Category Archives: Events & News

Emily Dickinson's handwriting on a letter and envelope

Poetry Discussion Group Spring 2026 Series

Emily Dickinson's handwriting on a letter and envelope

UPDATE: Poetry Discussion Group Spring 2026 Series is now SOLD OUT. 
Sign up for our e-newsletter to sign up for future groups!

Join us for a lively virtual discussion of Emily Dickinson’s poetry and letters, meeting once a week for a month (April or June). This program is designed to welcome newcomers and seasoned readers of Dickinson alike. 

Each session is facilitated by a guest scholar with unique expertise, who leads the group in discussion following an introductory talk. Brief reading handouts will be distributed prior to each month’s program. 

Topics and Leaders:

  • “My Romantic Brother!”: Emily and Austin Dickinson in Conversation and Competition with Gerard Holmes
    Reading her poems and letters, we’ll consider the role of Emily Dickinson’s older brother in the development of her youthful thought and nascent writing practice. 
  • Constellating Dickinson: Reading Across the Archives with Emily Coccia
    Examining the affordances of online archives and print volumes of Emily Dickinson’s writings for facilitating clustered close readings to identify constellated images, resonant phrases, and recurring thematic concerns across Dickinson’s sprawling textual corpus
  • “To the World”: Emily Dickinson and the Other Among Us with Anna VQ Ross 
    Emily Dickinson famously withdrew form most human society for the last 15 years of her life, but she emphatically did not retreat from the rest of the world, and her poems. In this discussion group, we’ll read poems in which Dickinson observes, listens, and speaks to the natural world around her, and discover what it tells her. 
  • “The Door ajar / That Oceans are”: Seeing Emily Dickinson’s Seas with Susannah Sharpless

    This session will navigate material and metaphorical oceans in Emily Dickinson’s poetry

Format

As a registrant, you are signing up to join a small group of 25 or fewer regular participants for four 90-minute Zoom sessions. Meetings are participatory, with video and audio encouraged. Because we want everyone to feel comfortable speaking, full sessions will not be recorded. The program is designed for adult audiences (18+).

Registration

We are offering an identical program for April and June groups. Please review the dates carefully — space is limited.
Refunds are not available for this program.

April Group (sold out), $125 program fee (inclusive of all sessions), limited to 25 participants 
Wednesday, April 8, 6-7:30pm ET
Wednesday, April 15, 6-7:30pm ET
Wednesday, April 22, 6-7:30pm ET
Wednesday, April 29, 6-7:30pm ET

June Group (sold out), $125 program fee (inclusive of all sessions), limited to 25 participants
Wednesday, June 3, 6-7:30pm ET
Wednesday, June 10, 6-7:30pm ET
Wednesday, June 17, 6-7:30pm ET
Wednesday, June 24, 6-7:30pm ET

For Educators:
Educators may request a certificate attesting to your participation in the program. 

Reservations are made on a first-come, first-served basis. 

Questions: Don’t hesitate to reach out to edmprograms@emilydickinsonmuseum.org with any questions about the program.

Gerard Holmes is a Lecturer in the English Department at the University of Maryland, College Park, and the Treasurer of the Emily Dickinson International Society. He has edited and co-edited special themed issues of The Emily Dickinson Journal (EDJ), ESQ, and Women’s Studies, and published standalone essays in EDJ, the Oxford Handbook to Emily Dickinson, Contemporaries / Post-45, and Reception. Subject interests include nineteenth-century uses of improvisation, play, surprise, and related ephemeral, imperfectly documented, or otherwise “immaterial” (in contrast with material) culture. 

Emily Coccia is the Robert A. Oden Jr. Postdoctoral Fellow for Innovation in the Liberal Arts at Carleton College, where she teaches and works on nineteenth-century literature; LGBTQ history; and digital fan cultures. Her book project, Textually Queer, considers how American workingwomen’s creative, resistant, and social reading practices allowed them to envision queer futures and to cultivate spaces for pleasure and intimacy. Her research has appeared in journals including Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers, Transformative Works and Cultures, The Emily Dickinson Journal, and Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society.

Anna V.Q. Ross is the author of the poetry collections Flutter, Kick (Red Hen Press), winner of the Benjamin Saltman Poetry Award, the Julia Ward Howe Award in Poetry, and named a 2022 Best New Poetry Book by the New York Public Library; If a Storm (Anhinga Press), winner of the Robert Dana-Anhinga Award; and the chapbook Figuring (Bull City Press). She holds an MFA from Columbia University, and her work has been supported by fellowships from the Fulbright Foundation, Massachusetts Cultural Council, Vermont Studio Center, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Community of Writers. Her poetry has appeared in journals including American Poetry Review, Harvard Review, The Kenyon Review, Missouri Review, The Nation, The Paris Review, Plume and on The Slowdown. She teaches creative writing and literature at Tufts University and lives with her family in Dorchester, MA, where she raises chickens. 

Susannah Sharpless specializes in nineteenth-century American literature, and her research and teaching focus on oceanic studies, the environmental humanities, gender, and poetics. Her manuscript-in-progress establishes the long-overlooked presence of women in oceanic imaginaries, demonstrating how literary representations of the sea’s destabilizing power connect to the material and ecological histories that extend beyond the stereotypically masculine spheres of ship and port. Her research has been published or is forthcoming in J19, ESQ, and The Emily Dickinson Journal, and her teaching has been recognized with Cornell’s Deanne Gebell Gitner Annual Prize for Teaching Assistants. She has also written and produced an episode of the C19 Podcast, and published poetry in Bennington Review and Jewish Currents, among others. She is currently co-editor of The Emily Dickinson Journal. 

a man uses a flashlight to investigate the beams under the homestead roof

Press Release:
Construction Underway at Homestead (March 2026)

For Immediate Release
Contact:
Patrick Fecher
publicrelations@emilydickinsonmuseum.org

The exterior front of the Homestead with scaffolding up to the roof

Construction Underway: The Emily Dickinson Museum Replaces Roof and Begins Research Stage for Final Homestead Restoration

(AMHERST, MA, March, 30, 2026) – The Emily Dickinson Museum has announced the commencement of a critical phase in its ongoing restoration efforts: the forensic study of the Homestead’s east and north additions. This meticulous process serves as the investigative prelude to a full-scale restoration of two wings of the nineteenth-century home where most of the family’s domestic labor took place. 

“When the final phase of restoration is complete,” said executive director Jane Wald, “the Museum will have achieved one of the important goals it set for itself in 2003: returning the poet’s home – as faithfully as possible – to its appearance during the years she lived here and wrote nearly all of her striking and lasting poetry.”

Investigation of the building fabric is a forensic process of examining the sequence of changes that various owners have made over time. Akin to archaeology, it requires careful dismantling of specific modern architectural additions to or alterations of the Homestead, including gypsum drywall or dropped ceilings, to expose original nineteenth-century features such as original plaster walls or room divisions. This is a vital stage in restoration as the north and east wings were built during Emily Dickinson’s lifetime, modified both during her lifetime and after her death. 

The Emily Dickinson Museum is working with Mesick Cohen Wilson Baker Architects to provide guidance about material to remove and Teagno Construction, Inc., to perform the work of revealing nineteenth-century features. The two firms previously were instrumental in the restoration of the original 1813 portion of the Homestead from 2021 to 2024. 

“There are hints, to be confirmed by this research, about how domestic space and activities were organized in Emily Dickinson’s lifetime,” Wald explained. “The Museum will use the results of this ‘building archaeology’ to help uncover and highlight the lives of the many individuals who worked for the Dickinson family and supported their more recognized accomplishments.”

In addition to restoration research, the Emily Dickinson Museum is set to replace the cedar shingle roof on the circa 1813 main block and the circa 1840 east addition. In 1916, when the Homestead was sold out of the Dickinson family, new owners replaced the dilapidated nineteenth-century roof with new slate roofing materials. In examining the roof for necessary maintenance in 2000, it was discovered that the heavy slate had caused deflection in the beams and plates supporting the roof. To prevent further structural damage and to return to the materials present during the poet’s lifetime, slate was replaced with cedar shingles. Now, after twenty-five years, new cedar shingles will replace the worn and weathered material.

Both projects are beginning at the end of March and are expected to be complete by the end of May 2026. During this time, the Emily Dickinson Museum will continue to be open to the public Wednesday through Sunday, 10am-5pm. Pedestrian paths and the visitor entrance to the Homestead may be re-routed for convenience and safety.

a man uses a flashlight to investigate the wood beams underneath the Homestead roof

For additional photography, please contact publicrelations@emilydickinsonmuseum.org

ABOUT THE EMILY DICKINSON MUSEUM

The Emily Dickinson Museum is dedicated to sparking the imagination by amplifying Emily Dickinson’s revolutionary poetic voice from the place she called home.

The Museum comprises two historic houses—the Dickinson Homestead and The Evergreens in the center of Amherst, Mass.—that were home to the poet (1830-1886) and members of her immediate family during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Museum was created in 2003 when the two houses merged under the ownership of the Trustees of Amherst College. The Museum is overseen by a separate Board of Governors and is responsible for raising its own operating, program, and capital funds.

two people are looking into a square cutout carved out of the plaster of the walls at the Dickinson Homestead

Behind the Scenes Tour:
Restoring Dickinson’s Kitchen, Pantry, and More!

Private tour with Museum Executive Director Jane Wald
Space is limited — registration required.

$100/adult
Limited to 10 tickets per tour. 

Tour Dates:
Saturday, October 24, 4-5pm [SOLD OUT]
Saturday, October 31, 4-5pm [SOLD OUT]
Saturday, November 14, 4-5pm [SOLD OUT]
Saturday, November 21, 4-5pm

Stay tuned for more availability!

a flashlight points at an open hole in a wall

RESERVE YOUR TICKETS

During this once-in-a-lifetime program, witness the discoveries emerging within the walls of Emily Dickinson’s 1813 home as the Museum enters the final phase of Homestead restoration. Executive Director Jane Wald leads a private tour of the architectural and forensic investigations illuminating the original condition of the Homestead’s service wing during the poet’s writing years. Guests will see discoveries in the kitchen where Dickinson baked her famous gingerbread, the pantry where she composed and read poems, the family dining room, secondfloor bed chambers, and rooms that housed the Amherst residents who worked for the Dickinson family. Now in the exploratory phase–a brief window when modern finishes have been removed and restoration work has not yet begun–this wing of the house has never been seen this way and will not remain in its current condition for long! From wear patterns on the original floorboards, to the “ghosts” of the poet’s pantry cupboards, you’ll see up close how new understandings of everyday life at the Homestead are shaping the final restoration plan.

This is a specialty tour focusing on historic architecture and restoration. For tours of the restored Homestead and Evergreens, please register for a guided or general admission tour. 

About Jane Wald

a headshot of Executive Director Jane Wald

Jane Wald is the Jane and Robert Keiter Family Executive Director of the Emily Dickinson Museum. She has worked in the public history and literary sites for more than thirty-five years and has been executive director of the Dickinson Museum for twenty years. Her interests in literary and cultural history, combined with her background in historical archaeology and material culture, have been a particular strength at the Emily Dickinson Museum in its first decades. In 2006, Wald helped to create a master plan for stabilization, preservation, and restoration of the two Dickinson family homes, grounds, and collections, and has systematically implemented each of its recommendations ever since. Critical projects have included preservation measures at both historic Dickinson houses including installation of fire detection and suppression and museum-grade mechanical systems. Significant restoration projects have included the Homestead library, original 1813 house, Emily Dickinson’s bed chamber, and reconstruction from original materials of Dickinson’s cherished conservatory.

Wald has presented numerous lectures, talks, and papers about Emily Dickinson, the Museum, and especially the material and cultural contexts of Dickinson’s environment. Of particular relevance to this “Behind the Scenes” program are publications including “A Short Biography of the Homestead and The Evergreens,” in The Oxford Handbook of Emily Dickinson (2022); “’The Poet Hunters’; Transforming Emily Dickinson’s Home into Literary Destination” in the Emily Dickinson Journal (2017); “’Pretty Much Real Life’: the Material World of the Dickinson Family” for the Blackwell Companion to Emily Dickinson (2014); and “’Better than Heaven’: Emily Dickinson’s Religious Texts” for the Dickinson Electronic Archive. She received an A.B. from Bryn Mawr College, graduate degree in American History from Princeton University, and historical archaeology graduate work at the College of William and Mary.