Berkshire Festival of Women Writers

Acclaimed poet Nikki Giovanni will present a special workshop for women writers on June 27 at 2 p.m., sponsored by the Berkshire Festival of Women Writers, in partnership with the Lift Ev’ry Voice Festival and The Mount.

In her seminal essay “Poetry is not a Luxury,” Audre Lorde describes poetry as “a revelatory distillation of experience” that taps into the “deep places” inside women, where “each one of us holds an incredible reserve of creativity and power, of unexamined and unrecorded emotion and feeling.”

For women, especially, Lorde says, “poetry is not a luxury.  It is a vital necessity of our existence.  It forms the quality of light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change,” and it is “not only dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives.”

Join poet Nikki Giovanni at the Mount in Lenox for an afternoon reading and workshop on the poetic process and its importance as a wellspring of women’s creative potential.  Giovanni will share with us what she has learned from years of mining those deep places in her own work, and give us strategies for tapping into the power of poetry in any form of creative expression. Come prepared to listen, write and be inspired!

Free and open to the public.  Nikki Giovanni will also be giving a reading June 27 at 7 p.m. at Spice Dragon in Pittsfield.  For more information on this and other related events, visit the Lift Ev’ry Voice Festival website.

Lean in with the Berkshire Festival of Women Writers

On Sunday June 16 from 3 to 5 p.m. at the Berkshire Museum, women writers are invited to join the new BFWW Lean In group for a fun, informal writing workshop co-hosted by Festival Director Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez and Berkshire Museum Director of Communications Lesley Ann Beck.

We’ll visit the museum’s new “Objectify” exhibit, using the thought-provoking objects on display as prompts for writing we’ll do together and (optionally) share.  Bring your notebook and pen and allow yourself to be transported by the creative fusion of the visual and verbal arts!

The Berkshire Museum is located at 39 South St., Pittsfield. The meeting is free and open to all women writers from the Berkshires and environs; it does not include Museum admission.

New Berkshire Calendar for Women Writers in the Works

In partnership with Stockbridge computer wizard Glenn Geiger, we are pleased to offer an easy way to find out what events are going on in the Berkshires of, by or for women writers.  Just go to the Berkshires Live Calendar and click on the “Berkshire Festival of Women Writers” group to see events of interest.

This interactive calendar is a community effort, so you can post your women-writer-related events under the Festival heading as well—just make sure to check the “Berkshire Festival of Women Writers Group” when you input your information, and your event will be highlighted as being of interest to Festival audiences.

By fall, we hope to have the calendar available right on the BFWW website, thanks to the generous collaboration of Glenn Geiger.

2014 Festival to Include Special Thematic Focus

As the busy summer season gets underway, the Berkshire Festival of Women Writers invites you to put on your thinking cap and get ready to propose a session for the 2014 Festival next March.

In addition to the regular general sessions, we’ll be offering a special focus next year: “Women Writing Health and Wellness: Writing the Self, Writing the World.”

Participants in this thematic track are invited to create workshops or offer readings that use writing to explore the links between personal and planetary health and wellness, prompting inquiry into the intimate interdependence between our individual, social and environmental landscapes.

This year we’ll be asking you to submit your proposal via an online form; we’ll send out an announcement later in June when the form is available for use.  Submission deadline is September 15.  We look forward to seeing what you come up with!

Summer Writing Opportunities with Festival Presenters

The Powder Keg Sessions with Suzi Banks Baum will continue on June 30, 1 – 4 p.m., at Eleven, 11 School Street in Great Barrington.  Step away from the kitchen sink or the conference table and spend a Sunday afternoon writing in the company of other women.  Contact Suzi for more information: suzi@laundrylinedivine.com.

Festival presenter and writing instructor Laura Didyk will hold two writing workshop series this summer.  Poetry Lab: The Craft of Inspiration will take place on six Wednesdays, June 12–July 17, 7-9 pm. Who Do You Think You Are? An Exploration in Writing Memoir will be held on six Mondays from June 10–July 15, 7-9 pm.  Contact Laura for more information: 845-705-0307; lauradidyk@gmail.com

The Berkshire Writing Workshop, directed by Festival presenter Alison Lobron, will be held at Bard College at Simon’s Rock from July 14-19.  Choose from three week-long classes: The Personal Essay, with Alison Lobron; Finding the Story, with Joan Wickersham and Fact into Fiction, with Brendan Mathews. For more information contact Alison at bww@simons-rock.edu.

Festival Godmothers Circle is Expanding

We are so thrilled and appreciative of all the women who have stepped up to support the grand collaborative effort that is the Berkshire Festival of Women Writers.

Please visit our website to see the list of Festival Godmothers and learn how to join the Circle.  We can’t do it without you!

A dozen women writers gathered at the Berkshire Museum on April 28 for the first meeting of the monthly Berkshire Women Writers Lean In Group.  Hosted by Lesley Ann Beck, Director of Communications at the Berkshire Museum, and Festival Director Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez, the meeting was a lively and inspiring start to what we hope will become a terrific resource.

The next meeting will be held on Sunday, May 19, at 3 p.m. at the Berkshire Museum, free and open to all women writers. Please bring a piece of writing to share (500 words or less) so we can appreciate all the wonderful voices in the group. Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez will give a presentation on starting a blog and we will discuss the importance of blogging for writers.  We will meet once more, on June 16 at 3 p.m., before taking a break for the busy summer months.  

At the first meeting, we came up with many ideas for the future.  Here are our notes, as summarized by Lesley Ann Beck.

A monthly gathering can meet the needs of working writers by offering opportunities:

• To learn and discover new approaches to writing
• To share our work, both with each other and in more public venues
• To share our experiences and create community
• To learn and/or share the business of writing – discipline, marketing, etc.
• To learn how to create opportunities for ourselves (Straw Dog Writers Guild, Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance are interesting models)
• To have small, anchored groups evolve from the larger group to focus on specific work
• To create smaller book groups and reading series

Among the group assembled at the first meeting, most expressed a preference for either Saturday or Sunday as the meeting day, and most preferred late afternoon. We did agree that rotating or changing the time and day of the meeting, as well as the venue, would allow more writers to participate. 

There was a lively discussion of the various topics that could be covered, as well as the format of the gatherings. We agreed that alternating talks and presentations with workshops would be best. Chances for sharing, discussion, Q&A, and engagement will be built into the gatherings that include a presentation. The gatherings that have a workshop format will certainly include exercises, breakout groups, and practice sessions. It was agreed to alternate creative topics with “nuts & bolts” topics that focus on the business of writing. Some of the suggested subjects include the use and benefits of blogging; finding our voices; self-promotion; and turning personal experiences into fiction/ turning personal experiences into non-fiction.

Other ideas include offering open mic sessions at venues such as Starving Artist Café in Lee or the Bookstore in Lenox; creating a library or database of resources and a shared calendar of writer events; and creating a salon for collaborations and experimenting with the unconventional – “sparking new thinking.”

We also discussed the creation of a Festival anthology; building an online Festival bookshelf with information on works by participants; and more opportunities connected to community-building, such as a quarterly curated reading or event series open to the public.

The new monthly Lean In Group is free and open to all women interested in writing.  Come join us and see what creative sparks we can get going together!

Presenters at the In Words Out Words In Women's Own Words 2013 Festival event at the Deb Koffman Gallery

Were you inspired and energized by the Festival events you attended last month?  Are you looking to extend that collaborative spirit throughout the year? Then this new series of monthly gatherings for women writers is for you!

The Berkshire Festival of Women Writers is pleased to announce a free new monthly event series, designed to encourage local women writers of all ages to “lean in” and collaborate to inspire and strengthen each other’s development as writers.

The first meeting will be held on Sunday, April 28, at 3 p.m. at the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield, MA, hosted by Dr. Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez, the founding director of the Berkshire Festival of Women Writers, and Lesley Ann Beck, director of communications at Berkshire Museum.

The idea for a monthly gathering was generated during the March 3 Festival panel discussion, Berkshire Magazine Presents Women Writers and the Role of the Editor, a lively presentation at the Triplex in Great Barrington, hosted by Berkshire Magazine editor Anastasia Stanmeyer.

The panel discussed issues such as the changes that the Internet is bringing to the careers of writers and editors, the various ways women writers deal with the somewhat isolating nature of their work, and the challenges of the business side of writing.

It was clear that there are many more important topics to be considered than could be covered in a single conversation, and audience members responded with great enthusiasm to the suggestion of a monthly convocation.

The initial meeting on April 28 will be an exploration of the many possible directions the group could take, from creating a list of potential discussion topics and inspiring guest speakers to planning the year-long schedule of regular meetings as well as some workshops. Suggestions and ideas from attendees are welcome!

The Berkshire Museum is located at 39 South St., Pittsfield. The meeting is free and open to all women writers from the Berkshires and environs; it does not include Museum admission.  Your RSVP to bfww@simons-rock.edu would be appreciated.