THE MASTHEADS
We must add to our heritage or lose it. –George Orwell
The Mastheads is a public humanities project in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. We seek to connect residents to the literary history of the region, create a forum for thinking about place, and support the production of new creative work. Founded in 2016 upon the legacy of five American Renaissance authors who wrote in Pittsfield, The Mastheads is at once an urban architectural experiment, a literary research initiative, a writers’ residency, and an educational program.
Our Projects
Mobile Writing Studios: The physical spaces that comprise The Mastheads are five sculptural studios, each the architectural interpretation of the original structure from which one of five American Renaissance authors wrote while in Pittsfield: Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., and Henry David Thoreau. From spring to fall, the studios are installed in different locations around the Berkshires for diverse Mastheads public programming and events.
The Writers’ Residency: In July, five writers are invited to Pittsfield to live and work. Residents receive a stipend, travel reimbursement, a private room in a house shared with the other residents, and exclusive use of one of the Mastheads studios.
The Lecture Series: Along with select events throughout the year, we produce city-wide humanities programming to complement our July Writers’ Residency, including public lectures, community conversations, and literary readings, with a new theme each summer. We assemble and publish The Mastheads Reader, a carefully curated collection of writing by Pittsfield authors, complete with an introduction and scholarly apparatus, to pair with the July programming.
Educational Programming: During the school year, The Mastheads operates its poetry-in-schools program, Fireside, in Pittsfield Public Schools. Students compose original poetry, and each ten-week course culminates in an anthology of student work and a community reading.
Publication and Design: Each summer we produce The Mastheads x The Berkshire Eagle Folds, a series of four newspaper folds that include transcripts of our lectures and community conversations, writing by our residents, as well as drawings, cartoons, poetry, and other writing by local authors and our Fireside students.
About the name “Mastheads”
Aboard the Pequod, the whaling ship in Moby Dick in which Ishmael sails, crew members take shifts climbing up high into the masthead, looking out for whales. From that new vantage point, they see the world around them from a different perspective, elevated far off the ship’s deck. At the same time, Ishmael describes the masthead—a space large enough for only one person—as an opportunity to look inward, and encounter new aspects of oneself.
Our Team
- Architects & Co-Founders: Tessa Kelly and Chris Parkinson
- Director: Tessa Kelly
- Education & Operations: Sarah Trudgeon
- Research: Jeffrey Lawrence
Donate!
To support The Mastheads, donate online via PayPal, or send a check to the address below:
Upper Housatonic Valley National Heritage Area
c/o The Mastheads
PO Box 611
Great Barrington, MA
01230
All donations are 501(c)(3) tax deductible.
Press
To learn more, visit www.themastheads.org
The Mastheads writers-in-residence project is a part of In Motion: Pittsfield, a city-wide initiative. The initiative is a means to preserve the legacy of a literary community of American Renaissance authors who produced work in Pittsfield, including Melville, Hawthorne, Thoreau, Longfellow, and Oliver Wendell Holmes through the construction of five writing studios that will provide venues for writers and local residents to engage with the Pittsfield landscape through the written, sung, or spoken word.
