If you really love Jane Austen, consider joining JASNA (The Jane Austen Society of North America). We welcome all who enjoy Jane Austen's works. The JASNA Massachusetts Region includes all JASNA members who are residents of Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island. We have many Austen scholars among our membership as well as those who simply enjoy reading Austen and sharing their pleasure with others.

We hold five events during our membership year: four regular meetings (September, November, March and May), plus a celebration of Jane Austen's birthday in December. These events usually consist of a talk or lecture lasting about an hour, followed by discussion and light refreshments. We'd be very pleased to have you join us at our next meeting.

2024 - 2025 Season Meetings this season will be held at 2pm, at the Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation in Waltham, MA. Meetings will be a hybrid of in-person and Zoom. Meeting fee is $10 JASNA members, $15 non-members. Cash is accepted at the meeting. Click here for driving directions and parking information. In-person member tickets: In-person non-member tickets: Zoom member tickets: Zoom non-member tickets: Sunday, November 10, 2024 2 pm, Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation Jennifer Rose Adapting Austen Jennifer Rose is the author of two books of poetry, The Old Direction of Heaven (Truman State University Press, 2000) and Hometown for an Hour (Ohio University Press, 2006), winner of the Hollis Summers Poetry Prize and the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry. Excerpts from her coming-of-age prose memoir have appeared in Ploughshares and Fourth Genre. A Jane Austen fan for many decades, she serves on the JASNA Massachusetts steering committee and is working on a contemporary version of Austen's Persuasion. Her talk will include readings from that manuscript, as well as a discussion about how she has approached the task of adapting Austen's story. When not reading Austen or writing, Jennifer works in the field of downtown revitalization. She is also a life-cycle celebrant, officiating at weddings, funerals and other ceremonies. She lives in Waltham. Sunday, December 8, 2024 2pm on Zoom only Jane Austen's Birthday Celebration Amanda Fagan, singer and actress Love, Jane - A Jane Austen Inspired Album 20-year-old Amanda Fagan is a budding young singer-songwriter and aspiring playwright. She has a passion for telling others' stories through music and has written songs inspired by a variety of fictional works, songs that have gained millions of listens. Amanda is currently studying Theatre and English at university, but has maintained working on a variety of creative projects in the meantime. Amanda has released a multitude of original songs that have gained millions of streams. Her debut song, Please Don't Make Me Choose, has over 7 million streams across streaming platforms. Amanda loves to write about personal experiences as well as tell the stories of others, whether they are characters from works of fiction or people who inspired her. Not only does Amanda love to write, but she loves to read as well. Love, Jane, Amanda’s newest album is based on the works of Jane Austen and is reminiscent of the classical songs from the Regency era. Amanda loves to explore all genres of music and has dabbled in musical theater, pop, rock, country, classical, jazz, electronic, acoustic, and indie. Sunday, March 16, 2025 2 pm, Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation Juliette Wells A New Jane Austen: How Americans Brought Us the World's Greatest Novelist Juliette Wells is Professor of Literary Studies at Goucher College. She is the author of three histories of Austen's readers and fans, all published by Bloomsbury Academic: A New Jane Austen: How Americans Brought Us the World's Greatest Novelist (2023), Reading Austen in America (2017), and Everybody's Jane: Austen in the Popular Imagination (2011). For Penguin Classics, she created reader-friendly annotated editions of Emma (2015) and Persuasion (2017); her edition of Mansfield Park is forthcoming in 2025. Her most recent publications include an essay on Austen's men and the arts in The Edinburgh Companion to Jane Austen and the Arts (2024) and a chapter on two Austen operas for the collection Women and Music in the Age of Austen (2023). She is guest co-curator of the Morgan Library & Museum's A Lively Mind: Jane Austen at 250 exhibition, which will run from June 6th to September 14th, 2025. Juliette will share highlights of her new discoveries about the forgotten and overlooked Americans who, from the 1880s to the 1980s, helped readers appreciate Austen's novels, persuasively advocated for her place in the literary canon, and preserved artifacts vital to her legacy. Expect a sneak preview of the Morgan Library's "A Lively Mind" show. Sunday, May 4, 2025 2 pm, Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation Elizabeth Porter Austen's London Elizabeth Porter is Assistant Professor of English and Coordinator of Women's and Gender Studies at Hostos Community College, City University of New York. Her current research analyzes the relationship between feminist histories and eighteenth-century studies. With her scholarship appearing (or forthcoming) in Digital Defoe, Eighteenth-Century Fiction, The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830, and Pedagogy, she has published articles on literary representations of London in the long eighteenth century, writing pedagogy, and feminist writing communities. This presentation analyzes Austen's representation of London in her letters and major novels to argue that the metropolitan setting is key to understanding her life and literature. While some of her literary predecessors linger on the sensory overload of the London season, Austen's engagement with London tends to be subtle and pragmatic. Juxtaposing a selection of Austen's letters with London-based scenes from some of her major novels, this talk considers the varied functions of the metropolis in her fiction, as well as the important role the city played in her life as an author.