July 2006

Greetings from Inkberry!

June was a pretty wild month around here. The big news was that we celebrated our fifth anniversary with a shindig we called Inkstravaganza — which was a phenomenal success. A ton of people came, we had a fantastic time, and all in all I think Inkberry was widely and wisely celebrated.

You can read my recollections of the party here.

You can read the poem offered by Seth Brown in our honor here.

And my sestina in our honor here.

There are photographs of the art in our “Buy A Vowel” art auction here.

And photos from Inkstravaganza here.

My deepest thanks to everyone who helped make Inkstravaganza a reality!

Now it’s almost July, and we’re moving full speed ahead into the height of summer. Coming up next: an online workshop called Writing the Body, taught by Josie Milliken, which begins at Inkberry Online on July 15th. Josie writes:

We all move about the world in our bodies; yet, it is only through certain circumstances or events — painful, joyous, difficult, or otherwise — that we are reminded of the unique relationships we have with our bodies. In this course, writers will explore their relationships with physical bodies through fiction, non-fiction, and poetry in order to learn alternative ways of expressing emotions, thoughts, narratives, sensations, moods, elationships, and identities. Class activities will consist of discussions, genre assignments, freewrites, and workshops.

Josie has an MFA from Arizona State University, and teaches writing at the University of Utah; you can learn more about her here.

The class will run for six weeks, starting in mid-July. Tuition for this workshop is just $125; you can sign up in our online store at http://www.inkberry.org/store/ Space is limited, so we encourage you to join the workshop now!

This past month I read The Devil and the Disappearing Sea, nonfiction by Rob Ferguson about the Aral Sea catastrophe. If you have an abiding interest in the Aral Sea (and/or in the challenges of trying to do aid work in a very difficult environment) it’s worth reading. Mostly, though, reading Ferguson’s book reminded me of how much more I had enjoyed Tom Bissell’s book Chasing the Sea, which I read last summer and really loved. It brought Uzbekistan to life for me, and did an excellent job of balancing history and scholarship with personal experience and humor. So if you’re looking for compelling memoir about travel, and work, in a place most readers of this newsletter will never encounter, I recommend Bissell’s book.

And that’s the news from Inkberry! Thanks for being a part of our world; we hope to see you soon.

— Rachel