Tuesday, October 20, 2026 · 6:00 PM – 7:00 PM
Meeting Room 1 — 7a Spofford Rd., Boxford, MA
Join Donna French McArdle as she shares her new book If. If , a book of poetry written to honor transformation and welcome the unfamiliar, traces daily life through both quiet memory and stories told and retold. People emerge from their pasts and their myths, and objects seem to shift. In these poems, versions of self, of others, and of landscape alter continuously, becoming their next iteration. Donna French McArdle began studying poetry at Kirkland and Hamilton Colleges, where she won the Watrous Prize for Poetry. She spent a semester studying with Richard Shelton at the University of Arizona. After graduating, she attended Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, then the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop earning an MFA. She then began a decades-long writing career, working as a copywriter for advertising and public relations, a technical writer documenting database interfaces, a journalist for local publications, and a writing coach full-time in public schools. She received a grant from the Boxford and Massachusetts Cultural Councils to write, design, publish, and promote a book on local farm stands. Her poems have been published in several literary journals.