Join us for our monthly open mic poetry night!

Maren Tirabassi was Portsmouth Poet Laureate
from 2001-2003. Her first project was the book Portsmouth Unabridged - New Poems for an
Old City which boasted more than ninety local poets from age nine to one hundred. Her
second year she ran a “Humor in Poetry”’ festival. Maren teaches poetry in
a wide range of settings and travels as a facilitator for United Church of Christ
(Congregational) workshops and conferences.

Harvey Shepard is a retired UNH Physics professor and is active with
the Portsmouth Poet Laureate Program. His work has appeared in Poetry East, Poet Lore, The Connecticut River Review, Psychotherapy Review, Roanoke Review, the Portsmouth Herald and in numerous anthologies and online journals.

After the featured poets, we'll open the floor for you to read your work (one or two poems only please). Get here early to sign up!

Local puppeteer extraordinaire Martha Dana is back! We are so happy to host our favorite puppet lady as she tells stories and teaches lessons using her beautiful, full-sized, handcrafted puppets. Join us for this fun and free event, great for children of all ages.

Liz Whaley's book group will meet at the Loaf and Ladle for an informal discussion of her March book, The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry.

The Secret Scripture is an epic story of family, love, and unavoidable tragedy from the two-time Man Booker Prize finalist Sebastian Barry 's novels have been hugely admired by readers and critics, and in 2005 his novel A Long Long Way was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. In The Secret Scripture, Barry revisits County Sligo, Ireland, the setting for his previous three books, to tell the unforgettable story of Roseanne McNulty. Once one of the most beguiling women in Sligo, she is now a resident of Roscommon Regional Mental Hospital and nearing her hundredth year. Set against an Ireland besieged by conflict, The Secret Scripture is an engrossing tale of one woman's life, and a vivid reminder of the stranglehold that the Catholic church had on individuals throughout much of the twentieth century.

Liz's group meets the third Sunday of the month at the Loaf and Ladle on Water Street in Exeter. Just read the book and join us-- no reservations necessary!

New Hampshire is celebrating Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird in March 2010 as part of the Big Read program. We'll be taking part by hosting a discussion of the book led by our very own Liz Whaley. Liz was an English teacher at Oyster River High School for many years, and now, besides being the most loyally followed bookseller at Water Street Bookstore, is the leader of our once monthly book group.

You can check out all of the programs being offered for the Big Read in New Hampshire at http://bigreadnh.org.

Anyone and everyone is welcome to join us. Read the book and come add your two cents!

This book is the result of a program developed by Eileen Palazzo to help girls and young women overcome eating disorders. The program, called Free, is a combination of weight loss and nutrition, but more than that, it is a method to change one's relationship with food.

Palazzolo has been running her "Free" program for several years out of Southern NH where she is also a fitness and gymnastics instructor. It was shortly after recovering from an eating disorder and years of unhealthy self-image on her own that she realized she could help others to overcome society's view of perfection as well. "I am not a nutritionist, psychologist, physician or physiologist," she states, "I am an ordinary person who through many trials and tribulations has found peace with my physical self."

Excerpt:
"The concept of losing body fat, and therefore weight, is a simple mathematical equation. Consume less calories than you burn. This is the only sound solution to the physiological task of weight loss. The psychological task of weight loss is another story indeed."

Bring your questions and join us for this fascinating and important event.

Holly Whiteside, caregiver's coach and author of The Caregiver's Compass: How to Navigate with Balance and Effectiveness Using Mindful Caregiving, will be joining us for a talk about her book, followed by a more intimate session for caregivers and those who care about them.

The Caregiver's Compass gives you back the reins of your well-being and emotional balance by teaching how to shift your experience of caregiving. Step by step the author coaches you down a sure and gentle path to greater peace. Through 36 short sections and seven chapters, you learn to apply three basic well-being principles to the emotional arenas of caregiving. Journaling prompts at the end of each section let you make the learning your own.

Holly Whittelsey Whiteside is a life coach, a caregiver's coach, and a writer. During her challenging decade of caregiving, she applied life coaching principles to herself in order to stay balanced. The resulting tools and techniques are now taught through workshops and private coaching. She is a certified Eden Alternative Associate.

Schedule for Event
2:00-3:00  Meet the Author and book signing: Hear the story of The Compass and learn about Mindful Caregiving tools

3:00  Chat with the Coach: A session for caregivers and those who care about them

Doug Stewart, the author of The Boy Who Would be Shakespeare: A Tale of Forgery and Folly, will be joining us for a reading and discussion of a fascinating literary hoax

In the winter of 1795, a frustrated young writer named William Henry Ireland stood petrified in his father's study as two of England's most esteemed scholars interrogated him about a tattered piece of paper that he claimed to have found in an old trunk. It was a note from William Shakespeare. Or was it?

In the months that followed, Ireland produced a torrent of Shakespearean fabrications: letters, poetry, drawings--even an original full-length play that would be hailed as the Bard's lost masterpiece and staged at the Drury Lane Theatre. The documents were forensically implausible, but the people who inspected them ached to see first hand what had flowed from Shakespeare's quill. And so they did.

This dramatic and improbable story of Shakespeare's teenaged double takes us to eighteenth century London and brings us face-to-face with history's most audacious forger.

Read an excerpt and watch a book trailer at Doug's website.

“A fascinating tale of forgery, greed, and deception. It’s the Catch Me If You Can of eighteenth-century London—gripping, fast-moving, and funny.”

—Joseph Finder, New York Times best-selling author
of Vanished and Paranoia

Doug Stewart writes frequently about history and the arts for Smithsonian Magazine. His stories have also appeared in Time, Geo, Muse, Discover, and Connoisseur. Stewart has worked as a book and magazine editor, a ghost writer, a science writer, and a restaurant columnist. He lives in Ipswich, Massachusetts, with his wife and fellow writer, Coco McCabe, and their two sons. This is his first book.

Bob Moore, local musician and poet extraordinaire, will be sharing from his new poetry book, Unexpected Colors, and we could not be more thrilled!

Robert Moore has been writing poetry since the early 1990’s. He self-published a collection of poems in 1997, A Bridge with a View, Little Rabbit Press. He’s had poems published in several literary journals including The Lyric, Compass Rose, The Poet’s Touchstone, and The 2008 Poet’s Guide to New Hampshire.
In December of 2009, he released a second collection of poems entitled Unexpected Colors, Beech River Books. Since 1999, his day job is as a
science teacher at Pelham High School, Pelham, NH.

Join us in support of this great community member, and fantastic poet.