Civil War Poetry

On March 14 at 7 p.m., the Vineyard Haven Public Library hosts the Martha’s Vineyard Poetry Society’s presentation of Civil War Poetry.

Walt Whitman, Herman Melville and many others, including some bards of Martha’s Vineyard, penned odes to express their views on America’s Civil War.

Bringing the poetry of that decisive era to life will be Lee McCormack, Fan Ogilvie, Ellie Bates, Jill Jupen, Susan Puciul, and William Waterway.

Build a Book

Teenagers have all the fun. It’s not enough that the young adult book genre has become the go-to read for adults (Harry Potter, The Hunger Games anyone) now teens have the chance to actually make the physical book too. Who said print was dead.

On Wednesday, March 14 and again on Wednesday, March 21 Emma Young leads a two-part book-making workshop for teens. To get a more precise idea of what this means, Ms. Young has the floor.

Library Book Talk

On Tuesday, Feb. 28, at 7 p.m. Susan Strane discusses her new book: A Whole-Souled Woman: Prudence Crandall and the Education of Black Women.

The book chronicles how Prudence Crandall opened the first boarding school in America for African-American girls in Canterbury, Conn. in 1833. The school was advertised as a seminary for “young ladies and little misses of color.”

The town was not pleased. There were boycotts, intimidation, and even the poisoning of their well.

On Tuesday, March 6 beginning at 5 p.m. the West Tisbury Library is hosting a talk by Virginia Carmichael, coauthor of The Albatross and the Fish (University of Texas Press, 2011).

The albatross family is currently the most threatened bird group in the world and in their extensively researched book, Robin W. Doughty and Virginia Carmichael tell the story of how its potentially catastrophic extinction has been interrupted by an unlikely alliance of governments, conservation groups, and fishermen.

iPhone Photo Workshop

Pathways Projects Institutes, a nonprofit organization dedicated to creative projects in the arts, writings, and collaborative forms, is offering a two-part winter iPhone photography workshop instructed by Kathy Rose.

The first session takes place Saturday, Feb. 25, from 3 to 5:30 p.m. and will include instruction on how to use apps, lenses and adaptors as well as tips and guidance for editing photographs. There will also be a field trip, weather permitting.

Fall from Grace, by Richard North Patterson, Scribner, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., New York, NY, March 2012, 278 pages (hardcover, $26.00).

Chilmark is home base in Richard North Patterson’s newest novel, Fall from Grace. “I’ve long wanted to write a novel set on Martha’s Vineyard, my summer home for almost two decades now,” Mr. North Patterson writes in the book’s afterword.