Author Talk: “Ripple Effects and Other Stories” by Lesley Mahoney O’Connell

The Vineyard Haven Public Library is pleased to welcome Lesley Mahoney O’Connell for a discussion of her newly released story collection, “Ripple Effects and Other Stories.” This event will be held at 4:00 PM on Friday, September 25th, at the Vineyard Haven Public Library, located at 200 Main Street in Vineyard Haven. Free and open to the public, no registration required.

In eleven carefully crafted stories, Lesley Mahoney O’Connell’s landscapes and seascapes help readers to recognize and to feel the strengths, flaws, and compromises her characters are developing as they navigate their life choices. Most of the stories are set in New England coastal villages. All are sensitive and thought-provoking, the characters relatable and real.  

“Ripple Effects” features mostly quiet but intelligent characters who see themselves as outsiders in their own worlds. O’Connell lets readers listen as they work their way toward decisions they can somehow live with. Some swim through currents of parental self-centeredness; others, lacking ordinary filters, dream impossible dreams as they ignore career crises and marital ennui. O’Connell is especially good at exploring the interior lives, the caves and cliffs carved by deep losses, creating empathy and often a sense of peace in readers.   

In the first story, a young teacher grapples with the strain of being permanent guardian for her neurodivergent younger brother. In the second, a teenage girl trying to escape heavy pressures at home is drawn to shoplifting, and to risky quarry jumping. Another follows a new mother struggling to bond with her baby in an isolated seaside home with a mostly-absent husband. Deception and self-deception blend and ripple when a grieving widower relives moments from his childhood and wonders what sort of future is possible. Memories clash with present moments when a young wife travels from California to sell her family’s New England home, the one she’d persuaded her parents to leave behind.   

O’Connell’s stories are connected by nuanced water motifs, and explore the dynamics of both ripples and riptides. Several feature empowered women, or women on the road to empowerment. At their core, most of these stories hint at the strength and hope which can arise in disheartening circumstances. 

Lesley Mahoney O'Connell lives on the South Shore of Massachusetts with her husband and son. Her fiction has appeared in Post Road, Psychopomp, and Solstice. She co-ran a reading series in Jamaica Plain, MA, and regularly takes classes at Boston’s GrubStreet and Provincetown’s Fine Arts Work Center. She works with health care in communications, marketing, and digital strategy.

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

Memento Morrie with photographer Heather Pillar

Mitch Albom with Morrie on Tuesday October 3, 1995 © Heather Pillar

The Vineyard Haven Public Library is pleased to welcome photographer and teacher Heather Pillar for a presentation about her photographic collaboration with Morrie Schwartz, subject of the best-selling memoir “Tuesdays with Morrie” by Mitch Albom. This event will be held at 11:00 AM on Saturday, September 19th, at the Vineyard Haven Public Library, located at 200 Main Street in Vineyard Haven. Free and open to the public, no registration required.

In 1995, Heather Pillar collaborated with Morrie Schwartz to document Morrie during the last six months of his life struggling with ALS. The project illustrates Morrie's philosophies about death and dying through photographs Pillar made of him interacting with family, friends, and caregivers. Over a quarter-century later, Morrie's wisdom resonates with people around the world largely due to the best-selling memoir “Tuesdays with Morrie” by Mitch Albom. Morrie's warmth and vitality comes through in each photograph to illustrate love, loss and the power of community. Morrie taught people, including Heather, how to live fulfilling lives with love. “It is by facing fears of death that we learn how to live.” 

"Memento Morrie: Images of Love and Loss" published by Daylight Books will be available for purchase before and after the talk. The book includes 44 duotones and four outstanding essays from professionals in their own fields plus short stories from interviews with Morrie’s friends and family. Some images are paired with Morrie’s now famous aphorisms giving imagery to the bittersweet themes of end-of-life: building a caring community; friends; family; caregiving; self-care; spirituality; and death and beyond.

Heather Pillar, photographer and teacher, has lived, taught and photographed in seven countries over four continents during the past 25 years. Her personal and collaborative photographic projects reveal her ongoing interest in women, girls' education, and aging. Heather's photographs have been exhibited internationally as well as published in numerous newspapers and magazines, such as People Magazine and The Boston Globe, and in the books “The Wisdom of Morrie,” “Tuesdays with Morrie,” and “Morrie: In His Own Words.” Her work has also appeared on television (CBS Sunday Morning, Today Show) and online (NPR, Next Avenue [AARP], PBS’s Inside E Street). She is the author of “Memento Morrie: Images of Love and Loss” (Daylight Books, July 2024).

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

Open Mic Night: Where Dreams Come True!

Do you dream of performing on stage? 

The Vineyard Haven Public Library is pleased to announce a monthly Open Mic Night in collaboration with the Vineyard Haven Harbor Cultural District. The Open Mic Night will be held in the library’s new Community Room at 6:00 PM on the third Thursday of the month, beginning September 17th.

Each attendee may perform 1-2 songs or pieces in a genre of their choice, be it music, dance, drama, or the spoken word. Free and open to the public. Sign up on arrival. No registration required.

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

2026 Great Reads Community Discussion: “Nothing More of This Land: Community, Power, and the Search for Indigenous Identity” by Joseph Lee

The Vineyard Haven Public Library is pleased to host a community-wide discussion about the 2026 Massachusetts Great Reads title “Nothing More of This Land: Community, Power, and the Search for Indigenous Identity” by Joseph Lee. This program will be held in collaboration with the Aquinnah Cultural Center at 2:00 PM on Thursday, September 17th, at the 200 Main Street Library or via Zoom. Click here to register.  

This discussion series is part of the 2026 Great Reads MA program, sponsored by the Massachusetts Center for the Book. The first 20 registered participants will receive a free copy of the book. All registrants will be invited to the Vineyard Haven Library to participate in a statewide, virtual Q&A with author Joseph Lee at 6:00 PM on Tuesday, September 29th. 

About the book: 

Before Martha’s Vineyard became one of the most iconic vacation destinations in the country, it was home to the Wampanoag people. Today, as tourists flock to the idyllic beaches, the island has become increasingly unaffordable for tribal members, with nearly three-quarters now living off-island. Growing up Aquinnah Wampanoag, journalist Joseph Lee grappled with what this situation meant for his tribe, how the community can continue to grow, and more broadly, what it means to be Indigenous.

About the author:

Joseph Lee is an Aquinnah Wampanoag writer based in New York City. He has an MFA from Columbia University and teaches creative writing at Mercy University. His writing has been published in The Guardian, BuzzFeed News, Vox, Electric Literature, High Country News, and more. He was a Margins Fellow at the Asian American Writers’ Workshop and a Senior Indigenous Affairs Fellow at Grist. He has won multiple awards from the Indigenous Journalists Association for environmental coverage, health coverage, and beat reporting and was awarded a 2024 Silvers Grant for Work in Progress. 

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

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.

The Margaret Webster Shakespeare Garden at Vineyard Haven Public Library

The Margaret Webster Shakespeare Garden at Vineyard Haven Public Library

Prior to the last library renovation in 1999, a feature of the library's landscaping was a "Shakespeare Garden" dedicated in 1976 to Margaret Webster, American-British theater actress, producer and director. The garden was laid out in an oval roughly 19’ in diameter, planted with herbs and flowers mentioned in Shakespeare’s works. The centerpiece of the garden was a bronze sculpture by Priscilla Pattison, given by Ms. Webster in memory of her partner Jane Brundred. During the 1999 library renovation, a Landscaping Committee created a plan for the library grounds that did not preserve the Shakespeare Garden, opting for landscaping that was lower-maintenance and that included a more functional patio area.

1975 Plan for the Shakespeare Garden at the library

The Shakespeare Garden as it appeared in the 1990s

The 2026 library renovation included a new interpretation of the Margaret Webster Shakespeare Garden designed by renowned landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh.  The new design increases accessibility and improves interaction between the community room, reading room, and garden space, and provides greater visibility for the Pattison Sculpture, which had been obscured by plantings following the 1999 renovation. The grounds of the library again feature plants mentioned in the works of Shakespeare or associated with the bard. The courtyard restoration, as well as the “reading lawn” and porch in front of the library, were funded in part by the citizens of Tisbury through the Community Preservation Act.

Shakespeare Garden Plants featured in the restored landscaping:

Cherry 

MND III, ii

Daffodil

WT IV, iii

Elm

Errors II, ii

Grass

Temp II, i

Holly 

AYLI II, vii

Lilies

Sonnets 94

Rose

RJ II, ii

Rosemary

Ham IV, v

Thyme

MND II, i

Oth I, iii

Yew

Mac IV, i

Geranium

Geranium robertianum, commonly known as Herb-robert, is thought to have gained its name from an ancient association with Robin Goodfellow, a house goblin from English folklore also known as Puck, a character in Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Hellebore

In Elizabethan folklore, hellebore had the power to repel witches and evil spirits, so it was often planted near doorways. Alternatively, it was gathered after dark on Midsummer’s Eve, then dried and hung in houses and stables for protection.

Magnolia

The gardens of the Folger Shakespeare Library include a heritage magnolia tree planted at the time of the Folger’s 1932 opening, that was famously moved during the library’s renovation in 2020.

The restored courtyard featuring sculpture by Priscilla Pattison in August 2026

Update on Neurocognitive Disorders and Alzheimer’s Disease with Dr. Nicole Absar

The Vineyard Haven Public Library is pleased to welcome back Dr. Nicole Absar, a specialist in Neurocognitive Disorders at the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital, for an update on neurocognitive disorders and Alzheimer’s disease. This event will be held on Tuesday, September 15th, at 6:00 PM at the Vineyard Haven Public Library, located at 200 Main Street in Vineyard Haven. Free and open to the public, no registration required.

In the lead to World Alzheimer's Day on September 21st, Dr. Absar's lecture will focus on the updated differential diagnosis of various forms of major neurocognitive disorders including Alzheimer’s disease, frontotemporal dementia, dementia with Lewy body, and other types of non-Alzheimer’s dementia. She will also cover recent updates on Alzheimer’s disease including molecular biomarker-focused early diagnosis and treatment. 

Dr. Nicole Absar is certified in Cognitive/Behavioral Neurology and Neuropsychiatry with a subspecialty in Neurocognitive Disorders. She has treated cognitive neurological disorders in Massachusetts, Maryland, and New York, and currently provides neurocognitive and Alzheimer's disease services to patients at the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital. She has served as teaching faculty at Harvard Medical School, the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Tufts Medical School, Johns Hopkins Medicine, and SUNY Stonybrook University Medical School. 

Dr Absar is an active member of the American Academy of Neurology as well as a Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and a member of the American Medical Association. A registered yoga teacher, she believes in Integrated Neuroscience and utilizes yoga, mindfulness and brain health as a modality for Cognitive Rehabilitation. She is a National Yoga Alliance certified educational provider in specialty yoga therapy for brain disorders. 

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