August 2006

Greetings from Inkberry!

In this installment of inkmail, you’ll find information about our next workshop (“Awakening New Poems” taught by Carol Edelstein), a remembrance of our two temporary summer interns, and a sneak peek at the season ahead. Here goes…

We’re well into the dog days of summer here at Inkberry, where the temperature on the street today is 95 degrees (Fahrenheit, naturally.) This is one of those rare weeks when we really wish we had air-conditioning at our office! Predictably, we’ve chosen this point in the summer to move things around, because what’s more fun than moving furniture when it’s really hot and sticky out? Next time you visit the Inkberry office, you may notice that the desks have moved; depending on when you swing by, you may also see the office in a different light, since we’re considering repainting, too. (If you visit this week, you can weigh in on the paint swatches on the interior office wall. Help us choose a green!)

It’s been a good summer for getting physical tasks done around the office. In July we had a pair of interns here who focused largely on office work. Majida and Jen joined us via the Summer Humanities and Social Sciences program at Williams College, and they spent a month hanging out in our bright yellow classroom, helping us get a handle on our writers’ resource library. A few months ago we got a tremendously generous donation — fifteen boxes of literary journals! — from poet Sandra Kohler, who read with us a few years ago. Majida and Jen catalogued everything in those boxes, and began the task of organizing the new collection and combining it with our preexisting collection. Now all we need to do is build some bookshelves to house the new (-to-us) tomes, and we’ll be in great shape! Thanks so much for your help and your good energy, Jen and Majida.

That’s what we’ve been up to; here’s what we’re about to be up to. Our next writing workshop is Awakening New Poems, taught by Carol Edelstein. It’s a one-shot workshop, happening all in a summer afternoon — it will take place on 8/19, from 2-5pm. Patiann Rogers writes, “Discovery is the goal of Carol Edelstein’s supple language — a turn of vision in an unexpected direction, an inward twist of clarity, an opening outward of new perspective, a coming together of memory and possibility.” I don’t know about you, but that kind of description really makes me want to study with her!

Tuition is $50.00 ($45.00 for members at the Paperback level and above, and for students who’ve taken an Inkberry workshop in the last year.) Join Carol, the author of The Disappearing Letters (Perugia Press, 2005), for a workshop designed to inspire new work. Bring paper, pen, and an openness to whatever arises! This workshop is designed to be suitable for writers at all levels of experience.

You can sign up by purchasing tuition at our online store: http://www.inkberry.org/store/ You can also sign up by replying to this email, or by calling us at 413-664-0775. Space is limited, so enroll now to guarantee a spot in this class.

Behind the scenes, we’ve been busy planning the fall schedule. We’ll be continuing our monthly WordPlay reading series at Papyri Books, and we’ll be featuring some terrific folks there. We’ll also have a few readings outside the context of WordPlay, among them a fabulous night of speculative fiction featuring Paul Park (author of several books, most recently and famously A Princess of Roumania) and Naomi Novik (author of the Temeraire series, which Steven King describes as “a cross between Susanna Clarke, of Norrell and Strange fame, and the late Patrick O’Brian.” You’ll hear more about that event, and others on our fall slate, in future installments of inkmail!

I haven’t had much time for reading this summer, alas, though books are piling up to be taken on the week-long driving and camping trip we’ve scheduled for the end of August in Maine. (Got any good beach reading to suggest?) But I recently read a fantastic graphic novel called The Rabbi’s Cat by Joann Sfar, the story of an Algerian rabbi, his daughter, and their talking cat who is a philosopher, a gourmand, and an all-around wonderful character to read about! The illustrations are marvelous, and the story is, too. It actually makes a lovely counterpoint to one of the movies we rented recently — the 2003 Monsieur Ibrahim, about a Jewish boy in 1960s Paris who befriends a Turkish Sufi shopkeeper (played by the unmistakeable Omar Sharif). Good stuff all around.

And that’s the news from Inkberry, where classical music pours out from Jill’s computer, we’re drinking a lot of cold beverages, and the fan is always on! Come and see us sometime soon.

— Rachel