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Boston Literary District

This is Boston Literary District: Shakespeare on the Common; a speakers’ forum featuring Alice Walker; a book festival with Doris Kearns Goodwin; walking tours that take you past Sylvia Plath’s apartment, just around the corner from Robert Frost’s residence, and Khalil Gibran’s…! All that, and more – poetry slams, writing workshops, readings, signings – can be found in Boston’s Literary Cultural District, the first such district in the country. From Washington Street to Exeter, from Beacon Hill to Boylston, Boston is crammed with literary happenings and history – probably more so than any other city in the country. It's a vibrant community of writers and readers who partake of Boston’s rich literary life via readings, discussions groups, and other programs and events. Boston has an unparalleled literary heritage with a broad and diverse set of writers ranging from enslaved poet Phillis Wheatley to Henry David Thoreau, Anne Sexton, and Eugene O’Neill. Get a glimpse of this district online and take advantage of a chance to see it up close with the hotels that offer literary tour packages. Enjoy the nearby restaurants with themed literary menus and visit institutions from the Boston Public Library to the Boston Athenaeum, Emerson College, Suffolk University, and GrubStreet, each with ongoing programs and events that cater to those who enjoy their relationship with the written word – or will develop one now that all things literary in Boston have been made more visible.

http://www.bostonlitdistrict.org/

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    Boston Globe Spotlight Team: Race and Power in Boston

    Fri, Apr 6, 2018
    In a highly publicized seven-part series published in 2017, _The Boston Globe’s_ Spotlight team dug into one of the city’s most pervasive and troubling issues: the marginalization of the black community. The series exposed the insidious impact of racism on all levels of city life from housing to healthcare to education. In this discussion , the Boston Literary District and GrubStreet invite the story’s writers to the stage where they will share their reporting, what didn’t make it into print, and engage with the audience on these pressing issues that strike at the core of the city’s identity. The panel is moderated by Latoyia Edwards, morning anchor and host of _This Is New England_, NBC10 Boston.
    Forum Network
    Boston Talks About Racism
    Partner:
    Boston Literary District
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    The Black Experience in Boston

    Fri, May 5, 2017
    GrubStreet, the Boston Literary District, and Mayor’s Office of Resilience and Equity joined forces to host "Who Are We When We’re At Home: the Black Experience in Boston” during the [Muse and the Marketplace 2017](https://grubstreet.org/muse/ "grub street conference link") conference at the Park Plaza Hotel. Boston Globe Associate Editor and Op-ed columnist Renee Graham moderates a conversation about the experience of code/switching that's common to African Americans nationally but also particularly in greater Boston, a city with its own very complicated and contradictory racial history. She’s joined at the table by the poet Charles Coe, historian Kerri Greenidge, and Boston’s Chief Resiliency Officer, Dr. Atyia Martin.
    Forum Network
    Boston Talks About Racism
    Partner:
    Boston Literary District
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    “Get Lit After Work”—Val Wang Reads Beijing Bastard

    Thu, Aug 4, 2016
    The Boston Literary District welcomes **Val Wang** for the fourth installment of “Get Lit After Work,” a pop-up literary biergarten in front of the Cheers bar in the Faneuil Hall Marketplace. **Val Wang** will discuss and share excerpts from her memoir,_Bejing Bastard: Coming of Age in a Changing China_. Raised in a strict Chinese-American household in the suburbs, **Val Wang** dutifully got good grades, took piano lessons, and performed in a Chinese dance troupe—until she shaved her head and became a leftist, the stuff of many teenage rebellions. But Val’s true mutiny was when she moved to China, the land her parents had fled before the Communist takeover in 1949.
    Forum Network
    Partner:
    Boston Literary District
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    "Get Lit After Work"—David Gullette Reads Poems On Fishing

    Thu, Aug 18, 2016
    Poet and performer **David Gullette** honors of one of summer’s great pastimes: fishing. Gullette will perform an evening of fishing-inspired verse and prose from Elizabeth Bishop, Henry David Thoreau, and Billy Collins, among others. Photo: [Boston Public Library on Flickr](https://www.flickr.com/photos/boston_public_library/ "")
    Forum Network
    Partner:
    Boston Literary District
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    "Get Lit After Work"—Regie Gibson Performs His Poetry

    Thu, Aug 11, 2016
    **Regie Gibson**, a National PoetrySlam Champion, songwriter, author, and educator shares an evening of spoken word, accompanied by a three piece band. His work has been featured in the film _love jones_, as well as on NPR, HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, and on the stages of TEDx. Photo: [Neale Eckstein](http://www.regiegibson.com/ "")
    Forum Network
    Partner:
    Boston Literary District
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    “Get Lit After Work” With Jennifer Haigh & Michelle Hoover

    Thu, Jul 28, 2016
    The Boston Literary District hosted **Jennifer Haigh** and **Michelle Hoover** for “Get Lit After Work,” a pop-up literary biergarten in front of the Cheers bar in the Faneuil Hall Marketplace. **Jennifer Haigh** will discuss and share excerpts from her latest novel, _Heat & Light_. **Michelle Hoover** will discuss and share excerpts from her latest novel, _Bottomland_.
    Forum Network
    Partner:
    Boston Literary District
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    “Get Lit After Work”—Howard Axelrod Reads From Point of Vanishing

    Thu, Jul 21, 2016
    Boston Literary District hosts **Howard Axelrod**, author of the critically acclaimed, _Point of Vanishing: A Memoir of Two Years in Solitude_. On a clear May afternoon at the end of his junior year at Harvard, **Howard Axelrod** played a pick-up game of basketball. In a skirmish for a loose ball, a boy’s finger hooked behind Axelrod’s eyeball and left him permanently blinded in his right eye. A week later, he returned to the same dorm room, but to a different world. A world where nothing looked solid, where the distance between how people saw him and how he saw had widened into a gulf. Desperate for a sense of orientation he could trust, he retreated to a jerry-rigged house in the Vermont woods, where he lived without a computer or television, and largely without human contact, for two years. He needed to find, away from society’s pressures and rush, a sense of meaning that couldn’t be changed in an instant.
    Forum Network
    Partner:
    Boston Literary District
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    "Get Lit After Work"—Kate Bolick Reads From Spinster

    Thu, Jul 14, 2016
    Boston Literary District launches “Get Lit After Work,” a pop-up literary biergarten in front of the Cheers bar in the Faneuil Hall Marketplace with **Kate Bolick**, author of the New York Times bestseller, _Spinster: Making a Life of One's Own_. “Whom to marry, and when will it happen—these two questions define every woman’s existence.” So begins _Spinster_, a revelatory and slyly erudite look at the pleasures and possibilities of remaining single. Using her own experiences as a starting point, journalist and cultural critic **Kate Bolick** invites us into her carefully considered, passionately lived life, weaving together the past and present to examine why­ she—along with over 100 million American women, whose ranks keep growing—remains unmarried.
    Forum Network
    Partner:
    Boston Literary District
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    Hank Phillippi Ryan on her book Truth Be Told

    Thu, Aug 27, 2015
    Hank Phillippi Ryan is an award winning investigative reporter with an amazing sideline career as a bestselling author. She has seven mystery novels, award winners of their own right, including five Agathas and the coveted Mary Higgins Clark Award. Her latest, _Truth Be Told_, is a Library Journal Best Book of 2014. She'll read from it as part of the Literary Lunch Break series in Faneuil Hall.
    Forum Network
    Partner:
    Boston Literary District
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    Stephen Kurkjian Reads From Master Thieves

    Thu, Aug 20, 2015
    Two men disguised as Boston police officers trick their way into the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum after midnight, tie up two night watchmen, and make off with an estimated half billion dollars worth of artwork, including paintings by Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Degas. You can’t make this stuff up. And, as you well know, no one did. It happened. Now, 25 years after the robbery, three-time Pulitzer Prize winner **Stephen Kurkjian**, the principal reporter on the case for The Boston Globe for years, writes about it in his new book, _Master Thieves: The Boston Gangsters Who Pulled Off the World’s Greatest Art Heist_.
    Forum Network
    Partner:
    Boston Literary District
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