The Greater Roxbury Book Fair invites literary lovers of all ages for author talks, book signings, and more. The fourth annual event will take place on Saturday, May 16, at the Shaw-Roxbury Branch of the Boston Public Library. Activities begin with an address from “We Refuse” author Kellie Carter Jackson, followed by a variety of bookish activities, including children’s story times, a poetry slam, and spoken word and comic-making workshops. The event will also feature an outdoor market, where attendees can explore local literary organizations and shop BIPOC vendors selling accessories, wellness products, home decor, and books. Festivities conclude with a keynote from Newbery winner Lesa Cline-Ransome, who will be joined by Boston Poet Laureate Emmanuel Oppong-Yeboah. - Annie Sarlin
Lenox’s Shakespeare & Company names new executive director
Shakespeare & Company named Molly Merrihew, the managing director of WAM Theatre, its new executive director. Merrihew will step into the role of managing director less than two years ahead of the company’s 50th anniversary.
This is not Merrihew’s first rodeo with Shakespeare & Company. Earlier in her career, she spent eight years helping with the company’s marketing and public relations before moving to her current role at WAM.
“We are truly thrilled to welcome Molly back to the Shakespeare & Company team in an even more robust capacity as Executive Director,” said Shakespeare & Company board chair Beverly Hyman. “Molly knows the company well, and she brings a crucial skill set to help steward us toward new horizons.” - Gitana Savage
Conan O’Brien to host 2027 Oscars for third consecutive year
Good things really do come in threes. Conan O’Brien will return as the Oscars host for the third time in 2027 to emcee the 99th Academy Awards. The Brookline native is the first person to host the ceremony for three years in a row since Billy Crystal in the 1990s.
“Conan has created remarkable energy around ‘The Oscars,’” said Craig Erwich, the president of Disney’s Television Group, in a statement. “His singular comedic voice makes Hollywood’s biggest night one of the most entertaining celebrations of the year.”
The 99th Oscars will take place Sunday, March 14, 2027, and will be broadcast live on ABC. —Gitana Savage
Rockwell Museum gets new head
The Norman Rockwell Museum has announced the appointment of a new director and CEO, Graham C. Boettcher. Boettcher is currently director and CEO of the Birmingham (Ala.) Museum of Art. He succeeds Laurie Norton Moffatt, who is retiring after 40 years of leading the museum. Located in Stockbridge, where Rockwell (1894-1978) lived and worked the final 25 years of his life, the museum was founded in 1969. It’s dedicated to the work of its namesake, one of America’s foremost illustrators, and the art of illustration generally. — Mark Feeney
Margaret Fuller returns to Concord, the cradle of transcendentalism
A key figure of the transcendentalist movement, the writer, journalist, and activist Margaret Fuller is less well known than her colleague and friend Ralph Waldo Emerson, partly because of her life’s brevity — she died in 1850 at just 40 — and certainly because she was a woman.
Megan Marshall’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography (“Margaret Fuller: A New American Life”) sparked a wave of projects looking anew at Fuller, a Cambridge native, and her transcendentalist sisters. Now a sculpture, commissioned and displayed since 1985 by local preservationist Ronald Lee Fleming, will be publicly displayed for the first time in its new home at the Concord Free Public Library’s garden retreat.
An unveiling ceremony will take place there at 2 p.m. on Saturday, May 23, with remarks by Marshall, Fleming, and the sculptor of the work, Penelope Jencks, who also crafted the Eleanor Roosevelt monument in New York City, as well as the statue of historian Samuel Eliot Morison on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston, and a statue of poet Robert Frost at Amherst College. — Kate Tuttle