January 2003

Happy new year from Inkberry!

We’ve had a long vacation, but now, despite the three feet of fresh snow outside, it’s time to get back in the swing of things. And things will be swinging very soon; our first workshop of the winter begins on January 8! It’s The Art of the One-Act Play, an eight-week class that we’re very excited to be presenting in partnership with the Main Street Stage. Taught by accomplished playwright Jennifer Mattern, along with the Stage’s Artistic Director Frank La Frazia, this is a down-and-dirty, hands-on workshop in which students will produce and polish their own one-acts, AND have the unique chance to hear their works-in-progress read on stage by actors in the Main Street Stage company. It’s a fantastic opportunity for any would-be playwrights, so call 664-0775 or visit our website (http://www.inkberry.org/workshops.html) to find out how you can sign up.

Later in January, the second in our series of online workshops will begin. Rachel Barenblat, our intrepid co-founder and Executive Director, will teach Getting Started, a brand new class specifically designed for beginning writers. Full of generative exercises and useful lessons on the writing craft, this six-week workshop will take place entirely in cyberspace — so all you Inkberry fans who can’t make it to North Adams classes, this is your chance. As always, you can call or see the website for more information.

We’ve got a tremendous reading later this month. Gonzo journalist and latter-day muckraker Ted Conover is coming to Inkberry on Saturday, January 25, for a 7:30pm reading. Conover’s most recent book, Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing, tells of his time as a corrections officer at New York’s Sing Sing Prison. (The state had denied him permission to investigate and write about the prison system, so he did it the hard way by working there for a year. The book went on to be shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize, and to win the National Book Critics Circle Award.) Conover’s other books include Rolling Nowhere, an account of several months he spent train-hopping with contemporary hoboes, and Coyotes: A Journey Through the Secret World of America’s Illegal Aliens, which recounts his travels in Mexico, the United States, and across the border with those who perform America’s menial labor.

Winter is an excellent time for reading; with constant snowstorms, which is what January in the Berkshires tends to entail, the temptation to hibernate with a stash of good books is almost too strong to resist. Right now I’m rereading one of my all-time favorites, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. You’ve probably seen ads (if not the film itself) for the recent release of The Hours, a new movie based on the book by Michael Cunningham that reimagines Woolf’s classic, as well as Woolf herself as she wrote it. (I must say, Nicole Kidman as Virginia Woolf is a shoo-in for the Year’s Most Unlikely Casting award.) I enjoyed Cunningham’s novel, and fully intend to see the movie whenever it finds its way to these parts (sometime around March, I imagine), but however good they may be, they can never match the rapture of Mrs. Dalloway itself. In the novel, Woolf sets out to capture in prose exactly how it feels to be alive from moment to moment. For my money, nobody ever did a better job of conveying the exhilaration and overwhelmingness of life, the multitude of impressions and stimuli that swirl around us at every instant, the fragility of a mood, of our sense of self. This is third time I’ve read it, and Mrs. Dalloway is as much of a revelation as ever.

On that note, I’ll wish you a warm month with your favorite books. (If you have particular recommendations, we’d like to hear them! Perhaps some future edition of Inkmail can feature your responses.)

— Emily