Friends of Great Barrington Libraries

08/25/2026

FREE POETRY READING AT MASON LIBRARY
Great Barrington

4-6 PM on Saturday, August 29th
Free w**e, c***r and snacks will be served.

Poetry readings by Jan Conn and Orchid Tierney.

JAN CONN is a poet, biologist, and visual artist. Peony Vertigo is her most recent book. The Disruptive Ordinary, a chapbook, is forthcoming this autumn. Her visual art is represented by Lauren Clark Fine Art Gallery in Great Barrington. She recently retired as Professor and Research Scientist with the New York State Department of Health and SUNY-Albany.

ORCHID TIERNEY is a poet and scholar, originally from New Zealand. She is the author of This Abattoir Is a College and A Year of Misreading the Wildcats as well as several chapbooks including Pedagogies for the Planthroposcene. She co-edited the Routledge Companion to Ecopoetics. She teaches at Kenyon College in Ohio and is a senior editor at the Kenyon Review.

EVERYTHING IS FREE. EVERYONE IS WELCOME.

The OtherWords series is sponsored by the Friends of Great Barrington Libraries and the Board of Library Trustees.

08/19/2026

IMPORTANT MESSAGE FROM THE OBSOLETE MEDIA DEPARTMENT :

If you owned a set of 2005 encyclopedias, not only would you be thumbing your nose at AI now, but you’ll be prepared for the future zombie apocalypse.

Bring a few empty boxes to the Mason Library and take them home. Free (or any amount you wish to donate.)

We also have nearly a thousand National Geographic magazines. Take as many as you want.

08/02/2026

Is there an art project in your future?

We got a donation of hundreds of National Geographic magazines that need a new home or a new purpose.

Take a few or a few hundred. Leave a message in the comments or contact the library if you want some.

07/16/2026

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cq61660qpdpo

Officials say they are suspected of selling "seditious" books which incited "hatred" against authorities.

07/13/2026

FREE Poetry Reading
FREE W**e and Snacks

Saturday, July 25th from 4:00 – 6:00 PM

Join us for a celebration of Granary Books, including a conversation with publisher Steve Clay; an upstate Granary book launch of Ghost Coast, a collaboration between visual artist Julie Harrison and poet E.J. McAdams; and a poetry reading by McAdams.

Come for great readings and good company, along with drinks and food provided by the Friends of Great Barrington Libraries.

07/13/2026

07/10/2026

You don’t have too many books. You have too few bookshelves.

If you don’t subscribe to the NY Times and you can’t open this, visit the GB Libraries Digital Media page.
https://gblibraries.org/books-media/digital-media/

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/09/style/too-many-books-new-york-city-apartment-scholar-landlord.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

Mendel Uminer faced a crisis when his landlord objected to the 10,000 volumes in his New York studio apartment.

07/06/2026

From Wikipedia:

06/15/2026

Please join us Saturday June 27th from 4:00 – 6:00 PM for readings by poets Norman Fischer and Ted Pearson.

Come for great readings and good company, along with drinks and food provided by the Friends of Great Barrington Libraries.

Norman Fischer is a poet, author, graduate of the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a senior American Zen Buddhist priest. A resident of the Bay Area, he has been publishing since the late 1970’s, including more than thirty titles of poetry and prose. His most recent poetry titles are Through a Window, There Was A Clattering As…, Nature, and Men in Suits. Chax Press will bring out his collection PoEM in early 2027. Chax also is publisher of his Selected Poems 1980-2013.

Ted Pearson, born and raised in Palo Alto, is a seventh-generation Californian. In a career spanning six decades, Ted has published thirty-two books of poetry, most recently Epistrophy and Trilogy. He co-authored The Grand Piano, a ten-volume experiment in collective autobiography; co-edited Bobweaving Detroit: The Selected Poems of Murray Jackson, and edited Epilogue, a posthumous collection of Craig Watson’s last poems. His work has appeared in Canada, England, France, Spain, and India. He currently lives in Northampton, MA.