Previous Speakers

FOSEL is proud to have hosted numerous distinguished and talented guest speakers from a wide variety of fields over the history of the South End Writes program.

FOR THE LAST TEN YEARS WE HAVE HOSTED:

2016:

Stephen Kurkjian (Master Thieves: The Boston Gangsters Who Pulled Off the World’s Greatest Art Heist)

Paul McLean (Bloodlines)

Ross Terrill (The New Chinese Empire)

Michelle Hoover (Bottomland)

Russ Lopez (Boston’s South End: The Clash of Ideas in a Historic Neighborhood)

Bessel van der Kolk (The Body keeps the Score: Brain, Mind and Body in the Healing of Trauma)

The Dog Lady, a.k.a Monica Collins (South End News columnist)

Saundra MacKay (The Measure of Love)

Callie Crossley (WGBH commentator/ political gabfest)

Joseph Finder (Guilty Minds)

Louise Miller (The City Baker’s Guide to Country Living)

Gordon Hamersley (Bistro Cooking at Home)

Dina Vargo (Boston by Foot)

2015:

Joe Steinfield (Claremont Boy)

Jamaica Kincaid (See Now Then)

Jennifer Haigh (News From Heaven)

Anjali Duva (Faint Promise of Rain)

Jack Beatty (The Lost History of 1914)

Scott Heim (We Disappear)

James O’Connell (The Hub’s Metropolis: Greater Boston’s Development from Railroad Suburbs to Smart Growth)

James Vrabel (A People’s History of New Boston)

Alysia Abbott (Fairyland: A Memoir of my Father)

John J. Ross (Shakespeare’s Tremor and Orwell’s Cough)

Adam Rothman (Beyond Freedom’s Reach: A Kidnapping in the Twilight of Slavery)

Diana Nicosia (The Caravaggio Contract)

Virginia Pye (Dreams of the Red Phoenix)

2014:

Christopher Castellani (All This Talk of Love)

Michael Lowenthal (The Paternity Test)

Max Grinnell (A talk about the urban condition)

Poet Colin D. Halloran (Shortly Thereafter)

Anita Shreve (Stella Bain)

William Landay (Defending Jacob)

Richard Vacca (The Boston Jazz Chronicles: Faces, Places and Nightlife 1937-1962)

Pablo Medina (Cubop City Blues)

Stephen Kinzer (The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles and Their Secret World War and True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth of American Empire)

Hope Shannon (Legendary Locals of Boston’s South End)

Jean Gibran (Love Made Visible)

2013:

Lynne Potts (A Block in Time: A History of Boston’s South End from a Window on Holyoke Street)

Dennis Lehane (Live by Night)

Barbara Shapiro (The Art Forger)

Joe Gallo (Boston Bronze and Stone Speak to Us)

Boston Poet Laureate Danielle Legros Georges (recent work)

Joe Wexler (The Adventures of Ed Tuttle, Associate Justice, and Other Stories)

Megan Marshall (Margaret Fuller: A New American Life)

Sara DiVello (Where in the OM Am I?)

J. Courtney Sullivan (The Engagements)

2012:

Wendy Wunder (The Probability of Miracles)

Police Officer John Sacco (Poet Laureate of the South End News’s Police Blotter)

Sven Birkets (The Other Walk & recent work)

Edith Pearlman (Binocular Vision)

Leah Hager Cohen (The Grief of Others)

Christine Chamberlain (How to write memoirs)

Mari Passananti (The Hazards of Hunting While Heartbroken and The K Street Affair)

L. Annette Binder (Rise)

Sara Lawrence Lightfoot (The Third Chapter: Passion, Risk and Adventure in the 25 Years After Fifty and Exits: The Endings that Set Us Free and Growing Each Other Up: When Our Children Become Our Teachers)

Margaret Sullivan (Boston’s Fairest)

Maryanne O’Hara (Cascade)

Margot Livesey (The Flight of Gemma Hardy)

Stephen Davis (More Room in a Broken Heart: the True Adventures of Carly Simon)

April Bernard (Miss Fuller)

Andre Dubus III (Townie, a Memoir)

Alice Hoffman (The Dovekeepers)

Susan Naimark (The Education of a White Parent: Wrestling with Race and Opportunity in the Boston Public Schools)

Marylou Depeiza (Walking in her Shoes)

2011:

Screenwriter/filmmaker Alice Stone (Film documentary: Angelo Unwritten)

Doug Bauer (What Happens Next?)

Colin Shepherd (The Museum of Human Beings)

Phil Gambone (Travels in a Gay Nation: Portraits of LGBTQ Americans and Recent work in progress)

Alison Barnet (South End Character: Speaking Out on Neighborhood Change and Sitting Ducks)

Meg Muckenhaupt (Boston’s Gardens and Green Spaces)

Susan Conley (The Foremost Good Fortune)

Poet Henri Cole (Pierce the Skin)

Christopher Kimball (Cook’s Illustrated)

Joanne Chang (Flour)

Lily King (Father of the Rain)

Johnny Diaz (Take the Lead)

2010:

Sue Miller (The Lake Shore Limited & The Arsonist)

Jennifer Steil (The Woman Who Fell From the Sky)

Scott Pomfret (Since My Last Confession)