Richie Davis, local author of Good Will and Ice Cream, retired as a senior reporter at the Greenfield Reporter in 2019. Join him for a reading of his book that features many local residents. Most notably, he received a grant for his in-depth reporting about the Leverett based “Hands Across the Hills.” The reading will be outside on our patio and includes some delicious ice cream. Weather dependent. Thanks to the Friends of the Leverett Library for supporting this program.

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Books purchased on the registration page include a signed bookplate!

Conversations with People Who Hate Me: 12 Things I Learned from Talking to Internet Strangers

“Dylan Marron is the internet’s Love Warrior. His work is fresh, deeply honest, wildly creative, and right on time.” —Glennon Doyle, #1 New York Times bestselling author

“Dylan Marron is like a modern Mister Rogers for the digital age.” —Jason Sudeikis

​​From the host of the award-winning, critically acclaimed podcast Conversations with People Who Hate Me comes a thought-provoking, witty, and inspirational exploration of difficult conversations and how to navigate them.

Dylan Marron’s work has racked up millions of views and worldwide support. From his acclaimed Every Single Word video series highlighting the lack of diversity in Hollywood to his web series Sitting in Bathrooms with Trans People, Marron has explored some of today’s biggest social issues.

Yet, according to some strangers on the internet, Marron is a “moron,” a “beta male,” and a “talentless hack.” Rather than running from this online vitriol, Marron began a social experiment in which he invited his detractors to chat with him on the phone—and those conversations revealed surprising and fascinating insights.

Now, Marron retraces his journey through a project that connects adversarial strangers in a time of unprecedented division. After years of production and dozens of phone calls, he shares what he’s learned about having difficult conversations and how having them can help close the ever-growing distance between us.

Charmingly candid and refreshingly hopeful, Conversations with People Who Hate Me will serve as both a guide to anyone partaking in dif­ficult conversations and a permission slip for those who dare to believe that connection is possible.

Dylan Marron is the host and creator of the critically acclaimed podcast Conversations with People Who Hate Me, a social experiment that connects adversarial internet strangers through phone calls. He recently joined the writing staff of the Emmy-winning hit television series Ted Lasso. Dylan is also the voice of Carlos on international podcast sensation Welcome to Night Vale, an alum of the New York Neo Futurists theater company, and the creator of Every Single Word, a video series that edits down popular films to feature only the words spoken by people of color. As a writer and correspondent at Seriously.TV, Dylan created, hosted, and produced Sitting in Bathrooms with Trans People, Shutting Down Bullsh*t, and the Unboxing series. Conversations with People Who Hate Me was selected as a Podcast Pick by USA TODAY and The Guardian, named “the timeliest podcast” by Fast Company, won a Webby Award, and was the subject of Dylan’s 2018 TED Talk “Empathy Is Not Endorsement.” He lives in Brooklyn, New York with his husband Todd.

Moderator Sarah Kay is a writer, performer, and educator from New York City. She has shared her poems in cornfields in Iowa, an orthodontist office in Nepal, a viking ship on a fjord in Norway, a nightclub in Singapore, the Royal Danish Theatre in Denmark, Carnegie Hall in New York City, the Kennedy Center in DC, the back rooms of dive-bars, middle school gymnasiums, and once on top of someone’s dining room table. Sarah has a masters degree in the art of teaching from Brown University, and has been a Hedgebrook Artist in Residence, a Serenbe Artist in Residence, and a Kundiman Fellow. She is a class of 2022 New Arizona Fellow at New America. Sarah is the author of four books of poetry: No Matter the Wreckage, B, The Type, and All Our Wild Wonder. She is the founder and co-director of Project VOICE, an organization that uses poetry to entertain, educate, and inspire students and teachers worldwide.

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About the event

Give Unto Others

Brunetti is forced to confront the price of loyalty, to his past and in his work, as a seemingly innocent request leads him into troubling waters.

What role can or should loyalty play in the life of a police inspector? It’s a question Commissario Guido Brunetti must face and ultimately answer in Give Unto Others, Donna Leon’s splendid 31st installment of her acclaimed Venetian crime series.

Brunetti is approached for a favor by Elisabetta Foscarini, a woman he knows casually, but her mother was good to Brunetti’s mother, so he feels obliged to at least look into the matter privately, and not as official police business. Foscarini’s son-in-law, Enrico Fenzo, has alarmed his wife (her daughter) by confessing their family might be in danger because of something he’s involved with. Since Fenzo is an accountant, Brunetti logically suspects the cause of danger is related to the finances of a client. Yet his clients seem benign: an optician, a restaurateur, a charity established by his father-in-law. However, when his friend’s daughter’s place of work is vandalized, Brunetti asks his own favors–that his colleagues Claudia Griffoni, Lorenzo Vianello, and Signorina Elettra Zorzi assist his private investigation, which soon enough turns official as they uncover the dark and Janus-faced nature of a venerable Italian institution.

Exploring the wobbly line between the criminal and non-criminal, revealing previously untold elements of Brunetti’s past, Give Unto Others shows that the price of reciprocity can be steep.

Donna Leon, born in New Jersey in 1942, has worked as a travel guide in Rome and as a copywriter in London. She taught literature in universities in Iran, China, and Saudi Arabia. Commissario Brunetti made her books world-famous. Donna Leon lived in Italy for many years, and although she now lives in Switzerland, she often visits Venice.

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