The Coolidge Corner Library will close at 2 p.m. on Friday, December 5

February 15, 2026 – Virtual

Jake Skeets is the author of two books of poetry, Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers, winner of the National Poetry Series, American Book Award, Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and Whiting Award, and the highly anticipated second collection, Horses. His work has appeared in journals and magazines such as Poetry, The New York Times Magazine, and The Paris Review. Other honors include an NEA Grant for Arts Projects, a Mellon Projecting All Voices Fellowship, and the 2023-2024 Grisham Writer in Residence at the University of Mississippi. He is the third Navajo Nation Poet Laureate and teaches at the University of Oklahoma.

 

A 2023 New Jersey Council on the Arts Poetry Fellow, Robin Rosen Chang is the author of the full-length collection, The Curator’s Notes (2021). Her poems appear in Alaska Quarterly Review, New Ohio Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and Plume, and have been featured on Verse Daily. She was an honorable mention for the Spoon River Review’s 2019 Editor’s Prize and the winner of the Oregon Poetry Association’s Fall 2018 Poet’s Choice Award. She has an MFA in poetry from The MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She is a co-founder and director of The Fields Poetry Reading Series and teaches writing at Montclair State University.

January 18, 2026 – Virtual

Kimberly Blaeser, founding director of Indigenous Nations Poets and past Wisconsin Poet Laureate, is the author of works in several genres. Her six poetry collections include Ancient Light, Copper Yearning, and Résister en dansant/Ikwe-niimi: Dancing Resistance. Blaeser’s honors include the 2025 Poets & Writers’ Writer for Writers Award, Zona Gale Short Fiction Award, and Lifetime Achievement Award from Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas. An enrolled member of the White Earth Nation, Blaeser is an Anishinaabe activist and environmentalist, Professor Emerita at UW–Milwaukee, and MFA faculty member at Institute of American Indian Arts.  For more information visit: http://kblaeser.org

 

Shannon K. Winston is the author of The Worry Dolls (Glass Lyre Press, 2025) and The Girl Who Talked to Paintings (Glass Lyre Press, 2021). Her individual poems have appeared in BrackenCider Press Review, the Los Angeles ReviewRHINO PoetrySWWIM Every DayWest Trestle Review, and elsewhere. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and an MFA in poetry from The MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She currently works at Indiana University and lives in Bloomington, Indiana with her family.

SolBe Learning Display

SolBe Learning

SolBe is a local, family-owned early learning center that reimagines traditional notions of child care and
preschool. Our name defines our perspective: “sol” from the Spanish word meaning sun
and the English word “be”, combining into a name meaning “to be full of light”.                                                             
Learning is not the filling of a cup, but the lighting of a fire. SolBe has two interconnected schools: the Nursery School (infant – 2 years) and the Canopy School (2-5 years). We integrate Spanish exposure, STEAM and outdoor learning, a comprehensive nutrition program, social emotional learning, emergent curriculum, and school-age readiness.               

Currency From Around the World

Banknotes are more than money—they’re tiny billboards of human achievement. When scientists like Marie Curie or Charles Darwin appear on them, they turn everyday cash into a celebration of curiosity and discovery. With telescopes, equations, and inventions woven into the designs, these notes remind us that science isn’t just in labs and books—it’s in our hands, fueling the future. In this display, I show science and scientists featured on banknotes from around the world.

 

December 21 – Virtual

Reginald Dwayne Betts is a poet, lawyer, and the Founder & CEO of Freedom Reads, an initiative to radically transform access to literature in prisons. The author of a memoir and five collections of poetry, Dwayne’s latest book of poetry is Doggerel (2025). Dwayne transformed his 2019 collection of poetry, the American Book Award Winning Felon, into a solo theater show that explores the post incarceration experience and lingering consequences of a criminal record. In 2021 Dwayne became a MacArthur Fellow, and in the past has been awarded fellowships from Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study, the National Endowment of the Arts, Emerson Collective, and the Guggenheim Foundation. Dwayne holds a J.D. from Yale Law School. In 2020, Dwayne founded Freedom Reads with a grant from the Mellon Foundation. Freedom Reads employs several formerly incarcerated individuals and is the only organization in the country with a mission to open libraries in prison cellblocks, and thereby support the efforts of incarcerated individuals to imagine new possibilities for their lives. As Dwayne often declares, “Freedom begins with a book.”

Paul McDonough’s book of poetry, Electric Boat: A Collection of Atomic Submarine and Shipyard Poems, was published this fall by Longhouse. He has also published a chapbook, and his poems and essays have appeared in a range of publications. Founder and Editor of Glitch, a small press magazine, he later served on the board of the Coffee House Press. A member of the Tennessee Mountain Writers, he lives in the secret city of Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

Wear, Repair, Repeat: The Beauty of Visible Mending

Buying fewer clothes and maintaining what you have is the best way to reduce your environmental impact. Visible mending not only promotes sustainability but also fosters creativity, saves money, and builds community. This September, stop by the Brookline Village Library to see examples of locally mended textiles and learn about their history.

This exhibit is brought to you by local menders and Mariko Sugimori of Zoe & Mona Mending. Stay tuned for a visible mending workshop at the library December 10!

November 16 – In Person

Patrick Donnelly is the author of five books of poetry, most recently Willow Hammer (Four Way Books, 2025). Former poet laureate of Northampton, Massachusetts, Donnelly is program director of The Frost Place, a center for poetry and the arts at Robert Frost’s old homestead in Franconia, New Hampshire. His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, The Georgia Review, The Iowa Review, The Massachusetts Review, Ploughshares, Slate, The VirginiaQuarterly Review, The Yale Review, and many other journals. Donnelly’s translations with Stephen D. Miller of classical Japanese poetry were awarded the 2015-2016 Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature. Donnelly’s other awards include a U.S./Japan Creative Artists Program Award, an Artist Fellowship from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and an Amy Clampitt Residency Award. More at: patrickdonnellypoetry.com
Laurie Rosenblatt M.D. is co-founder and co-editor of LEON Literary Review. She received an MFA from The Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Pecan Grove Press published her full-length poetry collection, In Case. She has three chapbooks: Blue (Toledo University Press), Cloud-10 (NAGA Gallery Boston, MA), and A Trapdoor, A Rupture, Something with Kinks (Finishing Line Press). She is grateful to the editors of New Ohio Review, The Common, Salamander, Kelp Journal, The Rupture, Dalhousie Review, HUSK and others for publishing her poetry and flash fiction.

October 19 – In Person

Hilary Sallick is the author of Love is a Shore (Lily Poetry Review Books, 2023), long-listed for the 2024 Massachusetts Book Award; and Asking the Form (Cervena Barva Press, 2020). Her poems appear in Action, Spectacle; Halfway Down the Stairs; Permafrost; Potomac Review; Notre Dame Review; and elsewhere. A teacher with a longtime focus on adult literacy, she lives in Somerville, MA.  (www.hilarysallick.com)
Oliver Payne
Oliver Payne had planned to give a reading of his poems in the Brookline Poetry Series this fall, but very sadly, he died in July in Maine, where he had lived since 1996. He had been a longtime member of two different groups of local poets who shared their drafts of poems with one another and exchanged feedback on a regular basis. Oliver’s poems were known for their wit, wide-ranging subjects, and deft use of poetic forms and his clear, thoughtful responses to group members’ poems were always deeply appreciated. A member of the foundation board of The Beloit Poetry Journal, he had also published his poems in places such as The Leon Literary Review. [We’ll celebrate Oliver’s life by reading some of his poems.]