A Program in Partnership with the Thoreau Society
Author talks and writing workshops that encourage critical thinking and perceptive writing about the world and ourselves.
Explore the List of Past Programs Watch Recordings of Past Programs
Upcoming Fall 2025
Gossamer Days:
The Poetics of Thoreau’s Last Seasons
Friday, October 24
7:00 PM
Concord Free Public Library, 129 Main St., Concord
Join author Kristen Case for a reading and conversation drawn from her new book, Henry David Thoreau’s Kalendar (Milkweed Editions), an exploration of Thoreau’s final work. Focusing on the chapter “Gossamer Days,” Case reflects on Thoreau’s return to his seasonal charts in the final months of his life, when illness confined him to his house on Main Street. Drawing on the journals, weather observations, river measurements, and natural phenomena he had painstakingly recorded for over a decade, Thoreau constructed a new kind of relationship to the living world—one sustained by memory, pattern, and reflection. Case traces how October’s gossamer threads—visible only in slant sunlight—became for Thoreau metaphors of interconnectedness, resilience, and the strange abundance of the year’s turning.
Kristen Case is a poet and scholar. In addition to Thoreau’s Kalendar, she is the author of American Pragmatism and Poetic Practice: Crosscurrents from Emerson to Susan Howe and three books of poetry, most recently, Daphne. She lives in Maine.
This program is co-sponsored by the Concord Free Public Library and presented as part of the Concord Festival of Authors.
We are delighted to also offer this program on Zoom. Please register here to join us virtually. Register to Attend Virtually
Finding Your Walden: How to Strive Less, Minimize More, & Embrace What Matters Most
A Book Talk with Jen Tota McGivney
November 9
2pm
At Thoreau Farm
In Finding Your Walden, Jen Tota McGivney invites everyone—both serious Thoreau fans and the merely Thoreau-curious—to learn how five of Walden’s messages can make life a little easier and a little happier today.
Join Jen as she shares her new book, as well as her mission to put a little less striving and a little more Thoreau into modern life.
Co-sponsored by the Walden Woods Project.
We are delighted to also offer this program on Zoom. Please register here to join us virtually. Register to Attend Virtually
Thursday, November 20
What does it mean to write the story of women whose lives were lived in relation—to each other, to their families, and to their cultural moment? Historian Kate Culkin takes up this challenge in her new book Emerson’s Daughters, the first full-length biography of Ellen Tucker Emerson and Edith Emerson Forbes, daughters of Ralph Waldo and Lidian Jackson Emerson. Drawing on the sisters’ extensive correspondence, Culkin reveals a lifelong partnership that shaped the Emerson family legacy and illuminates women’s contributions to American intellectual and cultural life.
Culkin will discuss the making of this biography with Pulitzer Prize–winning writer Megan Marshall, herself renowned for life stories of remarkable women including the Peabody sisters, Margaret Fuller, and Elizabeth Bishop. Their conversation will explore the choices and discoveries involved in writing biography, the ways women’s lives often form constellations rather than stand-alone narratives, and the possibilities of the genre itself.
We are delighted to also offer this program on Zoom. Please register here to join us virtually. Register to Attend Virtually
The World That We Are: A Conversation with Andrew Furman
Thursday, December 4, 2025
7:00 pm
Free Zoom Event
In 1837, a young Henry David Thoreau sets out to lead an extraordinary life in Concord, Massachusetts, combating formidable obstacles. He struggles to find work as a teacher, to discover his voice as a writer, and to realize true friendship and romantic love, battling all the while against the “family disease” that threatens his health. When a captivating young woman arrives in town, she ignites a tumultuous love triangle with Thoreau’s brother, forcing matters to a crisis. Meanwhile, David Hertzog, a Thoreau scholar in present-day Maine, embarks on a reflective journey in the autumn of his life upon the unexpected return of his estranged daughter. Her reappearance in town forces him to grapple with their painful shared history and seek a new path forward. Alternating between these two timelines, The World That We Are delves into enduring themes of love, family, the quest for meaningful work, and the search for a true home in the spinning cosmos.
All registration fees for Write Connection at Thoreau Farm programs are non-refundable.
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