square Books for this free discussion of Windward, the newest of the Best New England Crime Stories. Windward, the fourteenth Best New England Crime Stories anthology, continues the tradition of presenting the best mystery and crime fiction from both acclaimed, seasoned authors and exciting new voices.
Find out more »“Connecting with the Enemy” at Porter Square Books
Grappling with social change and grassroots activism can be a struggle. Porter Square Books welcomes SHEILA KATZ for a discussion on her illuminating new book. Connecting with the Enemy presents the first comprehensive history of unprecedented grassroots efforts to forge nonviolent alternatives to the lethal collision of the two national movements. Bringing to light the work of over five hundred groups, Katz describes how Arabs and Jews, artists and activists, educators and students, garage mechanics and physicists, and lawyers and prisoners have…
Find out more »SARAH PRAGER: Queer, There, & Everywhere: 23 People Who Changed the World
World history has been made by countless lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer individuals-and you've never heard of many of them. Sarah delves deep into the lives of 23 people who fought, created, and loved on their own terms. From high-profile figures like Abraham Lincoln and Eleanor Roosevelt to the trailblazing gender-ambiguous Queen of Sweden and a bisexual blues singer who didn't make it into your history books, these astonishing true stories uncover a rich queer heritage that encompasses every culture, in every era. SARAH…
Find out more »The Other Side of Impossible: Ordinary People Who Faced Daunting Medical Challenges & Refused to Give Up
In The Other Side of Impossible, Susannah Meadows tells the real-life stories of seven families who were determined to solve the unsolvable. Their adventures take us to the outer frontiers of medical science and cutting-edge complementary therapies, as Meadows explores research into the mind's potential to heal the body, the possible role food may play in reversing disease, the power of agency, perseverance, and hope--and more.
Find out more »Pirate Women: The Princesses, Prostitutes, & Privateers Who Ruled the Seven Seas
History has largely ignored these female swashbucklers, until now. Here are their stories, from ancient Norse princess Alfhild and warrior Rusla to Sayyida al-Hurra of the Barbary corsairs; from Grace O'Malley, who terrorized shipping operations around the British Isles during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I; to Cheng I Sao, who commanded a fleet of four hundred ships off China in the early nineteenth century. This event is free and open to the public.
Find out more »Wolf Hunt: Fiction, Translation: Translator Angela Rodel in conversation with Claire Messud
Published in 1986, three years before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Wolf Hunt was the first novel to portray the human cost of Communist policies on Bulgarian villagers, forced by the government to abandon their land and traditional way of life. Darkly comic and tragic, the novel centers on an ill-fated winter hunting expedition of six neighbors whose long and interwoven shared history comes to light in a voyage of shifting perspectives.
Find out more »The Chalk Artist at Porter Square Books
Porter Square books welcomes ALLEGRA GOODMAN for a discussion of her latest novel. Wise, warm, and enchanting, The Chalk Artist is both a finely rendered portrait of modern love and a celebration of all the realms we inhabit: real and imagined, visual and virtual, seemingly independent yet hopelessly tangled. Allegra Goodman's novels include The Cookbook Collector and Intuition. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker and Best American Short Stories. She is a winner of the Whiting Writer's Award and a fellowship…
Find out more »Truevine at Porter Square Books
Porter Square Books welcomes BETH MACY and Boston Literary District's own ALYSIA ABBOTT for a discussion of Macy's compelling, if disquieting book. Truevine tells the true story of two African-American brothers who were kidnapped and displayed as circus freaks, and whose mother endured a 28-year struggle to get them back. Through hundreds of interviews and decades of research, Macy expertly explores a central and difficult question: where were the brothers better off? On the world stage as stars or in poverty…
Find out more »PHILIP SMUCKER on “Riding with George” about his ancestor, George Washington
Porter Square Books hosts author PHILIP G. SMUCKER, a fifth-great grandnephew of George Washington, with his nonfiction book Riding with George. SMUCKER uses his background as a war correspondent, sports reporter, and amateur equestrian to weave an insightful tale based upon his own travels in the footsteps of Washington as a surveyor, sportsman, and field commander. Riding with George is "boots-in-stirrups" storytelling that unspools Washington's rise to fame in a never-before-told tale. It shows how a young Virginian's athleticism and Old World…
Find out more »Writer/Performer RANDY ROSS: God Bless Cambodia
Porter Square Books welcomes RANDY ROSS— a Boston-area writer, performer, and web consultant. His one-man show, "The Chronic Single's Handbook," has been featured at fringe theater festivals in the United States, Canada, and Edinburgh, Scotland. In 2007, he took a trip around the world and learned to say in three languages: "Speak English?" "Got Pepto-Bismol?" and "Where is the evacuation helicopter?" God Bless Cambodia is his first novel. Randall Burns is forty-eight, out of a job, and tired of wasting his…
Find out more »Silver Linings Playbook MATTHEW QUICK at Porter Square Books
Porter Square Books welcomes MATTHEW QUICK as he discusses his newest novel The Reason You’re Alive. The New York Times-bestselling author of The Silver Linings Playbook offers a timely novel featuring his most fascinating character yet: a Vietnam vet embarking on a quixotic crusade to track down his nemesis from the war. This event is not ticketed. The Reason You're Alive is currently being sold at Porter Square Books. If you cannot make it to the event but want your copy signed, order the…
Find out more »Poet EZRA DAN FELDMAN presents Habitat of Stones
Porter Square Books welcomes poet EZRA DAN FELDMAN as he reads from his poetry collection Habitat of Stones. FELDMAN's poetry collection is tied together by a certain “arrogant man.” This recurrent theme throughout the collection also bumps up against notions of the body: its finitude, its mortality and the struggles and regret of intimate relationships. "Exposing patriarchal and capitalistic practices that often cripple society, Ezra Dan Feldman’s Habitat of Stones reveals the symptoms of living in a post-industrial and illusional, high-tech world: 'He’s taken the…
Find out more »LGBTQ Novelists JONATHAN STRONG and KELLY FORD
Porter Square Books hosts novelists JONATHAN STRONG and GrubStreet's KELLY FORD for a discussion of their work. JONATHAN STRONG's Quit the Race is "...the story of a loving long-term couple weighing the best interests of their relationship against the desire of each to live the life he wants...Strong uses this drama to explore the nature of love and compromise, the longing to connect, and the need for independent identity and control." --Stephen McCauley KELLY FORD's Cottonmouths is the story of Emily Skinner.…
Find out more »Novelist LINDSAY HATTON Reads “Monterey Bay”
Porter Square Books welcomes LINDSAY HATTON with her first novel, Monterey Bay. In 1940, fifteen year-old Margot Fiske arrives on the shores of Monterey Bay with her eccentric entrepreneur father. Margot has been her father's apprentice all over the world, until an accident in Monterey's tide pools drives them apart and plunges her head-first into the mayhem of John Steinbeck's Cannery Row. Alternating between past and present, Monterey Bay explores histories both imagined and actual to create an unforgettable portrait of an exceptional woman,…
Find out more »Actress and Memoirist MARIANNE LEONE Reads from her Latest, Ma Speaks Up
Porter Square Books welcomes local memoirist MARIANNE LEONE with her latest acclaimed work, Ma Speaks Up: And a First-Generation Daughter Talks Back. Ma Speaks Up is a record of growing up on the wrong side of the tracks, with the wrong family, in the wrong religion. Though Marianne’s girlhood is flooded with shame, it’s equally packed with adventure, love, great cooking, and, above all, humor. The extremely premature birth of Marianne’s beloved son, Jesse, bonds mother and daughter in ways she couldn’t have…
Find out more »Novelists JULIA GLASS and EDWARD MOORE
Porter Square Books welcomes authors JULIA GLASS and EDWARD KELSEY MOORE with their novels A House Among the Trees and The Supremes Sing the Happy Heartache Blues. They will discuss how the past can catch up to the present, no matter how hard you try to leave it behind. In GLASS's fifth book since her acclaimed novel Three Junes won the National Book Award, she gives us the story of an unusual bond between a world-famous children's book author Mort Lear and his assistant…
Find out more »Kill the Ámpaya! The Best Latin American Baseball Fiction with DICK CLUSTER
Porter Square Books hosts DICK CLUSTER for a discussion of his collection of Latin American baseball fiction, Kill the Ámpaya! This collection features work from authors Leonardo Padura, Sergio Ramirez, Alexis Rosa Gomez and many more from countries such as Cuba, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela. A rich variety of baseball fiction exists south of the Florida Straits and the Rio Grande, but almost none available in English. This collection translates for the first time stories ranging…
Find out more »Author/Philosopher/Biker ALAN FISHBONE reads from Organ Grinder
Porter Square Books welcomes author ALAN FISHBONE as he reads from Organ Grinder, essays about mortality and freedom at the intersection of ancient philosophy and biker culture. ALAN FISHBONE is the motorcycle-riding classical scholar who offers wisdom gathered from the poetry of antiquity, and from near-death experiences on the open road in his work Organ Grinder: A Classical Education Gone Astray. This event is not ticketed.
Find out more »YA author JENN BISHOP at Porter Square Books
Porter Square Books welcomes JENN BISHOP with 14 Hollow Road, a warm coming-of-age novel about a community banding together in the wake of a tornado. The night of the sixth-grade dance is supposed to be perfect for Maddie: she'll wear her perfect new dress, hit the dance floor with her friends, and her crush, Avery, will ask her to dance. But as the first slow song starts to play, her plans crumble. Avery asks someone else to dance instead--and then the power goes…
Find out more »KATHERINE VAZ and JOAN WICKERSHAM at Porter Square Books
Porter Square Books hosts authors KATHERINE VAZ and JOAN WICKERSHAM in conversation about VAZ's collection of short stories: The Love Life of an Assistant Animator and Other Stories. In VAZ's new collection of short fiction, beauty is continually and painfully present in all places–in a Thanksgiving dinner assembled by a widowed DMV worker being stalked by an irate customer; in a middle-aged Hollywood actress who captivates a young studio animator for decades; in the aftermath of an unthinkable tragedy; and in…
Find out more »Sci-Fi/Horror authors DAN MOREN and LL SOARES at Porter Square Books
Porter Square Books welcomes journalist, podcast host, and author DAN MOREN in conversation with Bram Stoker Award-winning author L.L. SOARES. MOREN's The Caledonian Gambit is a throwback to the classic sci-fi adventures of spies and off-world politics, but filled to the brim with modern sensibilities. The galaxy is mired in a cold war between two superpowers. Thrust between this struggle are Simon Kovalic, the Commonwealth's preeminent spy, and Kyle Rankin, a 'lowly janitor' happily scrubbing toilets on Sabaea, a remote and…
Find out more »Listen: How Pete Seeger Got America Singing by LEDA SCHUBERT
Porter Square Books welcomes children's books author LEDA SCHUBERT with her literary tribute to Pete Seeger, American folk singer and social activist who spoke/sang to support international disarmament, civil rights, counterculture, and environmental causes. In this gorgeously written and illustrated tribute to legendary musician and activist Pete Seeger, author LEDA SCHUBERT highlights major musical events in Mr. Seeger's life as well important moments of his fight against social injustice. From singing sold-out concerts to courageously standing against the McCarthy-era finger-pointing,…
Find out more »Architect ROSALYN ELDER Explores the Historical Legacy of Massachusetts
Join Porter Square Books with nonfiction author ROSALYN ELDER to explore the history of 742 sites in 141 towns across Massachusetts in Exploring the Legacy. ROSALYN D. ELDER is a registered architect and entrepreneur with a passion for the arts, architecture and cities, and history. ELDER founded and operated Treasured Legacy, an African American cultural boutique from 1992 to 1998 at Copley Place in Boston’s South End. She co-founded and operated Jamaicaway Books, a multi-cultural bookstore, in Jamaica Plain, MA. In…
Find out more »Blast off with children/teen Sci-fi author KATIE SLIVENSKY
Porter Square Books welcomes children/teen author KATIE SLIVENSKY with her first book: The Countdown Conspiracy. The Martian meets The Goonies in this out-of-this-world middle grade debut where the stakes couldn't be higher. Miranda Regent can't believe she was just chosen as one of six kids from around the world to train for the first ever mission to Mars. But as soon as the official announcement is made, she begins receiving anonymous threatening messages...and when the training base is attacked, it looks like Miranda is…
Find out more »The Weight of Ink: RACHEL KADISH & JOANNA RAKOFF discuss Jewish Literature
Porter Square Books hosts author RACHEL KADISH and novelist/journalist JOANNA RAKOFF in conversation about KADISH's newest novel: The Weight of Ink. Set in London of the 1660s and of the early twenty-first century, The Weight of Ink is the interwoven tale of two women of remarkable intellect: Ester Velasquez, an emigrant from Amsterdam who is permitted to scribe for a blind rabbi, just before the plague hits the city; and Helen Watt, an ailing historian with a love of Jewish history. Electrifying and ambitious,…
Find out more »MADELEINE BLAIS Reads from her Memoir, “To the New Owners”
Porter Square Books hosts nonfiction author, journalist, and memoirist MADELEINE BLAIS as she reads her newest memoir: To the New Owners. In the 1970s, Madeleine Blais's in-laws purchased a vacation house on Martha's Vineyard for the exorbitant sum of $80,000. A little more than two miles down a poorly marked one-lane dirt road, the house was better termed a shack— it had no electricity or modern plumbing, the roof leaked, and mice had invaded the walls. It was perfect. To the…
Find out more »Heavy Metal + Thriller = TONY MACMILLAN Reading from The Augmented Fourth
Like rock and metal? How about thrillers? Join Porter Square Books as they welcome novelist TONY MCMILLEN for a reading of his newest novel, The Augmented Fourth. Four individuals trapped in a snowed in hotel. One of which, our narrator, is the bass player for the legendary, seminal heavy metal band Frivolous Black. None of the four trapped in the hotel are exactly what they appear to be. One might not even be human. This event is not ticketed.
Find out more »Why They Stay: Journalist ANNE MICHAUD on Politicians’ Wives
Porter Square hosts ANNE MICHAUD, a veteran political journalist who has won over 25 reporting and writing awards. MICHAUD reads her nonfiction book Why They Stay, and she offers a possible explanation for the wives of politicians who remain when their spouse is disloyal. After covering politicians for decades, acclaimed columnist MICHAUD switched her gaze to the women behind the cheating men. Drawing from multiple sources that span the Roosevelts' marriage to the more recent scandal involving Hillary Clinton's closest aide…
Find out more »Biographer MARK SCHNEIDER on Gerry Studs: America’s First Openly Gay Congressman
Porter Square Books welcomes biographer MARK ROBERT SCHNEIDER with his biography of the first openly gay congressman Gerry Studds, who served the Massachusetts South Shore, Cape Cod, and New Bedford congressional district from 1973 to 1997. On the floor of Congress, Studds confessed to having behaved inappropriately and then courageously declared that he was a gay man— becoming the country's first openly gay member of Congress. Defying all expectations, Studds won reelection in a bruising campaign. For the rest of his…
Find out more »The Fisherman’s Bride: The Untold Story of the Wife of Simon Peter by CATHERINE MAGIA
Porter Square Books welcomes author CATHERINE MAGIA for a reading of The Fisherman's Bride. Often times, religious study focuses on the men of Christianity. In this untold story of the woman behind the First Apostle, we see the journey of the fabled life of the unnamed wife who supports her husband through leaps and bounds. Cast off by her family after shunning a wealthy suitor to marry a humble fisherman, her life is fraught with hardship. She endures her husband’s growing restlessness,…
Find out more »Journalist KATHERINE NICHOLS reads Deep Water, a thrilling true story of 1970’s drug traffickers
Porter Square Books hosts novelist KATHERINE NICHOLS with her newest book: Deep Water. It's 1971 in Coronado, a small southern California beach town. For seventeen-year-old Eddie Otero, a skilled waterman and avid surfer, life is simple. Then a friend makes him an offer: Swim an illicit package across the border from Mexico. The intense workout is dangerous. Thrilling. Lucrative. And the beginning of a small business. The smuggling adventure grows into a one hundred million dollar global operation, and soon they…
Find out more »Poet SIMONE JOHN launches collection: Testify, joined by poet KRYSTEN HILL
Porter Square Books welcomes SIMONE JOHN with local poet KRYSTEN HILL as JOHN launches her first full-length poetry collection: Testify. JOHN's first full-length book of poems experiments with documentary poetics to uplift stories of black people impacted by state-sanctioned violence. Testify is ultimately a book of witness. It “burdens” its readers “with knowing.” Combined, both chapters serve as an unflinching critique of race and gender supremacy in the United States. This event is not ticketed.
Find out more »Vietnam Vet/Memoirist DAVID HOLDRIDGE on “The Avant Garde of Western Civ”
Porter Square Books hosts Vietnam Veteran DAVID HOLDRIDGE, author of the memoir The Avant Garde of Western Civ, an exploration of the complications of “giving.” HOLDRIDGE served in the Vietnam War in 1969 as an infantry platoon leader outside of Chu Lai. He was wounded and spent eighteen months getting repaired at various hospitals in the United States, culminating with operations at Hartford Hospital in Connecticut where neurosurgeon, Dr. Benjamin Whitcomb managed to free him from his trauma. Subsequently, he spent thirty-five years working with humanitarian…
Find out more »Rolling Stone columnist ROB SHEFFIELD’s latest: Dreaming the Beatles
Porter Square Books hosts ROB SHEFFIELD, Rolling Stone columnist and best-selling author (Love is a Mix Tape) presenting his latest-- Dreaming Beatles: The Love Story of One Band and the Whole World. SHEFFIELD offers an entertaining, unconventional look at the most popular band in history, the Beatles, exploring what they mean today and why they still matter so intensely to a generation that has never known a world without them. This isn't just another expose about the band and why they broke up.…
Find out more »Local debut YA novelist LANA POPOVIC in conversation with JILLY GAGNON
Porter Square Books welcomes debut YA author LANA POPOVIC in conversation with Jilly Gagnon, author of #Famous. Fans of Holly Black and Leigh Bardugo will be bewitched by LANA POPOVIC's debut YA fantasy novel Wicked Like A Wildfire about a bargain that binds the fates and hearts of twin sisters to a force larger than life. This event is not ticketed.
Find out more »Casanova’s Secret Wife, a historical love story by BARBARA LYNN-DAVIS
Porter Square Books hosts BARBARA LYNN-DAVIS as she reads her novel: Casanova's Secret Wife. Caterina Capreta was an innocent girl of fourteen when she caught the attention of the world's most infamous chronicler of seduction: Giacomo Casanova. Intoxicated by a fierce love, she wed Casanova in secret. But his shocking betrayal inspired her to commit an act that would mark her forever. Bringing to life a fascinating chapter in the history of Venice, Casanova's Secret Wife is a tour de force that charts…
Find out more »Roundtable of Literary Magazine Editors at Porter Square Books
Why do literary magazines matter? How do they shape the Boston writing community? What are the manuscript submission "dos and don'ts"? Join a lively conversation, moderated by JENN SCHECK-KAHN of Journal of the Month, with editors from Post Road, Salamander, Agni, Redivider, apt, and Harvard Review. This is a great opportunity for anyone who's wanted to publish in a literary magazine or is just curious about their role in literary community. This event is free and open to the public.
Find out more »Journalist/author MICHAEL DEIBERT on the history of Haiti
Join Porter Square Books as they host MICHAEL DEIBERT for a reading of Haiti Will Not Perish. In this moving and detailed history, MICHAEL DEIBERT, who has spent two decades reporting on Haiti, chronicles the heroic struggles of Haitians to build their longed-for country in the face of overwhelming odds. Based on years of interviews with Haitian political leaders, international diplomats, peasant advocates, gang leaders, and hundreds of ordinary Haitians, DEIBERT's book provides a vivid, complex, and challenging analysis of Haiti's…
Find out more »Author STEPHANIE GAYLE reads Idyll Fears, the 2nd in her LGTBQ crime series
Attention crime-novel enthusiasts! A new series is underway, and you can meet the author, STEPHANIE GAYLE, at Porter Square Books for a reading of the second novel in her crime series: Idyll Fears. It's two weeks before Christmas 1997, and Chief Thomas Lynch faces a crisis when Cody Forrand, a six-year-old with a life-threatening medical condition, goes missing during a blizzard. The confusing case shines a national spotlight on the small, sleepy town of Idyll, Connecticut, where small-time crime is…
Find out more »The Most Important Year: Dr. SUZANNE BOUFFARD on Pre-K Education
What do our young children need in the earliest years of school, and how do we ensure that they all get it? Porter Square Books invites author SUZANNE BOUFFARD to answer her own question with a reading from her book The Most Important Year: Pre-Kindergarten and the Future of Our Children. Cutting-edge research has proven that early childhood education is crucial for all children to gain the academic and emotional skills they need to succeed later in life. Children who attend…
Find out more »Twitter humorist JONNY SUN at Porter Square Books
Join artist, illustrator, award-winning playwright, comedy writer, and Twitter personality JONNY SUN for a presentation of Everyone’s a Aliebn When Ur a Aliebn Too: A Book, by Jomny Sun (the alien) hosted by Porter Square Books. “look. life is bad. evryones sad. we’re all gona die. but i alredy bought this inflatable boumcy castle so r u gona take ur shoes off or wat” -Jomny Sun Through this story of a lost alien finding acceptance among the creatures of Earth, we will all learn…
Find out more »Fault Lines in the Constitution: The Framers, Their Fights, and the Flaws That Affect Us Today
Many of the political issues we struggle with today have their roots in the US Constitution. Husband-and-wife team CYNTHIA and SANFORD LEVINSON join Porter Square Books with their nonfiction book Fault Lines in the Constitution: The Framers, Their Fights, and the Flaws That Affect Us Today. They take readers back to the creation of this historic document and discuss how contemporary problems were first introduced—then they offer possible solutions. Think Electoral College, gerrymandering, even the Senate. Many of us take these…
Find out more »Little Fires Everywhere, the latest from CELESTE NG
Porter Square Books is pleased to host local novelist, and best-selling author of Everything I Never Told You, CELESTE NG for a reading of her newest novel, Little Fires Everywhere. In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is planned—from the layout of the winding roads, to the colors of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. When old family friends of the strict Richardsons attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle…
Find out more »The Immigration Handbook, a poetry collection by UK poet CAROLINE SMITH
Porter Square Books is pleased to host UK poet/immigration caseworker, CAROLINE SMITH for a discussion of her book of poems, The Immigration Handbook. Inspired by her years as an immigration caseworker to one of the most diverse inner-city areas in the UK, Caroline Smith has written a collection of poems, The Immigration Handbook, that details the many troubling and moving incidents in the lives of those she tries to help. This is a book that reaches out of the headlines into our…
Find out more »The Suffragents: the hidden history of the men behind the struggle for women’s suffrage
Porter Square Books is pleased to welcome NYU journalism professor BROOKE KROEGER for a reading and discussion of The Suffragents. The Suffragents is the untold story of how some of New York’s most powerful men formed the Men’s League for Woman Suffrage, which grew between 1909 and 1917 from 150 founding members into a force of thousands across thirty-five states. KROEGER explores the formation of the League and the men who instigated it to involve themselves with the suffrage campaign, what they…
Find out more »The Ways Women Age by Professor ABIGAIL BROOKS
Porter Square Books is pleased to host ABIGAIL BROOKS, director of the Women’s Studies Program and Assistant Professor of Sociology at Providence College, with her book exploring the identity, body image, beauty standards, and expectations of femininity. Set against the backdrop of commercialized medicine in the United States, ABIGAIL BROOKS investigates the anti-aging craze from the perspective of women themselves, examining the rapidly changing cultural attitudes, pressures, and expectations of female aging. Drawn from in-depth interviews with women in the…
Find out more »Did You Know?
Certain books were “banned in Boston” at least as far back as 1651, when one William Pynchon wrote a book criticizing Puritanism.