December 2002

December is upon us, which means it’s exactly a year since we took possession of our Main Street space. When we moved in last year, the walls were an odd yellow and the floor was piled with pulp paperbacks; what a difference a year makes!

November was a fun month for us. First, as many of you know, we marshalled our forces to send out our annual appeal; in the process, we kicked off our first year of having a membership system, and catalogued our resource library to make it available for lending. The third of three UNITY/Inkberry teen writing workshops got going in November; we made an appearance on a panel at the Neighborhood Expo in North Adams; and we hosted an Evening of Regional Poets, which was a blast. Despite the weather (a nor’easter dumped an inch or two of ice pellets on Northern Berkshire, and kept one of our scheduled readers trapped in the Valley, alas) a crowd of about thirty people turned out to cheer on Kate Abbott, George Drew, and Greg Scheckler. A good time was had by all.

In the month to come, we’ll be winding down the fall term’s workshops. Our December reading, on 12/14 at 7:30pm, is an evening of fiction-writers from this year’s edition of The Berkshire Review. Sheila Barry of Pittsfield, a novelist and textbook author, has had six plays produced. Her stories have appeared in Flash Fiction and Ascent. Rebecca Flowers, a new Pittsfield resident, is a writer and commentator for NPR’s “All Things Considered.” Her work has appeared in many journals and publications. Carol Weir of Chatham, New York is a country lawyer who teaches writing at New York University. A story of hers won the PEN award in 1993, and her novel Dear Hostages was a winner of the Washington Prize for Fiction. All three are terrific writers, and we’re delighted to be partnering with the Berkshire Writers Room to present them at Inkberry, so come on down and enjoy their words.

Chanukah is early this year, and has already begun, but if you’re casting about for a Chanukah gift to give on one of the holiday’s later nights, or if you haven’t quite finished your Christmas shopping, consider giving the gift of Inkberry. We offer gift certificates (printed on lovely card stock with the signature Inkberry logo) at all dollar increments, which can be cashed in for any of our varied writing workshops, either in person or online. Just drop an email or give us a call (413-664-0775) and we’ll put one in the mail for you!

Despite the early snows this year, it isn’t technically “winter” at Inkberry until January, which is when our winter term starts. Winter events will include readings by Ted Conover and Clara Park, and our first-ever event for families with young kids (co-presented with The Family Beat). We’ll also be offering a slate of new workshops — including an online mixed-genre workshop designed specially for beginners and folks who need a little push to get them writing, and a playwriting collaboration with the Main Street Stage (culminating in a works-in-progress showing of student work) — so keep an eye out for our winter calendar, which is being designed even now and should hit the streets pretty soon.

For my part, I’ve been enjoying teaching our first-ever online workshop (it’s fun to have Inkberry students in several time zones!). And during the rare moments when I’m not actively Inkberry-ing, I’ve been curling up by the fire with books. I recently finished Darkling, a book-length poem by Anna Rabinowitz that completely blew me away. It’s not written in traditional narrative style; instead, it seeks to recreate (her family’s) WWII/Shoah experiences and history through a combination of narrative fragments, photographs and letters (both actual and figurative), quotations, and allusions, all held together by a stunning acrostic framework. In theory, I understood the notion that in the fragmented postmodern world we might need fragmented postmodern narratives; but this is the first time I’ve read one that was this rich and compelling.

Other excellent recent reads: novels The Archivist by Martha Cooley, and The Very Air by Doug Bauer. The two could hardly be more different — the first intertwines T.S. Eliot with the story of an archivist at an unnamed university, and the second paints an often hilarious picture of a snake-oil salesman in rural Texas in the early 20th century — but I enjoyed them both a lot.

And that’s the news from Inkberry! Have a great December; we hope to see you (either in person or online) soon!

— Rachel