April 2006

Greetings from Inkberry!

We’ve been busy assembling our summer calendar, and are in the process of adding our summer events to the website now — check back in the next few days to see our next season of programming unfold. For now, though, we wanted to give you a heads-up and save-the-date for one of the summer events we’re most excited about: Inkstravaganza!

This June marks our fifth anniversary — five years since our very first event, Donald Hall’s reading at the Main Street Stage — and we’re planning to celebrate it in style. Join us at the Cup & Saucer in downtown North Adams on Saturday, June 10 at 8pm for a party we’re calling Inkstravaganza! We’ll have:

• desserts and snacks
• a cash bar
• word games
• magnetic poetry
• readings of specially commissioned poems
• an art show (and the chance for guests to Buy a Vowel — rendered by local artists, with all proceeds going to Inkberry)
• the opportunity to meet and mingle with some of the fabulous writers and artists who have appeared in Inkberry’s reading series.

With honorary co-chairs Seth Rogovoy and Michelle Gillett, and special guests including Andrea Barrett, Jim Shepard, Karen Shepard, Maureen Howard, and others TBA. Tickets are $30 per person or $50 for two (discount only available for advance sales). Purchase tickets in our online store.

If you live anywhere near North Adams, or if you think you might be able to come to the Berkshires in June, please save the date! We’re incredibly excited about the chance to celebrate five years of Inkberry, and we’d love to have you there.

It’s the warmest end-of-March I can remember — today all the windows at Inkberry are open, and we’ve hauled the oscillating fan out of storage — which makes summer seem only a moment away. Of course, our spring isn’t quite over yet! In March we presented a unique one-man performance of the Gospel of Mark, told from memory by Reverend Bert Marshall; you can read an account of that arresting performance, written by Inkberry board member Rick Spalding, here at inkblog.

And while I’m pointing to inkblog posts, if you missed our March reading featuring Jill Gilbreth and Andrea Barrett, there’s a photo post chronicling that evening here.

Our next reading will fall on April 8th: the April installation of WordPlay, the second-Saturday reading series we present at Papyri Books, this reading celebrates National Poetry Month with a visit from four regional poets. We’re delighted to be hosting Jocelyn Emerson, author of Sea Gate (Alice James Books, 2002); Tara Gorvine, whose work has appeared in a variety of magazines, Joshua Michael Stewart, author of Ordinary Mysteries (White Heron, 2004), and Sophie Wadsworth, whose Letters from Siberia received the 2004 Jessie Bryce Niles award from the Comstock Review. That reading will be at 7:30pm at Papyri, followed as usual by an open-mike; if you’re a lover of poetry, join us!

Meanwhile, our Thursday Night Critique workshop is going strong; our ‘ZineBerry program (a ‘zine-making workshop for area middle school students, presented in conjunction with the Adams Youth Center and culminating in a reading at Topia Cafe) is going strong with twelve terrific kids enrolled; our intern Jessica has been researching independent bookstores around the country, and recently sent an email to over 250 stores asking whether they’d be game to help us promote our online offerings. In a word, life at Inkberry is busy, just the way we like it.

We always like to close inkmail with a word about good things to read. This month I have to recommend Jonathan Lethem’s Fortress of Solitude, which absolutely knocked my socks off. It’s a dense novel, but it rewards immersion. The characters are vibrant and vital, and Lethem does a gorgeous job of recreating a particular 1970s Brooklyn. This book encompasses race, friendship, brotherhood, art, the birth of hip-hop and graffiti art, comic books, super heroes, adolescence, dreams. There’s a touch of magical realism here and there, but somehow the book still feels one hundred percent real, as though I had really been there and experienced exactly what Lethem describes.

That’s the news from Inkberry! Save the date of June 10th for our birthday party, check the website soon to learn about our summer season, and drop in to visit us sometime.

— Rachel