August 2003

Hello again from Inkberry, where the summer’s just zooming by! We keep the door open these days to enjoy the glorious weather as best we can from the office.

August is another busy month for us. Right off the bat, this very evening is First Friday, and we’re once again teaming up with Images Cinema and the Contemporary Artists Center to host an Artists & Writers networking party from 8 to 10 pm. All artists, writers, and lovers of art and literature are welcome! If the last few parties are anything to judge by, there will be wine and soft drinks and snack food, and a crowd of interesting people, so stop by and say hello! Admission is free, but a donation of $3 per person goes a long way towards covering our costs.

We’ve got a month chock-full of workshops. Tomorrow — that’s Saturday, August 2 — from 1-5 pm Elayne Clift will be leading “Maiden, Mother, Crone: Writing Ourselves to Wisdom.” This is a special workshop just for women, and it’s unlike anything we’ve ever offered before. Focusing on the three traditional stages of women’s lives, this workshop will encourage participants to explore their own passages to adulthood, maturity, and ‘women’s ways of knowing.’ Space is still available in this class, which costs $50: come share in the spirit of affirmation and personal growth.

Then, beginning on Monday, August 4, David Lane will teach the four-session “Writing from the Center” (meets Mondays and Wednesdays, August 4, 6, 11, and 13, from 7-9 pm). Aimed at helping the novice or experienced writer navigate a clearer path to the page, this workshop will take students through a series of illuminating exercises to distill and clarify their work, revealing the hidden — and truest — themes of their pieces. This is a terrific opportunity for those who are feeling “stumped” or “blocked” in their work to learn evocative techniques to access the raw writing energy within. $65 for 4 sessions. Sign up now!

Later in the month, Judith Monachina will lead a one-day workshop that asks the question, “What Does It Mean to Be an American Writer?” Many writers in America today are feeling compelled to see their craft in new ways. Challenges to civil liberties, the grip of fear on the national psyche, the narrowing of news coverage, and questions about the role of the US in the world are inspiring them to reexamine their vocation in unknown political terrain. On Saturday, August 16 from 1-4 pm, come look at how the work of several American writers (poets, essayists, novelists, and journalists) evolved during political and cultural upheaval, then take part in exercises to help you explore your own voice in these times. This afternoon workshop costs $30.

Finally, artist and calligrapher Ann Kremers returns to Inkberry on Sunday, August 24, with an entirely new one-day workshop on Japanese bookbinding. Bring a loose manuscript and leave with a book! Tuition is $35, plus a $7 materials charge; see our website for the list of supplies to bring.

(As always, more information about all these classes — along with a registration form — can be found at our website, http://www.inkberry.org/workshops.html. Students who have taken an Inkberry class within the last year, or who are members at the Paperback level and higher, are entitled to a 10% discount on tuition. Work-study is available, so call 413-664-0775 to find out more.)

August also sees the resumption of our reading series, with our biggest event of the year! In partnership with MASS MoCA, we’re very proud to be bringing fiction writer and memoirist Rick Moody to North Adams. A virtuoso writer, Rick is the author of (among other works) The Ice Storm, Demonology, and The Black Veil: A Memoir with Digressions. He’ll be reading from several of his recent works on Friday, August 15, at 7 pm at MASS MoCA. Tickets are $8, and are available from the MASS MoCA box office. This should be a spectacular reading by one of America’s most celebrated young writers!

Behind the scenes, our board of directors is working overtime this summer to map out the future of Inkberry. And our work with the REACH For Breast Health program (in which we pair writers with breast cancer patients to record oral histories) is carrying on apace; the first pairs of writers and patients have already met. To help us continue that work, we’re seeking donations of tape recorders, so if you’ve got one of these machines kicking around and don’t need it anymore, let us know. (All donations are, of course, tax deductible.)

And me? I’ve been writing a lot; summer always seems to be my most productive time. (I never knew I was this light-sensitive until I moved to the Berkshires.) Also reading a lot. My favorite read of the last month is a book of journalism by Martha Gellhorn, who’s probably best known for her marriage to Ernest Hemingway but was a prolific writer in her own right. The View from the Ground is a collection of her peacetime reporting from the 1930s through the 1980s. Over the course of six decades, Gellhorn travelled all over the world and wrote about whatever she saw; this one volume contains a fairly thorough history of the twentieth century, from the Great Depression through the Reagan era. Articles which continue to haunt me include one describing a lynching in the American south in the early 1930s, one on relations between Israelis and Palestinians in the mid-1950s, and a series in which she interviews artists and intellectuals in Poland to get a sense of what life was like behind the Iron Curtain. In all her work, her method seems to be, above all, democratic: she gets to a place and just begins knocking on doors, listening to anybody who will talk to her, to get past the official version of events and hear directly from real people. She admits that this isn’t necessarily a scientific approach, but it’s always engaging to read.

— Emily