Carter Sickels, author of the just-published novel, The Prettiest Star, will be hosted by Sara DiVello on South End Writes via ZOOM on Monday, June 22 at 6:30 PM (details below). The date was changed to June 22 June from 23rd due to a last-minute scheduling conflict.

Although The Prettiest Star takes place in the 1980s, when an HIV-infected son returns to his conservative family’s home in Ohio to die, a recent Atlanta Journal-Constitution review suggests the theme of the “toll on smalltown America” during the AIDS epidemic is not dissimilar to the impact on rural America of the Covid-19 pandemic of today. “What happens when a son comes back home, and he’s sick with the most feared disease of our time?” is the question posed ? Kirkus Reviews called the book a “brutally fresh kind of homecoming novel.”

Sickel’s 2012 debut novel The Evening Hour, finalist for both the Oregon Book and Lambda Literary awards, was adapted into a feature film that premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. His essays and fiction have appeared in a variety of publications, including Oxford American, Poets & Writers, BuzzFeed, Guernica, and the Bellevue Literary Review. Carter was the recipient of the 2013 Lambda Literary Emerging Writer Award. Other honors include earned fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the MacDowell Colony.

Carter is an assistant professor of English at Eastern Kentucky University, where he teaches in the Bluegrass Writers low-residency MFA program. In a 2012 interview with The Advocate, Carter said that, as a trans person he identified as queer. “For me personally, queer is the more progressive and inclusive label, and also has a more political angle — to be queer is to not fit in the norms created by a heterosexist, patriarchal culture, and to call into question those norms. Queer is one part of my identity. I also identify as a gay man, and as trans.”

Ashley Molesso and Chessie Needham, queer power couple and founders of the popular Brooklyn stationery company Ash + Chess, have written and illustrated The Gay Agenda: A Modern Queer History and Handbook, an entertaining guide that pays tribute to the LGBTQ+ community. Filled with engaging descriptions, interesting facts, helpful features—such as historical queer icons and events and LGBTQ+ acronym definitions— it illuminates the transformation of the LGBTQ+ community, highlighting its struggles, achievements, landmarks, and contributions. It salutes its iconic members—the celebrities, politicians, entrepreneurs and ordinary citizens who have made a notable impact on gay life and society itself. Ash and Chess will be hosted by Sara DiVello on South End Writes via Zoom. Tuesday, June 9, at 6:30 PM.

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The Gay Agenda is also a nostalgic look back for older generations, as well as an archive for younger people, and a helpful introduction for those interested in learning more about the community and its achievements. From James Baldwin and Emma Goldman to Marsha P. Johnson and Jodie Foster; the Pink Triangle and the Rainbow Flag to Stonewall and the AIDS crisis; Matthew Shepard and Pulse Nightclub to Sodomy Laws and Obergefell; Drag and Transitioning to The L Word and The Kinsey Scale, Freddie Mercury and Ellen Degeneres to Laverne Cox and David Bowie, this magnificent digest is a keepsake honoring all LGBTQ+, and the ongoing fight to gain—and maintain—equality for all.

Filmmaker Katrina Browne, a descendant of the largest slave-trading family in the U.S., traced the geographic, historical and political legacy of her ancestry, together with eight of her cousins, to produce a documentary movie, Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2008. It was shown on PBS, won the Henry Hampton Award for Excellence in Film and was nominated for an Emmy Award for historical research. FOSEL board member, Gary Bailey, Assistant Dean for Community Engagement and Social Justice at Simmons University, will introduce the event and its participants, Dain and Constance Perry. .

Dain Perry is one of the filmmaker’s cousins; his wife, Constance, is a descendant of slaves. Together they have conducted more than 350 screenings and facilitated conversations in over 160 cities across the country, including many libraries and churches. Both active in the Episcopal Church, they will lead a discussion about the documentary’s subject after the movie..

Traces of the Trade describes the DeWolf family of Bristol RI, who from 1769 to 1820 trafficked in human beings. Their ships sailed from Bristol to West Africa, with rum to trade for African men, women and children. Captives were taken to plantations that the DeWolfs owned in Cuba, or were sold at auction in Havana and Charleston while sugar and molasses were brought from Cuba to the family-owned rum distilleries in Bristol. Over the generations, the family transported more than ten thousand enslaved Africans across the Middle Passage. They amassed an enormous fortune. By the end of his life, James DeWolf had been a U.S. Senator and was reportedly the second richest man in the United States.

The film follows ten DeWolf descendants, ages 32-71, as they retrace the steps of the Triangle Trade, from the DeWolf hometown of Bristol to slave forts on the coast of Ghana to the ruins of a family plantation in Cuba, exploring the impact of slavery on America and its ongoing legacy of racism. Back home, the family confronts the thorny topic of what to do now. In the context of growing calls for reparations for slavery, family members struggle with how to think about and contribute to “repair,” questions that apply to the nation as a whole: What is the legacy of slavery? Who owes who what for the sins of the fathers of this country? What history do we inherit as individuals and as citizens? How does Northern complicity change the equation? What would repair—spiritual and material—really look like and what would it take?

The event is free. Due to the length of the movie (1.5 hours) and the time required for a post-movie discussion, the event begins at 6:00 PM and ends at 9:00 PM. We thank branch librarian Anne Smart for keeping the library open beyond its usual time.

Star chef Jody Adams, currently the owner of Porto, Saloniki and TRADE, will be at the South End library on Tuesday, December 5 at 6:30 PM, and give a demonstration on how to make pasta. Seating is limited. Additional tastings may become available. Final details are still being worked out. 

Italian food has been fundamental to Adams, who won the James Beard Foundation Award for the Perrier-Jouet Best Chef Award: Northeast in 1997. She traveled through the Mediterranean countries after graduating from Brown University with a degree in Anthropology, and began as a line cook at Seasons restaurant under chef Lydia Shire in 1983. Three years later, she helped open Hamersley’s Bistro as sous-chef of Gordon Hamersley's with whom she developed Hamersley's famous roasted chicken recipe. (By the time she left in 1990 she stayed away from eating chicken for two years, she says.) Adams also has a fantastically photographed and finely detailed food blog, The Garum Factory, with recipes ranging from Duck Ragu with Pancetta and Green Olives to Passion Fruit Sponge Custard, and everything in between. 

In 1990, Adams became executive chef at Michela’s in Cambridge where she combined New England ingredients with Italian culinary traditions. In September of 1994, Adams opened Rialto in Cambridge. In addition to running Rialto, Adams published a cookbook, In the Hands of a Chef: Cooking with Jody Adams of Rialto Restaurant. She co-wrote the book with her husband, Ken Rivard. Copies will be available for sale at the December 5 event.

The widely admired chef has a strong reputation of supporting local farms and purveyors. In 2008, she launched an internal educational program, Guerilla Grilling, designed to connect her staff to the farmers and artisan producers that supply the restaurant. Adams is actively involved in organizations that support child’s advocacy and hunger relief, including the Greater Boston Food Bank, Share Our Strength and Partners In Health. In October 2010  was presented with the Humanitarian of the Year award by Share Our Strength.