July 2004

June was a fantastic month at Inkberry, in part because our first-ever anthology of work by the Inkberry community came into being! Inklings: Selections from Workshops at Inkberry, Vol. I, came out on June 4th. On the 5th we held a reading and launch party celebrating Inklings, its many fine contributors, and the birthday of Inkberry’s reading series which began with Donald Hall three years ago.

The Inklings event will stand out in my memory as one of the highlights of Inkberry’s first few years. Several contributors read their work to a packed house (standing-room only!), and afterwards we feasted on wine and crudités, homemade fruit tarts, and an enormous chocolate sheet cake (it was a birthday party; we needed cake). I got a little teary when the assembled throng sang happy birthday to Inkberry in impromptu multi-part harmony. Tremendous thanks to all who celebrated our birthday with us; copies of the anthology can be purchased at Inkberry, online through our store, or at Papyri Books down the street. It features work by thirty-one writers, some of whom are luminaries in the eyes of the literary world and all of whom are luminaries in our eyes. I couldn’t be prouder of what it showcases: the remarkable community of readers and writers who give Inkberry a reason to exist.

July is the heart of summer here in the Berkshires, and we’re presenting some excellent workshops this month. On July 6th and 13th we’re offering Pulling It All Together, a seminar on assembling poems into a coherent chapbook or book-length collection, led by Susan Kan (founder of Perugia Press) and Gail Thomas (author of two collections of poems, most recently No Simple Wilderness). Susan and Gail will address voice, musicality and unity; hands-on exercises will help participants make decisions about titles, poem order, epigraphs, and more. The enrollment deadline is July 1, so if you’re interested, tell us now! You can read all about it here.

We recently taped the July episode of Inkberry’s Bookshelf, which focuses on the many pleasures of food writing; our guest this month is Darra Goldstein, and the show will air on Willinet on Tuesday nights (beginning on July 6th) and on Pittsfield Community TV and Northern Berkshire Community TV as well (contact them for airtimes). Food nourishes us on many levels: not only physically, but also spiritually. If thinking and writing about food interests you, join our online Introduction to Food Writing workshop which begins on July 9th. Only a couple of spaces are still open, so act fast!

(Incidentally, my sincerest thanks to James Ehler at wwwFoodReference.com, who’s helping us to promote the food writing workshop. Next time you’re browsing the internet in search of good food-writing resources, pay him a visit.)

On a recent visit to the revamped Space-Crime Continuum bookstore in Northampton, I noticed that they’ve expanded their stock. They still carry the mystery, science fiction, and fantasy titles that have been their mainstay for the last nine years…but now the genre books are complemented by a wide range of general fiction, nonfiction, science writing and more. My heart rejoiced, my wallet groaned, and I came home with several treasures, among them Simon Winchester’s charming Outposts: Journeys to the Surviving Relics of the British Empire.

I’m a big fan of good travel literature, so I’ve been devouring Winchester’s funny and erudite accounts of travels to Gibraltar, the Falklands, and an assortment of odd islands most Americans have probably never heard of, much less contemplated trying to find on a map. (My favorite book of his remains The Professor and the Madman, about the making of the Oxford English Dictionary. Speaking of which: a group of word-lovers is working on rewriting the entire OED in limerick form, one word at a time. Anyone can opt in; I wrote a few limericks for them last month, and hope to write more. If this sounds like fun to you, check them out here.

That’s the news from Inkberry! We hope to see you soon, online (in the food writing workshop or via the writing exercises and forums at Inkberry online) or in person (at the poetry manuscript seminar or in our writers’ resource library). Thanks for being a part of what we do!

—Rachel