November 2004

Greetings from Inkberry!

October was, as usual, a busy month here. We kicked off an online poetry workshop, as well as a new session of Wednesday Night Writers. Midway through the month we presented a reading by poets Mary Koncel, Jeffrey Levine, and Margaret Szumoswki — two of whom read poems about root vegetables, which really opened my eyes to potatoes’ poetic potential. The three poets know each other, so they had a great energy together on stage; it was a real pleasure to bring them here. (Thanks, guys!)

Of course, as the saying goes, you can’t win ‘em all. One of our fall offerings didn’t fly; we had to cancel our songwriting workshop for low enrollment. But our November online workshop — an introduction to the art of the short screenplay — is going full steam ahead (it begins today, so if you want to join, now’s the last minute to do so; opt in at http://www.inkberry.org/store/). We’ve never quite figured out why some courses fill up and others don’t, and we’re curious to know what you think; we’ll be sending a survey to our mailing list later this month, so if you’re not on our mailing list and want to be, you can opt in at www.inkberry.org/contact/.

In other news, we’re offering a really cool afterschool program at Drury High School this month. It’s called Creative Writing Boot Camp, and we’re presenting it in conjunction with the Drury English department. We’re able to offer it for free thanks to a generous grant from the James and Robert Hardman Fund for North Adams. On three consecutive weekday afternoons, we’ll give students the tools they need to start crafting poetry, fiction, and nonfiction; the workshop will be team-taught by three writers, each of whom specializes in one of the above genres. This one was Tom’s brainchild, and we’re delighted to see it come to fruition — so if you go to Drury, or know anyone who does, come and check this out!

Behind the scenes this month we’ve been working on some exciting stuff. We’re exploring a collaboration with two other arts organizations (folk music series The Railway Café and new theatre troupe Mill City Productions), and we dream of moving together into a new space that could house all three of us. (Some of you may have caught us on The Opinion Show on WNAW talking about this last week.) We’re still working out the details; representatives from all three organizations meet at Brewhaha every week, at the bleary hour of 7:30am, to brainstorm over muffins and coffee. It remains to be seen whether we’ll be able to find the right venue for all of us, and what shape our collaborations will take, but it’s a fun set of conversations to be having.

Anyway, we’ve got some good stuff on tap for this month. In addition to the online screenplay workshop that I mentioned earlier, we’re presenting a terrific reading this upcoming Saturday (the 6th) at 7:30pm: novelists Tony Eprile and Elizabeth Graver.

Tony is the author of Temporary Sojourner & Other South African Stories, a New York Times Notable Book; his newest is The Persistence of Memory, a gently satirical novel which chronicles the injustices of the secret 1980s wars in Namibia and Angola through the story of a South African man with an inconvenient near-photographic memory. J. M. Coetzee calls Eprile’s latest book “Always warm-hearted, sometimes comic, ultimately damning,” while Margot Livesey says she was “enthralled by [Eprile’s] gorgeous prose…and…by the fiercely comic gift of his unforgettable, and unforgetting, narrator.”

Elizabeth is the author of Unravelling and The Honey Thief, both of which were New York Times Notable Books. Her latest book is Awake. Of that new novel, Andrea Barrett writes, “Elizabeth Graver has an astonishing ability to imagine her way deep inside her characters, illuminating complex lives and situations. This is a passionate, deeply engaging novel.” Publisher’s Weekly says it’s “Gracefully written and emotionally rich…Graver’s lyrical portrait of a thoughtful woman in crisis will resonate with many readers.” Her work has been included in Best American Short Stories and Best American Essays, as well as in Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards.

Hearing these two writers read their work together will be a rare pleasure, so if you’re in the area next Saturday night, come on down and check them out! As usual, we’ll have books for sale courtesy of Papyri Books, so you can get your new books autographed at the event.

Speaking of books, I’ve been reading several things at once, of late. Neal Stephenson’s The System of the World (the third book in his Baroque Trilogy) is out, so I’ve been reading it in bits and pieces, though I’m finding (as I did with the previous two) that it’s frustrating to try to read that way. I’m looking forward to a weekend when I can curl up with it and really dive in; this trilogy rewards deep immersion, and I’m eager to know what happens to the characters I’ve come to know and love. I’ve also been reading Marcia Prager’s The Path of Blessing, an in-depth exploration of the Jewish practice of making blessings. And lately I’ve been grooving on the songwriting of a guy named Jonathan Coulton, who manages to make the bizarre (the musings of a giant squid, or the unrequited love of a mad scientist) funny and poignant. Many of his songs are available for free download, but if you like them, reward his fan-friendliness by nabbing his latest EP.

That’s the news from Inkberry! Drop in and see us sometime.

—Rachel