Advisory Board

Frank B. Porter

Having completed a 36-year tenure at Boston law firm Choate, Hall & Stewart, Frank Porter currently divides his time among his civic commitments, which include serving on the boards of the Boston Athletic Association and the Cambridge Community Foundation, and writing. A graduate of Yale College, he served as a Lieutenant in the Marine Corps before attending Harvard Law School. He has published many op-ed pieces in The Boston Globe and The Boston Herald, and his writing has appeared in several other newspapers and periodicals.

Nancy Sommers

As the Sosland Director of Expository Writing at Harvard University, Nancy Sommers directs both the university's expository writing program and the Harvard Writing Project, a program she launched in 1995 with the goal of improving the teaching of writing to undergraduates. With the support of a Mellon Foundation Grant, she has recently concluded a four-year study that investigates writing's role in education. The author of several books, she is also the creator of Shaped by Writing: The Undergraduate Experience, a video that explores the importance of writing from the perspectives of both students and professors.

Patricia Meyer Spacks

Patricia Meyer Spacks is the Edgar F. Shannon Professor of English Emerita at the University of Virginia, and has held similar teaching positions at Wellesley and Yale. She has also worked with a variety of academic and professional institutions including the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, where she is currently its president. A specialist in eighteenth-century literature, Dr. Spacks has edited the Norton Critical Edition of Jane Austen's Persuasion and is the author of many books and publications, including Boredom: the Literary History of a State of Mind, Desire and Truth: Functions of Plot in the Eighteenth-Century English Novel, and Gossip.

Richard Wendorf

In 1997 Richard Wendorf became the eleventh director of the Boston Athenaeum, moving from his position as Director of the Houghton Library at Harvard. An eighteenth-century scholar with a particular interest in English art, literature, and printing history, he lectures widely on issues concerning rare book libraries, and on the relationship between literature and the visual arts. He is the author of several books, including the award-winning Sir Joshua Reynolds: The Painter in Society and The Scholar-Librarian: Books, Libraries, and the Visual Arts, a collection of essays.