September 2003

Greetings from Inkberry!

Goldenrod, I’m told, always blooms five weeks before first frost. As the Berkshires hover at their end-of-summer peak, overflowing with farm and flower abundance, Inkberry too is poised to start the long downhill coast towards fall.

The highlight of our August was the Rick Moody reading that we co-presented with MASS MoCA, which took place at the museum midway through the month. The heavens refrained from raining on us (a real rarity this summer!) so the reading was held outside in the Courtyard Café, under strings of pepper-shaped lights. Rick’s reading was fantastic; his new work is whimsical and funny and strong; and folks asked terrific questions during the Q-and-A period after the reading. Many thanks to all of you who attended and applauded and asked questions!

September is the end of our official summer season, and will include three events and a weekend workshop. On September 5 we’ll be a part of the official First Friday Festivities downtown. We’ll be showing a new art installation, and we’ll host our every-other-month Writers’ and Artists’ Networking Salon, co-presented with Images Cinema and the Contemporary Artists Center. Come downtown, browse the Art Walk in various local businesses, and cap off your evening by schmoozing, networking, and hanging out with other area artists and writers at Inkberry from 8-10pm. (And please pitch in $3 towards the wine and cheese.)

On September 6, we’re delighted to present “Scenes from One-Acts: An Evening of Works in Progress” at 7:30pm. This past winter, nine students studied with playwright and teacher (and all-around great gal) Jennifer Mattern in Inkberry’s first workshop of its kind, The Art of the One-Act Play, co-presented with the Main Street Stage. As Jennifer put it in the course description: “Brash and bold, without a second to spare, the one-act play is short-track speedskating for the theatre.” On the 6th, Inkberry is proud to present a staged reading of scenes from several of the plays produced in that class. Jennifer will host as actors chosen by the playwrights bring to life the words of Chrystal Berche, Rebecca DeWitt, and Jane Poncia. Come on down and support new local work! The suggested donation for attendance is $5.

And on September 12-14, we’ll take our second shot at presenting a weekend of nature-writing programs. On Friday night (9/12) at 7pm, Tammis Coffin will give a talk entitled “Resources for Nature Writers.” She’ll offer suggestions from her own teaching and writing practice for opening sensory and imaginative pathways to a fuller receptivity of the natural world, and will have an assortment of books and journals to pass around. Admission is $10, though the talk is free to students enrolled in the Nature Writing workshop that follows.

“What nature writing workshop,” you ask? On Saturday and Sunday (9/13-14), Tammis will lead “Nature Writing in the Berkshires,” a weekend workshop for nature writers, which will take place at a variety of outdoor locations around the county, likely to include Sheep Hill, Field Farm and Stony Ledge on Mt. Greylock. (Locations will be announced at the start of the course along with alternate rainy day sites.) The workshop meets Saturday morning from 10am-12:30pm with a break for lunch, and resumes Saturday afternoon from 3-6pm, with a final session on Sunday from 10am-12:30pm. Tuition is $60 ($54 for members at the Paperback level and above, or students who’ve taken an Inkberry workshop in the last year), and as always work-study is available, so don’t let lack of funds deter you!

(As a reminder, we’re located at 63 Main Street in North Adams; call or e-mail if you have questions or need directions.)

One of the drawbacks of running one’s own business is that the work expands to fill whatever time one makes available…which can lead to far too little time to read! But Ethan and I went on vacation last month, which gave me plenty of time to savor some of the excellent books I’ve been stockpiling. The first book I read on vacation was Peter Jenkins’ Looking for Alaska, which is fantastic. Jenkins (best-known for A Walk Across America,, written more than twenty years ago and something of a classic in the finding-oneself-via-travel genre) spent eighteen months living in and travelling across Alaska, with his wife and various combinations of children. Looking for Alaska is the book that came out of that experience.

Jenkins does an admirable job of treading the fine line between outsider (which enables him to ask questions a local might not get away with) and new resident (which gets him deeper into local communities from Seward to Barrow and everywhere in between). He visits a Haida community only accessible by boat, paces with the locals when his new home base of Seward is hemmed in by the winter’s first avalanche, learns to mush sled dogs, and heads north of Coldfoot on snowmachine to spend a few weeks with homesteaders in the absolute frozen middle of nowhere…among other adventures. If you enjoy travel writing, writing about Alaska, or just plain good nonfiction storytelling that makes a unique place come alive, you’ll like this book.

Another recent favorite is Kim Stanley Robinson’s Antarctica. It’s a science-fiction eco-thriller, set in a world that’s only skewed a few degrees from our own. Politicians, scientists, artists, eco-terrorists, rebels, and a Chinese feng shui master (among others) come to life in this one, as does the unforgiving and unforgettable Antarctic landscape. Robinson weaves together an amazing array of characters and plots. He’s best known for his Mars trilogy (which was critically-acclaimed and won the Hugo and Nebula awards). At first I was surprised that he was writing about earth, although as I think about it, Antarctica is a perfect Terran setting for showing the classic SF theme of personal and global struggles against the backdrop of an inhospitable locale.

I’m something of an Antarctica buff (I think I’ve read all the nonfiction about Antarctica currently available in the English language), and I was initially wary of this book, afraid Robinson might be sensationalizing the place and its history. I couldn’t have been more wrong: it turns out that not only has he read every book I have, but he’s also lived on the continent, thanks to the Office of Polar Programs’ artists-and-writers grant program. That might explain why he’s able to write about Antarctica with such authority and such exquisitely detailed awe.

And that’s the news from Inkberry, where all the women are strong, all the workshop instructors are good-looking, and all our students are above-average. Come down and see us sometime!

— Rachel