Penning a success story: Inkberry holds fifth anniversary party, fundraiser

NORTH ADAMS — The roots of the writing center Inkberry lie in an e-mail conversation among a group of friends in the fall of 2000. The three recent graduates of Williams College, Rachel Barenblat, Emily Banner and Sandy Ryan, exchanged ideas about creating such a space someday.

“One by one, all our reasons for doing it at a later juncture fell away,” Barenblat said. It officially got off the ground in June 2001, when poet Donald Hall came to Williams for a reading they sponsored.

The group will celebrate its fifth anniversary with a birthday party and fundraiser — dubbed Inkstravaganza — tomorrow at Cup and Saucer, which is just below the windows of their current location on the second floor of the Empire Building on Main Street.

The event will include desserts and snacks, a cash bar, word games, magnetic poetry, readings of poems commissioned for the occasion, an art show and auction of works by local artists, and a chance to meet some of the writers who have appeared in Inkberry’s reading series. There also will be a raffle of prizes donated by various Berkshire businesses.

The idea was to create a writers’ community center. Banner said she had in mind something like the Guild Complex, where she volunteered when she lived in Chicago.

Much of what Inkberry does is to offer online and in-person workshops designed to bring together writers of various levels and experience, under the guidance of one of a regular rotation of teachers.

It also includes collaboration with as many other groups as it can. That includes a reading series at Papyri Books, writing workshops for young people with the Northern Berkshire Community Coalition, and author visits such as the one last summer by nature writer Verlyn Klinkenborg in conjunction with the Williamstown Rural Lands Foundation.

“We work with everybody we can find,” Barenblat said. “It’s a small community, but a very interconnected one.”

Banner said there are about 200 to 300 members and participants of Inkberry events. Much of their funding comes from grants and workshop tuition.

She said there is plenty on tap for the future. “We always had more ideas than we had time to implement.”

Tickets for tomorrow’s event are $30 per person, or $50 for two tickets, and can be purchased online at www.inkberry.org