The annual Hemingway Distinguished Lecture is presented each July by The Community Library, honoring the month of Ernest Hemingway’s birth and death. The event celebrates the power of words and the creative spirit in a landscape that Hemingway loved. This year, The Community Library welcomes JOY HARJO, who in 2019 was appointed the 23rd United States Poet Laureate: the first Native American to hold the position and only the second person to serve three terms in the role. Harjo’s ten books of poetry include Weaving Sundown in a Scarlett Light, An American Sunrise, Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings, How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems, and She Had Some Horses. She is also the author of two memoirs, Crazy Brave and Poet Warrior, which invites us to travel along the heartaches, losses, and humble realizations of her “poet-warrior” road. She has edited several anthologies of Native American writing including When the Light of the World was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through — A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry, and Living Nations, Living Words, the companion anthology to her signature poet laureate project. Her many writing awards include the 2022 Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the 2019 Jackson Prize from Poets ...

One of the most asked questions in astronomy is whether we are alone in the universe. Life on earth is abundant with the most obvious example: ourselves. However, we also see life in less obvious places like the Mariana Trench which reaches depths of around 36,000 feet---think the altitude of a commercial airplane but underwater! The life we see at these depths is typically microbial but relies on one major factor: hydrothermal vents. One other place we may see this similar microbial life is on Europa, one of Jupiter’s numerous moons. In October 2024, NASA aims to begin the journey to Europa and determine if extraterrestrial life is closer than we thought. Speaker Lauren Osburn is a recent graduate of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida, where she earned her Bachelor's degree in Astronomy and Astrophysics. During her undergraduate studies, she became interested in the possibility of extraterrestrial life within our solar system, and in the history and evolution of the universe. She also completed a research project in estimating the age of one of the oldest known globular clusters. Passionate about making the wonders and beauty of space accessible to everyone, she hopes to demystify astronomical concepts and ...