From John Devino:
“Letters from Erastus: Field Notes on Grace”, with Anne D. Emerson
Sunday – September 13th – 4:00 pm

Author Anne Emerson explores twenty-two letters written by her great-great-grandfather, Erastus Hopkins, to his daughters in the 1850’s and 1860’s. Buried for 150 years in the archives of the Massachusetts Historical Society, the letters became the driving force in the author’s quest to figure out who this forgotten man was. Along the way, they become a bridge for the author’s understanding of her own life story and her old New England family.

Note: Erastus’ sister, Sarah, married UVM President John Wheeler

Anne Emerson graduated from Brown University where she studied creative writing. She did graduate work at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and later at the Boston University School of Management. She worked at Boston University on the team that developed Boston’s Huntington Theater and ultimately she married its first artistic director, Peter Altman. In 1988 she moved to Harvard’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs where she was executive director for a decade. In the evenings she took creative writing classes at the Harvard Extension School.

In 1998 Emerson became the executive director of the Bostonian Society with a vision to develop a major history center for the city. She continued to lead the Boston Museum Project, which split from the Bostonian Society, until 2008. At that point she began her work on Letters from Erastus: Field Notes on Grace. She lives in Jamaica Plain with her husband and spends her time writing and painting.