Talks and Lectures

Bring Boston’s literary history to your library, museum, school, book club, historical society, or community group.

Through illustrated talks and engaging lectures, the Boston Literary History Project explores the writers, books, publishers, bookstores, movements, and neighborhoods that shaped Boston’s literary past.

I connect familiar names with lesser-known stories and showing how Boston became one of America’s most important literary cities.

These programs are designed to be lively, accessible, and richly researched. Talks can be adapted for general audiences, literary groups, classrooms, conferences, and cultural organizations.

Available talks and lectures:

  • Boston has one of the richest literary histories in the United States, yet many people walk past sites every day where authors lived, wrote, gathered, and published without realizing the stories right in front of them.

    Did you know that Louisa May Alcott published her first novel while living on Pinckney Street in Beacon Hill? That the first printing press in the American colonies was located in Harvard Square? That Jewish Book Month was founded by an immigrant librarian at a West End library? That a home on Charles Street hosted many of the major literary figures of the 19th century? Or that the center of American publishing once stood where a Chipotle is today?

    Through my work with Literary Boston, I’ve spent years researching and sharing these stories—through a weekly newsletter, literary history walking tours, and public programming—and in this session, I’ll bring them together in a single narrative.

    We’ll trace Boston’s literary history from colonial printing presses through the rise of 19th-century publishing and into the era of Confessional poetry. Along the way, I’ll map key literary sites across Boston and Cambridge, building a visual understanding of how place, people, and publishing intersected to shape American literary culture.

    You’ll leave with a deeper understanding of Boston’s literary past and a new way of seeing the city around them.

Reach out to learn more:

Hi! I’m Jessica, and I’m the founder of Literary Boston, a cultural initiative that promotes the local literary community, past and present. Other literary roles include literary history tour guide, library assistant, bookseller at both indies and Barnes & Noble, book festival director and social media manager, lit mag founder, lit org board member — and, of course, writer.

I hold a BFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College and an MA in Literature from Harvard University (Extension), where my thesis on Moby-Dick and Calvinism won the Director’s Prize (yes, I wrote that for fun!). During my time in my master’s program, I tried to take as many classes in American Literature as I could, specifically 19th c. New England literature. And yes, there was a bit of literary theory in there, too.

My writing has appeared the North American Review, the Emerson Review, Writer’s Bone, and others, and my short story “Rose” received the Leah Lovenheim Award for Short Fiction. I’m also a freelance ghostwriter with over a hundred pieces published out there on the web. You can find my portfolio here.

I recently graduated from GrubStreet's Novel Incubator program, a year-long novel writing craft intensive, where I worked on a novel about paramedics in 1970s Boston (still in progress!).

Finally, my passion for “digging into the text” lead me to run a book club for a few years we called “English class over dinner,” as well as a nine-month informal “Moby-Dick Class” where I guided friends through the novel.