Virtual Literary Lecture Series: "Gender Dramas" with Professor Philip Weinstein

 Professor Philip Weinstein, the Alexander Griswold Cummins Professor Emeritus of English at Swarthmore College

The Vineyard Haven Public Library is pleased to announce "Gender Dramas," a seven-part virtual lecture series with Professor Philip Weinstein, the Alexander Griswold Cummins Professor Emeritus of English at Swarthmore College. Beginning September 8th, Professor Weinstein will explore dramas of yearning and desire in three remarkable novels of the 19th and early 20th century: Flaubert’s Madame Bovary (1851), Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (1878), and Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (1925). This virtual lecture series will be held via Zoom from 7:00 - 8:30 pm on the following Tuesdays: Sept. 8, Sept. 22, Oct. 6, Oct. 27, Nov. 10, Dec. 1, and Dec. 15. 

Gender Dramas will be hosted on Zoom by Lifelong Learning Swarthmore. Professor Weinstein and Lifelong Learning Swarthmore have generously arranged for Martha’s Vineyard library patrons to participate in this program at no charge. To sign up for complimentary access, patrons may register here. Login instructions will be sent to registered library participants prior to the first session. 

Lectures will be held from 7:00 - 8:30 pm on the following Tuesdays as follows:

Tuesday, Sept. 8, 7:00 - 8:30 PM: Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

Tuesday, Sept. 22, 7:00 - 8:30 PM: Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

Tuesday, Oct 6, 7:00 - 8:30 PM: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Tuesday, Oct 27, 7:00 - 8:30 PM: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Tuesday, Nov 10, 7:00 - 8:30 PM: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Tuesday, Dec 1, 7:00 - 8:30 PM: Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

Tuesday, Dec 15, 7:00 - 8:30 PM: Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

“What does a woman want?” Freud’s famous question has been asked — and in strikingly different ways illuminated — by writers well before and after Freud. We shall explore dramas of yearning and desire in three remarkable novels of the 19th and early 20th century: Flaubert’s Madame Bovary (1851), Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (1878), and Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (1925). The heroines in these novels memorably confront and engage gender norms operative in their culture. What light does each novel shed on the struggles engaged? How do the novels’ embodied stance toward such gender arrangements affect that light? Perhaps a third question as well: how does their way of dramatizing these issues provoke questions of your own? “Gender” serves as the fulcrum in this course description, but our aim goes beyond any set of “prescriptions” or “proscriptions.” Rather, it is to do justice to each writer’s creative take on the drama of yearning and desire.

Philip Weinstein earned his PhD in English from Harvard University, staying on to teach at Harvard for the next 3 years. He then accepted a position at Swarthmore, where he remained for over 40 years, becoming the Alexander Griswold Cummins Professor of English. He has written several books of literary criticism, many focused on Faulkner, including “Becoming Faulkner: The Art and Life of William Faulkner,” which won the Hugh Holman Award for the best book of literary scholarship or literary criticism in the field of southern literature published in 2010. In 2015, Weinstein retired from Swarthmore and moved to Martha’s Vineyard full-time. Since then, he’s gone on to write three more books and to continue teaching adults through the Vineyard Haven Public Library, Swarthmore Lifelong Learning, and the 92nd Street Y in New York.

Author Talk - “Numinosity: A New England Forester’s Search for the Ineffable” by Bob Perschel

The Vineyard Haven Public Library is pleased to welcome Vineyard resident and professional forester Bob Perschel for a talk about his fifty-year quest in pursuit of something larger than all of us, a quest documented in his new book, “Numinosity: A New England Forester’s Search for the Ineffable.” This event will be held at 4:00 PM on Friday, September 4th, at the Vineyard Haven Public Library, located at 200 Main Street in Vineyard Haven. Free and open to the public, no registration required.

“Numinosity: A New England Forester’s Search for the Ineffable” is a collection of stories and poems offering a rare and moving account of what happens when deep scientific knowledge of the forest meets a search for transcendence within it. Drawing on Jungian concepts of the numinous, those encounters with an awe-inspiring force that defies full articulation, Perschel’s poems emerge from the lived intimacy of forest work: marking timber alone in winter woods, listening to the life cycle of an ancient oak, and reckoning with the weight of human impact on a landscape. The result is a collection that is both deeply personal and urgently ecological.

The collection is organized into three thematic sections. The first, Forestry, explores the spiritual and ethical dimensions of forest stewardship through poems including “Marking Timber,” “Lie Down: A Forester’s Directive,” and “The Last Twitch.”  The second section, Life, reveals how the natural world can provide meaning and weave its influence through our lives with poems such as “Meeting the Green Lady”, “The Place Where Life Begins”, and “Snake River Bar.”   The third section, Climate Change, confronts the moral stakes of the current environmental crisis with poems such as “Epistle to Left on the Earth,” “J.D. Skis Ukraine,” and “Memo to a Prospective Leader.”

Robert T. Perschel has helped conserve six million acres of New England’s forests during a four-decade career as a professional forester. He chaired the 53-member Northern Forest Alliance and co-founded the Forest Stewards Guild, a national organization of ecologically focused foresters. As Executive Director of the New England Forestry Foundation, he led the creation of Exemplary Forestry standards that use climate-smart management to offset significant regional carbon emissions. He holds a Psychology degree from Yale College (1973) and a Masters of Forestry Science from the Yale School of the Environment (1979). Bob lives in an oak forest on the north shore of Martha’s Vineyard.

For more information, please contact the library at vhpl_programs@clamsnet.org or (508) 696-4211.

One Bad Crab: Screening, Discussion & Green Crab Tasting!

Nelson Sigelman, writer and narrator of One Bad Crab, with the subject of the film

The Vineyard Haven Public Library is pleased to welcome environmental filmmaker Sandy Cannon-Brown, along with members of the MV Shellfish community, for a screening and discussion of the film, One Bad Crab, followed by a green crab appetizer prepared by Chef Galen of the Lambert's Cove Inn. Speakers to include: MV Shellfish Group Executive Director Emma Green-Beach, MV Shellfish Group Founder Rick Karney, GreenCrab.org Executive Director Mary Parks, and Tisbury Shellfish Constable Danielle Ewart. This event will be held at 4:00 pm on Friday, August 28th, at the Vineyard Haven Public Library, located at 200 Main Street in Vineyard Haven. Free and open to the public, no registration required.

One Bad Crab is a 38-minute documentary film by environmental filmmaker Sandy Cannon-Brown, narrated by Nelson Sigelman. The Latin name for the European green crab, Carcinus maenas, translates as “raving mad crab", which gives some insight into the personality of this invasive crustacean with a voracious appetite that undermines valuable shellfish resources here on the Island. It's impossible to eliminate this fecund critter, but we can take advantage of its presence as a savory menu item. Chef Galen of the Lambert's Cove Inn will treat attendees to a green crab appetizer following the screening. 

Sandy Cannon-Brown, founder (1985) and president (1985-present) of VideoTakes, Inc., is an award-winning environmental filmmaker. Before moving to Martha's Vineyard in 2020, she lived in DC and St. Michaels, MD and made nine documentaries about subjects important to the Chesapeake Bay with writer Tom Horton and photographer Dave Harp. In 2025 the team was honored by the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum with the prestigious Bay Heritage Award. Sandy was also an associate director for the Center for Environmental Filmmaking at American University, honored as CEF’s first senior scholar in 2013, and named AU’s adjunct professor of the year in 2011. Among her many other honors, Women in Film Video DC honored Sandy as a Woman of Vision in 1998. She served as WIFV’s president 2011-2012.

Emma Green-Beach is Executive Director of the MV Shellfish Group. Emma grew up in Oak Bluffs and fondly remembers gathering shellfish from Sengekontacket, Edgartown Great Pond and Wasque. She started with the MV Shellfish Group as seasonal staff in 2006 after receiving her B.S. in Biology at U Mass Dartmouth. She went on to earn a M.S. in Ecology and Evolution from Rutgers University in 2011. She joined MV Shellfish Group full-time in 2014 and became the Executive Director in 2017.

Rick Karney is Founder and Director Emeritus of the MV Shellfish Group. Rick came to the Island in the 1970s to create a shellfish management program that focuses on aquaculture to enhance public shellfish stock propagation. He also helped start the MV Shellfish Group, which celebrates its 50th year in 2026. His work with MVSG earned him the Gulf of Maine Visionary Award in 2001 for demonstrating "that shellfish aquaculture can be an environmentally and economically sustainable activity for coastal communities." Rick graduated from Rutgers University in 1972 with a B.S. in Biological Sciences.

Mary Parks is Executive Director of GreenCrab.org. Mary grew up in Penobscot Bay and first learned about the green crab's invasive impact from the surrounding lobstering and clamming community. After working in traceability for a commercial fish wholesaler in Boston, and learning more about bait markets for green crabs, she started asking what needed to be done to build a culinary market. In 2020, she went on to found GreenCrab.org: a nonprofit dedicated to building culinary markets for European green crab and spreading awareness of its invasive impact.

Danielle Ewart is the Tisbury Shellfish Constable. During the summer of 2004, between her freshman and sophomore years of college, Danielle worked as a summer deputy for the Town of Oak Bluffs and part-time at Martha's Vineyard Shellfish Group. After graduating, she rose in the ranks to full-time deputy for the Town of Oak Bluffs. She became the Shellfish Constable for the neighboring Town of Tisbury in 2010.

For more information, please contact the library at vhpl_programs@clamsnet.org or (508) 696-4211.

Stories of Healthcare and Healing with Donna Bulseco and Ryn Gluckman

The Vineyard Haven Public Library is pleased to welcome Donna Bulseco, editor of “Where It Hurts: Dispatches from the Emotional Frontlines of Medicine,” and Ryn Gluckman, ER nursing director at the Martha's Vineyard Hospital, for a conversation about this newly released collection of essays, short stories, and poems. This event will be held at 6:00 pm on Tuesday, August 25th, at the Vineyard Haven Library, located at 200 Main Street in Vineyard Haven. Free and open to the public, no registration required.

Health care workers see us all at our highest highs and our lowest lows. They’re heroes, healers, and confidants—but they’re also real people who struggle with burnout, doubt, frustration, fear, loneliness, shame, and anger. "Where It Hurts" (The Experiment; March 24, 2026; $18.95; Paperback; 979-8-89303-104-1) shares the stories of over sixty medical professionals, offering a window into the daily highlights and difficulties of the health-care industry. This collection of beautifully written poems and highly relatable essays and short stories paints health-care workers as real people, working every day in the spaces between health and illness, life and death. From funny stories (for instance, the story of a doctor who helps his patient find a cure, which, strangely enough, involves fajitas) to heart-rending and heart-mending tales of connection between doctors and patients, "Where It Hurts" shows us what it means to truly be human. 

From Grey’s Anatomy to The Pitt, our society has long been fascinated with stories of what it’s like to work in the high stress, high-stakes world of health care. According to the CDC, the health-care industry employs over twenty-two million workers, and "Where It Hurts" makes a great gift for anyone working in medicine—med school students, doctors, nurses, or EMTs. Literary and deeply moving, "Where It Hurts" reveals the challenges and triumphs of working in health care and invites us to live fully and empathize deeply with those around us.

DONNA BULSECO is a journalist and editor who holds graduate degrees in English from Brown University and in narrative medicine from Columbia University. Through the years, she has published work in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, InStyle, Self, and The Purist. As editor-in-chief of Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine, a literary journal recognized as a leader in the medical humanities world, she works with an editorial board of clinicians, educators, and writers, who review and select from over one thousand submissions a year to produce the journal. She edited "Where It Hurts": Dispatches from the Emotional Frontlines of Medicine, a new anthology of work culled from the Intima Archives and published by NYC publisher, The Experiment, this year. 

RYN GLUCKMAN, BSN, RN has been an emergency nurse for over 18 years and is currently the Nurse Director of the Emergency Department (ED) at Martha's Vineyard Hospital. She received a nursing degree at the University of Massachusetts in 2008 and earned a BA in pre-law and sociology from Hampshire College in 2001. In addition to working as a frontline and nursing leader, Ryn has also served has an educator at the University of Vermont and faculty member in the Allied Health Program for the Community College of Vermont. Throughout her career Ryn has been committed to amplifying nursing voices and ethics, elevating nursing practice as a powerful tool for social change and centralizing the principles of justice, inclusion, and equity in nursing culture. She is currently a candidate for a master's degree in the Disaster Resilience Leadership Program at Tulane University, with a focus on alternative models of health care delivery. 

For more information, please contact the library at vhpl_programs@clamsnet.org or (508) 696-4211.

Library Renovation Project Updates

 

Update July 22nd, 2026

The library building at 200 Main Street has reopened! Please note that some services and collections will be unavailable due to ongoing site work and unpacking:

• We will continue to be closed on Mondays while minor building work continues.
• The courtyard and courtyard entrance to the library are not yet accessible.
• The study room is not yet available for reservations.
• Microfilm of the Vineyard Gazette is not currently available. In August we will have a new microfilm reader capable of digitizing pages.
• Public printing and computer use are limited but WiFi is available.
• Books shelved in the adult stacks on the lower level are not fully arranged in order so some items may be difficult to locate, but there are lots of books to browse!

Update July 16th, 2026

Our satellite library at 15 Church Street is closing today, Friday July 16th! If you have an item on hold you will be able to pick up today between 10am and 6pm. No other services are available today. If you are unable to pick up today, your items on hold will be available at 200 Main Street when we reopen. We tentatively plan to open the renovated building at 200 Main Street on Tuesday July 21st in the afternoon. Please check our website for confirmation of opening date and time. Please continue to return items using the book drop at Church Street, or just hold on to your items until we reopen the renovated building. 

Update July 10th, 2026

The Church Street Satellite Library is Closing! Saturday July 11th is  the last day the little library will be open for browsing and computer use. 

Starting Tuesday July 14th,  if you have an item waiting on hold, you can pick it up at the circulation desk at 15 Church Street, using the parking lot entrance, the front entrance and the rest of the building will be closed while we pack up. 

Please continue to return items using the book drop at Church Street, or just hold on to your items until we reopen the renovated building. We plan to open 200 Main Street on July 21st, with a grand opening celebration on Saturday July 25th!

Update July 4th, 2026

We are working hard to complete the renovated library as soon as possible for you to enjoy this summer! Our plan is to have the 200 Main Street building open by July 21st, though some services and collections may not be immediately available upon opening. The Church Street Library will remain open regular hours this week, but our schedule and services may be reduced as our move progresses. 

Update June 22nd, 2026

You will see moving trucks at the library building at 200 Main Street this week as we begin to move shelving fixtures back into the building. The project is nearing completion, but renovation work is ongoing. The Satellite Library at 15 Church Street will remain open in June, and a July reopening date will be announced soon!

Small Pieces from the Big Composers with Silas Berlin

The Vineyard Haven Public Library is pleased to welcome pianist Silas Berlin for an evening of classical piano music. This event will be held at 6:00 pm on Tuesday, August 18th, at the Vineyard Haven Public Library, located at 200 Main Street in Vineyard Haven. Free and open to the public, no registration required.

Silas will perform a wide array of eras and styles in short form composition, including preludes, etudes, and salon music by Chopin, Gershwin, Rachmaninoff and others. 

Raised on Martha's Vineyard, Silas currently lives in Seattle, where he teaches private piano lessons and performs when the occasion arises. Silas deeply values the opportunity to share music with the island community that itself places a deep value on music.

For more information, please contact the library at vhpl_programs@clamsnet.org or (508) 696-4211.

Cleo King's Open Mic

The Vineyard Haven Public Library is pleased to announce an evening of music, dance, drama, and the spoken word, emceed by acclaimed actress, Cleo King. This event will be held at 6:00 pm on Thursday, August 13th, at the Vineyard Haven Public Library, located at 200 Main Street in Vineyard Haven. Free and open to the public, no registration required.

Participants are invited to perform in a genre of their choice: music, dance, drama, the spoken word, etc. A sign-up sheet will be available at the event. Each performer will be given 5 minutes to display their talent. Come to perform or sit back and enjoy the show. All are welcome. 

Cleo King is an accomplished actor, singer & dancer. She can be seen on such shows as Nemesis, Mike & Molly, Grey's Anatomy, CSI, NCIS, Lemony Snickets, Shameless, Mom, Young Sheldon, Monk, and Deadwood, among others.  On the big screen, she has acted in The Hangover, Pineapple Express, The Life of David Gale, National Security, Dreamgirls, and Magnolia. Her latest film is The Dink, where she plays a pickleball obsessed attorney. Cleo’s Broadway & touring credits include Chicken & Biscuits, Jelly's Last Jam, Ain't Misbehavin, Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, and Big River, to name a few! Cleo hails from St Louis, Missouri, by way of New York, and has lived in Los Angeles since 1995.

For more information, please contact the library at vhpl_programs@clamsnet.org or (508) 696-4211.