THE FROST PLACE Museum and Poetry Center Hires New Executive Director

The Board of Trustees of the Frost Place, a museum and poetry education center based at Robert Frost’s homestead in Franconia, New Hampshire, have announced that Jim Schley of South Strafford, Vermont, has been hired as executive director.

Schley has extensive experience in the fields of publishing, education, and theater. He has been co-editor of the literary quarterly New England Review and editor-in-chief of the book publisher Chelsea Green, and he has worked as a teacher with Community College of Vermont, ElderHostel, and the Vermont Humanities Council. He has toured internationally with Bread & Puppet Theater of Glover, Vermont, and Les Montreurs d’Images of Geneva, Switzerland, performing often in recent years with FLOCK Dance Troupe. He is a member of the National Book Critics Circle and an associate of the journalists collective Homelands Research Group, and his writings have been published in books such as Garrison Keillor’s Good Poems anthology and the chapbook One Another (Chapiteau, 1999) as well as in newspapers and magazines, including an essay in Newsweek about the experience of having two dozen part-time jobs in one year. Before accepting the Frost Place position he was working as a senior editor and researcher at Leadership in Medicine, Inc. of White River Junction, Vermont.

The Frost Place was founded in 1976 when a group of neighbors led by David Schaffer and Van Macklin persuaded the Franconia town meeting to approve the purchase of the farmhouse where Robert Frost and his family lived full-time from 1915 to 1920 and spent nineteen summers. A board of trustees was given responsibility for management, and from 1977 through 2005 teacher and scholar Donald Sheehan served as the organization’s executive director. In his retirement Sheehan is doing a new translation of the Biblical psalms.

“This is a fabulous opportunity,” said Schley. “How many arts organizations have had one director for twenty-nine years? Donald Sheehan created an extraordinary atmosphere for learning, with a rare combination of intellectual rigor and kindness. And I feel as if all that I enjoy and know how to do will be called upon in this job — not only writing and teaching poetry, but everything from repairing clapboards to creating compelling grant proposals to addressing Franconia’s town meeting.”

Since 1977, the Frost Place has awarded a fellowship each summer to an emerging American poet, including a cash stipend and the opportunity to live and write in the house for several months. In addition, the Frost Place has sponsored an annual Festival and Conference on Poetry for writers seeking classes and workshops with a faculty of illustrious poets, a program that has in recent years expanded to include a young poets conference for high school students, a teachers’ conference, and an advanced seminar in addition to on-the-road workshops across the U.S.

For more information, including questions from the media, please contact Frost Place director Jim Schley or assistant director Keisha Luce at (603) 823–5510 or email. Frost Place programs can be viewed on this page.