Walking Gloucester: In the Footsteps of Anastas Bayliss Ferrini Garland Olson  September 2023

Our 2023 annual conference, "Walking Gloucester: In the Footsteps of Anastas Bayliss Ferrini Garland Olson," took place September 8-10. The weekend's events explored some of the city's diverse neighborhoods through talks, walks, and readings highlighting the work of five friends who lived in Gloucester and wrote about its history, its geography, its neighborhoods, and its people: the novelists Peter Anastas and Jonathan Bayliss, poets Vincent Ferrini and Charles Olson, and historian Joseph Garland.

The conference began with a Friday early-evening walk led by John Day exploring sites in the Rocky Neck section of Gloucester of importance to the writers. Viking Gustafson gave a short tour of the Gloucester Marine Railways, a favorite haunt of Bayliss's. Next was a program of readings at the Rocky Neck Cultural Center: "From Rocky Neck to Lane's Cove: Gloucester Neighborhoods in the Writing of Anastas Bayliss Ferrini Garland Olson," introduced by Rocky Neck resident George Sibley, with readings from the five writers' prose and poetry by Benjamin Anastas, Mary John Boylan, Henry Ferrini, Ken Riaf, and Ben Wildrick. 

On Saturday at the Lanesville Community Center, short talks about the writers' lives in Gloucester were presented by Benjamin Anastas, John Day, Liz Sibley Fletcher, Peter Littlefield, and Ben Wildrick. These were followed by nearby walks led by Ed Becker of two Greenbelt properties, Kleimola and Harvey reservations.  The afternoon began with presentations by Ed Becker ("The Geology of the Kleimola Reservation: Granite, Ice, and Boulders") and Monica Lawton ("100 Years in 20 Minutes: The Story of Quarrying on Cape Ann"). Then Jay McLauchlan shared with Peter Littlefield his memories of the five writers starting in the 1960s. A late afternoon walk led by Chris Leahy explored the "Cut Bridge" area of Gloucester, including Peter Anastas's childhood home and a maze of streets leading up to Governor's Hill, with its view of the city and harbor. After a conference dinner, an informal collection of video clips and photographs were shown highlighting different aspects of the writers' lives.

Sunday morning began with walks through downtown Gloucester: one led by Peter Littlefield which included a stop at Olson's residence at 28 Fort Square and one led by Judith Walcott of side streets known to the five writers but unknown to many current Gloucester residents. The conference ended on Sunday afternoon at Cape Ann Museum with "Anastas, Bayliss, Ferrini, Garland, Olson: Writers Writing to Each Other." CAM Head Librarian & Archivist Trenton Carls provided an overview of the Museum's literary archives, and John Day explored the correspondence among the five writers, with portions read aloud by Sharon Day, Monica Lawton, Theo MacGregor, Mern Sibley, and Suellen Wedmore.

Recordings of the Friday and Saturday readings and talks are available on Youtube. The Sunday talk at the Cape Ann Museum is available here.

The conference was in partnership with Gloucester 400+, which celebrates Gloucester’s 400+ years of cultural, social, ethnic, and economic diversity. The year 2023 marks four hundred years since English colonizers first attempted to settle in Gloucester. The conference was supported in part by grants from the Gloucester Cultural Council, the Bruce J. Anderson Foundation, and the Mass Cultural Council. We are grateful for the support of conference partners Cape Ann Museum, Common Crow Market, Gloucester 400+, Gloucester Writers Center, Greenbelt, Rocky Neck Art Colony, and Sawyer Free Library. A bibliography of conference-related resources available at the Sawyer Free Library is included here, courtesy of the Library.