NMH Expands Visiting Writers Program

A new program will bring visiting writers to the Northfield Mount Hermon campus to connect with students to talk about their work and inspire them on their own writing journeys.

The Joseph Conrad Visiting Writers Program, which launches in the fall, will bring up to six writers to campus each year to work with students, including one or two who will do longer-term residencies.

The program will be supported by an endowed fund created by Andy Barnard ’73. Barnard credits NMH with introducing him to what’s become one of the passions of his adult life: literature. His love of reading deepened during his time at Clark University, where he studied political science and international relations, and through his successful career in the insurance field, including many years as president and CEO of Fairfax Insurance Group. So when Barnard, a regular supporter of NMH, recently decided that he’d like to make a significant gift to the school, he says, it felt appropriate that the gift help today’s students fall in love with literature themselves.

Barnard’s gift builds on and secures a visiting writers program that began last fall as a pilot program, with the acclaimed spoken-word poet Marshall Davis Jones and bestselling young adult author Julie Berry. “I see here at NMH some of the most capable and intellectually curious students of their age,” says English teacher M.K. Brake, the program’s organizer. “And while we have so many incredible supports for athletics and STEM here, I saw a potential niche to be filled for students craving more creative opportunities.” 

The program’s goal, she adds, “is to promote a diverse array of voices and expose students to all that literature can be, as well as get students face-to-face with real, working writers to show them that the literary world is alive and well outside the bounds of this campus.”

The endowed fund will allow NMH to expand the program even further and to ensure its continuity, including through the addition of residencies for some of the writers. “Our visiting writers will not only visit our campus but be a part of our campus life for the duration of their stay, giving our students a greater feeling of ownership over the experience, as well an invigorated sense of pride for their school, as a place where art truly comes to life," Brake says.

In addition to the Joseph Conrad Visiting Writers Program, Barnard’s gift will also fund the Jane Austen Teaching Fellowship to support a member of the English faculty, who will oversee the writers program. The gift is part of the ongoing This Place, This Moment: The Campaign for Northfield Mount Hermon. 

“It was important to me that it connect to something relevant to my own life experience and development and evolution,” says Barnard, an avid reader (on the day he spoke about his gift to NMH, he was in the middle of “Anna Karenina”) and book collector.

He was also interested in making a gift that emphasized the value of the humanities, a field that is sometimes underappreciated in the wider world. “I think that exposure to these masters of literature is very helpful in developing communication skills, developing facility with language that is useful in whatever endeavor you choose in life,” he says.

Barnard discussed his interest with Head of School Brian Hargrove and Bea Garcia, assistant head of school for academic programs and dean of faculty, who proposed the faculty fellowship and the visiting writers series as valuable additions to the academic program. 

“We are grateful and excited about Barnard's contribution,” Garcia said. “The support for these initiatives will create exceptional opportunities for students to form direct connections with working writers, deepening their understanding of the creative process, professional pathways in the literary arts, and the role of storytelling in shaping individual voice and identity.”

Barnard chose the program names, which honor two important figures from his reading life. He first read Joseph Conrad at NMH, tackling “Heart of Darkness” in class. He selected the author for the visiting writers’ program because Conrad’s books take readers around the world and because he wrote them in his third language, English. “I thought for a school where about a quarter of students are international and maybe English isn't their first language, it's an inspiring example of what is possible,” he says. Jane Austen is a writer he discovered more recently. “I fairly recently read all of her books and was just so taken with her use of the English language, her writing style.”

Both writers, Barnard says, call for slow, contemplative reading. “You have to read at a pace that enables you to digest what they're saying. That is a wonderful skill to nurture and develop, to be able to read and understand these complex sentences.” He also chose Austen and Conrad because their work transports readers to very different times and places. “Literature is a portal into many different worlds,” Barnard says.