August 2005

Greetings from Inkberry!

There is a mighty lot happening at Inkberry these days! In this edition of inkmail: a report on our weekend with Verlyn Klinkenborg, raves about the new website, and a sneak preview of what our fall season will hold.

WEEKEND REPORT

This past weekend was the first installment in our three-part series of programs focusing on rural living, community renewal, and sense of place: we brought nonfiction writer Verlyn Klinkenborg to town, in conjunction with the Williamstown Rural Lands Foundation, and it was fabulous.

On Saturday afternoon, Verlyn spoke to a packed room in the farmhouse at Sheep Hill Farm about rural living, nature writing, and the writing life. He talked for an hour entirely without notes, and was direct, funny, clear, and informative. One of his major themes was the need for attention. Being in contact with nature, and being a writer, both require one to hone one’s ability to notice things, to be aware of what’s going on, to pay attention to the world around one. Afterwards people asked excellent questions, and then enjoyed a splendid repast of pumpkin breads and cookies and several kinds of iced tea.

On Saturday evening, Verlyn gave an almost-premiere of new work (he’d read from his new book once before, but it was to a room of people he knew, so we were the first crowd of strangers to hear it) at the Contemporary Artists’ Center, again to a packed house! His new book, due from Knopf in February, is called Timothy, Or, Notes from an Abject Reptile. He calls it nonfiction, though Knopf is filing it as a novel! In the eighteenth century, Verlyn told us, there was a British naturalist and clergyman named Gilbert White who owned a tortoise named Timothy. White wrote pages in his journals describing Timothy, and Verlyn found himself wondering whether Timothy might also have been observing White…so the new book tells that true story from Timothy’s point of view. Fantastic stuff, rich and captivating, and after the reading we hung out and enjoyed wine and cheese and olives and conversation.

And on Sunday morning, Verlyn joined Hank Art (professor at Williams College, and board member at WRLF) for a moderated panel discussion on farming history, both here and in Iowa where Verlyn comes from. Once again, they spoke to a room full of people, and the conversation was lively and informative.

All three of these excellent events were funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and we couldn’t be happier with how they turned out! We’re already looking forward to our next program in this series, a visit from children’s book author Jane Yolen in October, co-presented with Words are Wonderful at the Williamstown Elementary School.

NEW WEBSITE

The new Inkberry website has launched! It’s at the same address as it ever was, but it’s much-improved. The design is prettier (I love the woven-cloth look), the back end is far more usable (in all kinds of ways that don’t really bear explanation, but trust me, they’re cool), and we’re offering a variety of new features that I’m really pleased about.

The most exciting new feature is inkblog, Inkberry’s contribution to the literary blogosphere. I’ve already posted a few entries there, offering glimpses into the inkberry life; anyone who wants to can post a comment in response, ask a question, leave an impression — in short, participate in the larger inkberry conversation.

Participating in the inkberry conversation is a theme for us at the moment. Another one of the changes the new website heralds is a revamped set of forums. We now have three Inkberry Forums: The Writing Biz (Ask questions, and offer answers, about the business of writing,) Readers’ Corner (Come discuss books with the Inkberry community!) and Brainstorming Forum (Pull up a chair and tell the Inkberry team what you think about what we do and how we do it). Anyone can post to these forums; all you have to do is create a username and password for yourself.

And the third neat new thing we’re offering are RSS feeds. RSS is a way of syndicating content; it’s an easy way for us to stream information directly to you. Now you can keep up with Inkberry using your blog aggregator! (Here’s a nifty website which points to several different blog aggregators, for Mac and Windows, desktop or online.) You can subscribe to the Combined Feed (everything Inkberry), or to any of our four individual feeds: the Events feed, the Writing Exercises feed, the Inkberry News (press coverage and inkmail) feed, and the InkBlog feed. To do so, just visit the Inkberry website and click on the little “rss 0.91” icon at the bottom left-hand corner of any page — that will open a little window which will offer you various RSS options.

Why RSS? Well, we love communicating with all of you, but sending inkmail out to the hundreds of people who subscribe is getting a bit unwieldy, and we wanted to make it easier to keep up-to-date on our press coverage, our events, and our spiffy new blog. So if you have an aggregator and can subscribe via RSS, please do. (And then please email us and tell us you’ve done so; once you’re receiving our updates via RSS, we don’t want to duplicate that by sending you inkmail.) If you don’t have a blog aggregator or aren’t comfortable with RSS, have no fear; you can continue receiving inkmail via e-mail, and can stay abreast of our events, writing exercises, and the inkblog by visiting the website regularly.

FALL PREVIEW

Our fall calendar is at the printer now, and it’s chock-full of incredibly exciting stuff. We’ll be offering in-person workshops in nature writing, short fiction, and the art of the novel; online workshops in poetry, copyediting, and essays which respond to various kinds of art; a free weekly salon (featuring refreshments, films, and conversation) at Inkberry Central in North Adams; and a dazzling array of events featuring writers as diverse as Philip Lopate, Naomi Pasachoff, and Jack Gilbert. All of these events will be listed on our website within the next few weeks, so check back for details there (or, naturally, subscribe to the “Events” RSS feed!)

TH-TH-THAT’S ALL, FOLKS

And that’s the news from Inkberry, where all the writing is excellent, all the coffee is iced, and all the women are above average. I’ll close this inkmail with an introduction from one of the decidedly-above average folks in our office this summer, our intern, Holly! Come and see us sometime soon.

—Rachel

Greetings from the new Inkberry intern! Since I’ve been here since June, I suppose it’s about time to introduce myself. I’ll be a senior at Williams College next fall (one more year!), and although I’m an art history major I’m also a complete bookworm. At Inkberry, I’ve been helping Jill out with a lot of the marketing and press details—trying to make Inkberry popular and pervasive throughout the Berkshires, if not nationally. A big step is revamping both the website and our office; they’re clean, fresh, and reorganized. I’ve also been helping Jill with organizing our first NEA installment, a weekend with Verlyn Klinkenborg; be sure to catch her on Willinet!

Since I’ve already claimed the title of bookworm, my most recent books have been a return to 80s fiction—John Updike’s The Witches of Eastwick and Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities—both highly recommended for fun, entertaining summer reading, and actually quite good to read in sequence. And of course, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince—who can resist it??

My time at Williams is quickly coming to a close, and I must admit I am at a loss for a post-graduation plan. So my current plan is to ride out the last year and hope some epiphany comes along. Until then, I’ll be busily reading, studying, and helping out at Inkberry. Hope to see people at our events or in the office, and please come say hi!

—Holly