March author visits in Wellesley

Wellesley is fortunate enough to draw multiple authors to town each month who write across a wide range of genres, and who visit to  connect with readers and promote their work. Attending an author’s talk—whether you’ve read the book, or just want to learn more about the topic at hand—is a great way to meet the current stars of the literary scene. Here are just a few author events happening this month.

Author: Rachel Slade, Making it in America

DATE: Wednesday, March 6
TIME: 5:30pm (light refreshments, followed by a conversation with Rachel Slade, and a Q & A)
LOCATION: Wellesley Books, 82 Central St.
COST: free
DESRIPTION: Rachel Slade will talk about some of the hottest topics in business today—manufacturing, supply chain, immigration, entrepreneurialism—and the promise of the American Dream. Rachel Slade is a journalist and author of Making It In America, the chronicle of American Roots, an innovative apparel manufacturer in Portland, Maine, and also Into The Raging Sea, the heartbreaking story of the sinking of a container ship caught up in foul weather and the demands of the global supply chain.
RSVP REQUIRED to attend or receive livestream link

Author: Suzette Mullen, The Only Way Through is Out

DATE: Tuesday, March 12
TIME: 7pm
LOCATION: Wellesley Books, 82 Central St.
COST: free. RSVP requested
LOCAL ANGLE: the author is a Wellesley College graduate
DESCRIPTION: On the surface, Suzette had it all—a kind and successful husband, two thriving adult sons, and an ocean-view vacation home. But beneath the happy facade was a woman who watched her friends walk boldly through their lives and wondered what was holding her back from doing the same. Digging into her past, Suzette uncovered a deeply buried truth: she’d been in love with her best friend—a woman—for nearly two decades. Leaning into these “unspeakable” feelings would put Suzette’s identity, relationships, and life as she knew it at risk, but taking this leap might be her only chance to feel fully alive.

Author: Adrienne Brodeur
Novel, Little Monsters

DATE: Tuesday, March 19
TIME: 7pm
LOCATION: Wellesley Free Library, and online
COST: Free. RSVP requested
DESCRIPTION: Ken and Abby Gardner lost their mother when they were small and they have been haunted by her absence ever since. Their father, Adam, a brilliant oceanographer, raised them mostly on his own in his remote home on Cape Cod, where the attachment between Ken and Abby deepened into something complicated—and as adults their relationship is strained. Now, years later, the siblings’ lives are still deeply entwined. Ken is a successful businessman with political ambitions and a picture-perfect family and Abby is a talented visual artist who depends on her brother’s goodwill, in part because he owns the studio where she lives and works.

Author: Serhii Plokhy
Current events/history: The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of History

DATE: Thursday, March 21
TIME: 7pm-8:30pm
LOCATION: Wellesley Free Library, and online
COST: Free. Zoom link will be sent via registration email. Register here.
DESCRIPTION: An authoritative history of Europe’s largest military conflict since World War II, from the New York Times best-selling author of The Gates of Europe.
PRESENTED: In partnership with the Wellesley Historical Society and generous sponsor, Christine Mayer.

Despite repeated warnings from the White House, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 shocked the world. Why did Putin start the war―and why has it unfolded in previously unimaginable ways? Ukrainians have resisted a superior military; the West has united, while Russia grows increasingly isolated.

Serhii Plokhy, a leading historian of Ukraine and the Cold War, offers a definitive account of this conflict, its origins, course, and the already apparent and possible future consequences. Though the current war began eight years before the all-out assault―on February 27, 2014, when Russian armed forces seized the building of the Crimean parliament―the roots of this conflict can be traced back even earlier, to post-Soviet tensions and imperial collapse in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Providing a broad historical context and an examination of Ukraine and Russia’s ideas and cultures, as well as domestic and international politics, Plokhy reveals that while this new Cold War was not inevitable, it was predictable.