Seminars and Classes
Learn more about Boston’s literary Past and Present
Winter/Spring 2026
New!
Boston Classics:
Reading Boston’s Authors of the Past
A 6-Week, In-Person Seminar
Boston has such a rich literary history, and through my new literary walking tours, I’ve helped others discover that history at the locations where authors from the past gathered, lived, and wrote.
But they also light up when we read work together written by those authors on the streets where they lived.
There are many more stories to read — so let’s do English class together!
“Boston Classics” is an in-person literature class where we'll read, analyze, and discuss work by authors who once called Boston home. I’ll guide the discussion, offer historical and literary context, and make the texts accessible, even if you’ve never done close reading before. We’ll be meeting at the historic Omni Parker House, once the hub of Boston’s literary scene and a gathering place for many of the authors we’ll read.
Registration is now open for class beginning the week of February 2!
Click the button below for more information on the class and to secure your spot today.
Your Instructor
Hi! I’m Jessica, and I’m the founder of Literary Boston, a cultural initiative that promotes the local literary community, past and present. Other literary roles include literary history tour guide, library assistant, bookseller at both indies and Barnes & Noble, book festival director and social media manager, lit mag founder, lit org board member — and, of course, writer.
I hold a BFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College and an MA in Literature from Harvard University (Extension), where my thesis on Moby-Dick and Calvinism won the Director’s Prize (yes, I wrote that for fun!). During my time in my master’s program, I tried to take as many classes in American Literature as I could, specifically 19th c. New England literature. And yes, there was a bit of literary theory in there, too.
My writing has appeared the North American Review, the Emerson Review, Writer’s Bone, and others, and my short story “Rose” received the Leah Lovenheim Award for Short Fiction. I’m also a freelance ghostwriter with over a hundred pieces published out there on the web. You can find my portfolio here.
I recently graduated from GrubStreet's Novel Incubator program, a year-long novel writing craft intensive, where I worked on a novel about paramedics in 1970s Boston (still in progress!).
Finally, my passion for “digging into the text” lead me to run a book club for a few years we called “English class over dinner,” as well as a nine-month informal “Moby-Dick Class” where I guided friends through the novel.