1876
An Evening 150 Years In The Making
2026
Our Story
It all started with one woman standing up in a Town Hall Meeting, then a Reading Room for girls on Essex Street in 1876, then a philanthropist donated half a house...and the rest is history.
150 years have passed, but our mission hasn't: women helping women rebuild.
Meet The Speakers
Beverly Cooper-Pierce
Beverly Cooper Pierce has been an academic librarian, registered nurse in the field of integrative care, family historian, and writer, strands all braided now into her debut novel, The Rowans.
Growing up in Salem, Massachusetts, she had no idea that John and Elizabeth Proctor, both convicted of witchcraft, were her father’s sixth great-grandparents, or that some of the oldest houses in towns along the coast held stories of his family.
After living in Minnesota many years and bringing two sons into the next generation, she now lives and writes north of Boston on Cape Ann, where the bones of her novel are familial and real. She is at work on a sequel set in Maine.
Renee Blacken
Renee Blacken is an endurance athlete, musician, yoga instructor, and mom living in northern New Hampshire. Her diverse background includes teaching high school, working on a goat dairy farm, and working in outdoor retail. An accomplished adventurer, she has run numerous marathons, several ultramarathons, backpacked over 1,000 miles of the Appalachian Trail, hiked all of New Hampshire’s 48 4,000 footers, and cycled 420 miles around Ireland. Renee is also a trauma survivor who has struggled with her mental and physical health throughout her life. After accessing trauma recovery programs that helped her regain agency on her healing journey in recent years, she recognized a lack of similar resources throughout northern New Hampshire.
In January of 2024, Renee founded the nonprofit Outdoor Adventuring for Good to raise awareness of and funding for trauma recovery programs that integrate mind and body healing in northern New Hampshire. To put this mission and organization on the map, she undertook her most physically and mentally demanding adventure yet--rowing solo across the Atlantic Ocean.
Renee set off from Lanzarote in the Canary Islands in January 2026, alone in a wooden rowboat, without a chase boat, as a part of an event called The Atlantic Dash. Sixty-five days and 3,200 miles later, she landed in Antigua in the Caribbean, becoming only the fourth American woman to row solo across the Atlantic. The row brought more visibility and financial support for trauma recovery resources in her area. The challenges, joys, lessons, and support she encountered on the way to the starting line and out on the open ocean have had a tremendous, transformative impact on her life and on the work she continues to do in her community.