Events Archive

The Bookstore, Lenox, 7 p.m.

Elephant Tree House, a small press publisher of contemporary poetry, founded in 2010 and located in Pittsfield, MA, will introduce itself and the three authors of its first publications: Nan Becker, (After Rain), Susan Hartung, (Inclusion), and Rosemary Starace (Requitements and Mountain Vows). The reading will feature selections from the books read by the authors, two of whom reside in the Berkshires, and the other with family ties here. Coincidentally, all three women began their creative lives in the visual arts. Their writing spans a range of styles and subjects.

http://www.elephanttreehouse.com/

Nan Becker (After Rain) lives and writes in Stillwater, NJ. Her poetry has appeared in The Litchfield Review, Nimrod, The Potomac Review, Salamander, and other journals. Her poem “Blue Heron” won a W.B. Yeats Society Honorable Mention. She holds an MFA in sculpture from Yale.

Susan Hartung (Inclusion) lives and works in Housatonic, MA. She holds an MFA in painting from Columbia, and has exhibited widely in New York and western Massachusetts. As a teacher at Berkshire Country Day School in Stockbridge, MA, she taught art, language arts, and math. Her poetry has appeared in Serving House Journal, Cell2Soul: The Journal of Humane Medicine and the Medical Humanities, and Memory of New Hunger.

Rosemary Starace (Requitements and Mountain Vows), of Pittsfield, MA, is co-editor, with Moira Richards and Lesley Wheeler, of the international poetry anthology, Letters to the World. Her poetry has appeared in Orion, Studio, Lake: A Journal of Arts and Culture, Poemeleon, and qarrtsiluni, among others. More writing and art at http://rosemarystarace.com.

Presented by Maria Sirois

Blodgett House, Bard College at Simon’s Rock, 2-4 p.m.

Come spend an afternoon writing with others determined to craft a life that thrives. As we write and discuss writing practice we’ll come to understand how writing allows us to leave the past behind and create new futures that  include our authentic selves. No prior writing experience necessary—just a pad, a pen, an open heart, a sense of humor, and the tiniest bit of courage.

Maria Sirois is an inspirational speaker, clinical psychologist, and author who has spent twenty-plus years working in the intersections of health and wellness, psychology, and spirituality and has found writing to be one of the most rewarding pathways to a life of meaning and joy and bounce.
http://www.mariasirois.com/

Hosted by Leslie Wheeler with Barbara Ross and Katherine Fast 
Bushnell-Sage Library, Sheffield, 7-9 p.m.

In this workshop we will explore how writers plot, construct, and populate the mystery short story from light-hearted to noir. We will examine the differences between writing short stories and novels. We will also look at the range of genres within the mystery short story, including flash fiction, caper, thriller, suspense, mystery, and horror. We will read and discuss the opening lines and paragraphs of published stories, and participants will have an opportunity to write their own opening lines and paragraphs for possible short stories. The workshop will conclude with a discussion of short story markets and contests.

Leslie Wheeler is an award-winning author of books about American history and biographies, who now writes the Miranda Lewis “living history” series. Titles include: Murder at Plimoth Plantation, Murder at Gettysburg, and Murder at Spouters Point. Her short crime fiction has appeared in six anthologies of crime stories by New England writers, published by Level Best Books, to which she is now a contributing editor. She is a member of Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime, serving as Speakers Bureau Coordinator for the New England Chapter. Wheeler also chairs the Al Blanchard Short Crime Fiction Award Committee.
http://www.lesliewheeler.com/

Barbara Ross’s first mystery novel, The Death of an Ambitious Woman, was published in 2010. Her crime stories have appeared in several anthologies published by Level Best Books, to which she is now a contributing editor. She had twice won honorable mention in the Al Blanchard Short Crime Fiction Contest. In 2012 Barbara will be President of Sisters in Crime New England and co-chair of the New England Crime Bake Committee.
http://barbaraannross.com/

http://www.sincne.org/

Katherine Fast, aka Kat, is on her eighth or ninth life focusing on fiction writing, watercolor, and handwriting analysis. Her short stories have been published in Level Best anthologies, and “The Bonus,” published by NEWN, won a flash fiction award. She is now doing her level best as an editor.

Hosted by Dawn Barbieri, with Claudette M. Webster and friends Ramsdell Library, Housatonic 6:30-8 p.m.

An evening of poetry by local poets, established and emerging, hosted by Dawn Barbieri. The poets include Dawn Barbieri, Tammis Coffin, Susan Melot, Jan Hutchinson, Christine Ward and Claudette Webster.

Dawn Barbieri is a writer of poetry and short stories. She is a member of the Berkshire Writers Room and has read her works in different venues. Dawn is a musician (saxophones & percussion), and is passionate about teaching watercolor to adults. She lives with her husband in Housatonic, and has two grown children as well as a grandson.

Tammis Coffin is a local naturalist and educator who has led nature inspired writing groups at Bartholomew’s Cobble, The Summit House on Mount Holyoke, AMC Camp Noble View and Walden Pond. She has published two books of essays about natural and cultural landscapes.

Jan Hutchinson has been writing poetry (mostly in the closet) for over fifty years.  For the last nine and a half years she has written at least one poem every day.  In 2008, a collection of  her poems, entitled Poems of Prayer and Heresy, was published locally . On March 7th she will be reading from poems, which could be grouped under the title “Aging with Imagined Grace,” about an older woman living in an empty nest with an imaginary friend named Grace.  These poems have humor and poignancy.

Christine Ward is a Berkshire County native who delights in the natural world. Much of her working time is spent providing for the care of Lake Mansfield and the building and maintaining of trails in Great Barrington. But, when she escapes her desk, I am  out and about – searching for the wonders that persist in every wild space.  She is learning to quiet her own inner hubbub, to look and listen with greater attention. She is convinced that these moments of connection and clarity are the wellsprings that enrich and inform my own brief journey on this amazing planet.

Claudette Webster is a poet and teacher. A native of Jamaica, she holds two Master’s degrees in education and is currently working on her M.F.A. in Creative Writing at Goddard College.

Hosted by Marie Gauthier with the staff and authors of Tupelo Press
MCLA Gallery 51, North Adams, 7 p.m.

A presentation on book production, book sales and distribution in the new market, from marketing, editorial, and creative perspectives, by a panel comprised of members of Tupelo Press, a nonprofit literary press headquartered in North Adams now entering its twelfth year.

Rose Carlson is the Administrative Director at Tupelo Press, where she also serves as graphic designer and audio editor.  Before coming to Tupelo, Rose was the co-founder and Executive Director of Devanaughn Theatre in Boston.  During her twenty years as a director, producer, actor, and designer, she has been involved in over 120 plays, films, and video projects.  In addition to her duties at Tupelo, Rose currently directs and produces independent films from the Berkshires, designs costumes for Belmont Hill Theatre Department, and does public relations outreach for Burr and McCallum Architects.  Rose has held a variety of positions in the business world, managing administration, public relations, events, marketing, and financials for large real estate firms, small non-profits, and philanthropic organizations.  She has served as an educator for a variety of ages, leading theatre workshops, and tutoring reading and math.  Rose studied at the Center for Digital Imaging Arts at Boston University, Harvard Summer School and Extension School, Gordon College, the Yeats International School in Sligo, Ireland, and many other programs.

Cassandra Cleghorn is Associate Editor for Nonfiction for Tupelo Press. She has taught English and American Studies at Williams College since 1990. She received her B.A. in Greek from University of California, Santa Cruz and her Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University. Her poems have appeared in journals including The Paris Review, Yale Review, Seneca Review, Prairie Schooner, Western Humanities Review, and Southwest Review; reviews and interviews have appeared in Tin House. In 2000 she was a finalist for the Massachusetts Cultural Council poetry award. With the quartet, Merge, she has performed her poems at venues including the Bowery Poetry Club and Naropa Institute; their debut CD was issued in 2007 and the second in in production. Her most recent publications appear in New Orleans Review and Poetry International.

Marie Gauthier is the Director of Sales & Marketing at Tupelo Press, co-curator of the Collected Poets Series, and previously general manager of the Jeffery Amherst Bookshop & College Store. She’s the author of the chapbook, Hunger All Inside, and her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry Northwest, Salamander, Cave Wall, The Common, Linebreak, and elsewhere. She was the recipient of a 2008 Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize as well as Honorable Mention in 2010. She lives with her family in Shelburne Falls, MA.
Director of the Poetry Center at Smith College, Ellen Doré Watson is the author of Dogged Hearts and This Sharpening (Tupelo Press, 2010 and 2006), We Live in Bodies and Ladder Music (Alice James, 2001 and 2002), as well as Broken Railings (Green Lake Chapbook Prize, Owl Creek Press, 1996). She is also the translator of twelve books from Brazilian Portuguese, including The Alphabet in the Park: Selected Poems of Adélia Prado (Wesleyan University Press, 1990), and serves as Poetry and Translation Editor of The Massachusetts Review. In 2011, she was appointed an Elector of the Poets’ Corner at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.

Presented by Sarah Harris Wallman, Krysia Jopek, and Michael White
Blodgett House, Bard College at Simon’s Rock , 7-9 p.m.

The faculty of the “no residency” MFA program at Albertus Magnus College, in New Haven, Connecticut, will host a panel discussion on the usefulness of the MFA degree. What are the real advantages of getting an MFA? What kinds of MFAs are there (this is a degree that has gone from 15 programs in 1975 to 199 currently listed by Poets and Writers magazine), and what are their graduates doing? While we run a very low residency program, our faculty have attended two- or three-year residential programs (or, in one case, no MFA at all). This is an exciting degree that opens up possibilities but should not be entered into lightly: we’d like to give honest answers about the benefits and pitfalls of an advanced degree in writing.

http://www.albertus.edu/masters-degrees/mfa/index.php

Sarah Harris Wallman is a fiction writer with degrees from the University of Virginia and the University of Pittsburgh (MFA). Her work has been produced off-off-Broadway, nominated for Best American New Voices, and published in a number of literary journals, including Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet and P.M.S—poemmemmoirstory.

Krysia Jopek, author of Maps and Shadows, 2011 winner of a Silver Benjamin Franklin Award for Historical Fiction, has published poetry in literary journals and book reviews of poetry or The American Book Review and The Wallace Stevens Journal. She holds three degrees, a B.A. and M.A. in English from the University of Connecticut and a M.Phil. in English from CUNY Graduate Center. She is currently completing an M.F.A. in Fiction Writing at Albertus Magnus. She taught at City College in NewYork for ten years and is currently a Visiting Lecturer at Westfield StateUniversity.

Michael White is the author of six novels: Soul Catcher, which was a Booksense and Historical Novels Review selection, as well as a finalist for the Connecticut Book Award, A Brother’s Blood, which was a New York Times Book Review Notable Book and a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers nominee; The Blind Side of the Heart, an Alternate Book-of-the-Month Club selection; A Dream of Wolves, which received starred reviews from Booklist and Publisher’s Weekly; and The Garden of Martyrs, also a Connecticut Book Award finalist and currently being made into an opera. His latest novel (William Morrow, 2010), Beautiful Assassin, won the 2011 Connecticut Book Award for Fiction. A collection of his short stories, Marked Men, was published by the University of Missouri Press. He has also published over 50 short stories in national magazines and journals, and has won the Advocate Newspapers Fiction Award. He was the founding editor of the yearly fiction anthology American Fiction as well as the magazine Dogwood. He is the founder and director of Fairfield University’s low-residency MFA Creative Writing Program (www.fairfield.edu/mfa).

Presented by Mary Kate Jordan
Stockbridge Library, 6-7:30 p.m.
Fee $10; limited to six participants.

Photo essays are a special breed of communication. Success at composing them requires a passionate heart, a good eye, a good ear, attention to detail, and a symphony conductor’s baton. In this 90-minute workshop you’ll learn seven skills to help you approach the genre with even greater confidence than before. Bring your writing tools and 5-7 photos to which you have publication rights. You’ll put them to good use.

Mary Kate Jordan’s photo essays have been published both nationally and locally. Try a sample at TheJordanCenter.com/articles

Special Benefit Opening
Blood Sky, a play by Yasmine Beverly Rana; directed by Mari Andrejco

New Stage Performing Arts Center, 55 North St., Pittsfield, 7:30 p.m.
On-going performances Friday and Saturday nights at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at
 3 p.m. through March 25. 
$45 for opening night; $20 for adults and $18 for students and seniors for all other performances.
Blood Sky is an emotional drama about a young woman coming to terms with sexual abuse in her past. Set in the Bayou, the play evokes the sultry heat and seductiveness of the South as the protagonist searches for self-forgiveness and acceptance. Directed by Mari Andrejco.
Opening night performance and post-show reception will benefit the Elizabeth Freeman Center. Post-show talk-backs will follow each Sunday’s matinee with the author, director, and representatives from the Elizabeth Freeman Center.

For tickets and information: http://newstageperformingarts.org/2011/12/blood-sky/

Yasmine Beverly Rana’s book The War Zone is my Bed and Other Plays, which includes “Blood Sky,” was published to acclaim in 2011 by Seagull Books. She has had plays stage-read and produced at many venues, including The Birmingham Repertory Theatre in England, The International Women Playwrights Festival in Greece, The Jewel Box Theatre in Los Angeles, Playwrights Theater of New Jersey, and more. Excerpts from her plays have been published in The Best Stage Scenes and The Best Women’s Monologues series from Smith and Kraus Publishers, The Alabama Literary Review, and U.S. 1 Worksheets. She is a Paulette Goddard Fellow from New York University and a 2004 recipient of the Walter E. Dakin Fellowship in Playwriting from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. She has graduate degrees in Education and the Creative Arts Therapies. Yasmine has worked as a drama therapist in Bosnia-Herzegovina, The Republic of Georgia, and Switzerland.

Director Mari Andrejco trained with Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City. She has performed in Europe, Mexico, Egypt, and the U.S., done stage acting, television, and video, appearing as Queen Elizabeth I and Susan B. Anthony for PBS. She has worked with Shakespeare and Company, Triple Shadow, and the Pleiades Company and has taught at the Institute for Arts in Education in the Albany schools.

Press for Blood Sky

3/8 – A woman on her own stands tall. (Berkshire Eagle)

3/7 – Play at New Stage about healing from sexual abuse (The Advocate)

3/6 – Playwright Yasmine Rana on WAMC’s The Roundtable

Presented by Jessica Treat, Professor of English at Northwestern CT Community College
Mason Library, Great Barrington, 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

How short can a story be and still be a story? What goes into crafting a good story?
What’s the difference between a prose poem and flash fiction? In this workshop we’ll look at the magic and beauty of the short-short story, from just 100 to 1,000 words. Exercises and prompts will be given for writing our own. Writers will write in the workshop and go home with lots to work from. Markets—online and print journals—for flash fiction will also be shared.

Free, but pre-registration required; workshop limited to 12 on a first come, first-served basis. E-mail jesstrea@gmail.com.

Jessica Treat has been writing short-short fiction since the 1980s. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Ms., Quarterly West, Black Warrior Review, and the American Literary Review. She is the author of the story collections: Meat Eaters & Plant Eaters and Not a Chance, and a collection of short-short fiction, A Robber in the House. She lives in Sheffield and is Professor of English at Northwestern Connecticut Community College, where she coordinates the Mad River Literary Festival, now in its 16th year. More at: www.jessicatreat.com

Featuring Celia Bland, Harriet Brown, and Sarah Towers
Blodgett House, Bard College at Simon’s Rock, 2-4 p.m.

A reading featuring nonfiction writer Harriet Brown, author of Brave Girl Eating: A Family’s Struggle with Anorexia, and short fiction writer Sarah Towers, hosted by Bard College Writer-in-Residence Celia Bland, author of the poetry collection Soft Box. “When we talk about mortality,” Joan Didion recently wrote, “we are talking about our children.” These works—stark but optimistic, conferring excitement and promise—celebrate mothers and children and, by inference, mortality.

Celia Bland’s poetry and prose has recently appeared in Poetry International, The Boston Review, and Drunken Boat and is upcoming in The Narrative Review and The Evergreen Review. Her essay, “Secret Book Written in the Dirt,” will be included in an upcoming collection devoted to the poetry of Jean Valentine (University of Michigan). Her collaboration with visual artist Dianne Kornberg, “Madonna Comix,” will be published in 2012. She is writer-in-residence at Bard College and a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College.

Harriet Brown’s work appears in the New York Times Magazine, O, Health, Glamour, Prevention, and other publications. Her latest book, Brave Girl Eating: A Family’s Struggle with Anorexia, recounts her family’s efforts to help their oldest daughter recover from anorexia nervosa. She co-chairs Maudsley Parents, a website of resources for families struggling with eating disorders (www.maudsleyparents.org), and is a member of the Academy for Eating Disorders. Brown is an assistant professor of magazine journalism at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications in Syracuse, New York, where she created Project BodyTalk, an audio project that collects commentaries about people’s relationship to food, eating, and their bodies (www.projectbodytalk.com).

Sarah Towers’s short stories, reviews, and essays have appeared in various places, including Tin House, Mirabella, The New York Times Book Review, Vogue, Seventeen, and BookForum. She has taught fiction and literature at Boston University, Colgate, and, most recently, the Bard Prison Initiative. Her story, “The Outside World,” won the Chariton Review’s Short Fiction Prize in 2011.

Annunciation - Madonna Comix Celia Bland and Dianne Kornberg

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Presented by bloggers Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez and Michelle Gonzalez
Clark Auditorium, Fisher Science Center, Bard College at Simon’s Rock, 6:30-8 p.m.

In this show-and-tell presentation of some of the digital tricks of the contemporary writer’s trade, we’ll explore the impetus—both personal and professional—behind blogging, as well as the relative merits of popular platforms like WordPress and Tumblr; the whys and wherefores of social media networking on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other similar sites; and new directions in video logging and film clips through YouTube. If you’ve ever wondered what all the fuss with digital media is about, this is your opportunity to find out more! No experience necessary.

Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez teaches comparative literature, media studies, human rights, and gender studies at Bard College at Simon’s Rock and directs the Berkshire Festival of Women Writers. For the past decade she has organized an annual conference in observance of International Women’s Day, and she has combined activism and scholarship with her two edited collections, Women Writing Resistance: Essays on Latin America and the Caribbean (South End Press, 2004), and African Women Writing Resistance: Contemporary Voices (University of Wisconsin Press, 2010). She is the author of many articles exploring the nexus of politics and poetics in world literature by women, including, most recently, “The Politics and Poetics of Global Feminist Alliance; Or, Why I Teach Such Depressing Books” (in Educating Outside the Lines: Bard College at Simon’s Rock on a ‘New Pedagogy’ for the Twenty-First Century, ed. Nancy Yanoshak; Peter Lang, 2011). She blogs at Transition Times (http://bethechange2012.wordpress.com).

Michelle Gonzalez is a senior at Bard College at Simon’s Rock currently writing her senior thesis on body politics, queer identity, and the right to appear in public spaces; she is also passionate about reproductive rights and other LGBTQ issues. Michelle is the blog supervisor for Paradigm Shift NYC, manages her own feminist blog, does social media for the Amber Chand Women’s Peace Collection, and aspires to become a “professional feminist.” http://mylifeasafeminista.tumblr.com/

A poetry reading by Hannah Fries
Women’s Interfaith Institute, Church on the Hill Chapel, 55 Main Street, Lenox.
Potluck 6-7 p.m.; program 7:15 – 8:30 p.m.

(Church on the Hill Chapel is the brown building down the street from the main church, and across the street from Nejaime’s Wine Cellar. Enter through front door.)

A poetry reading featuring the imagined stories 
of women characters from the Bible and mythology. Hannah Fries’s poetry has been published in numerous literary journals, including the 
all-women’s journal Calyx. She is associate editor and poetry editor at Orion Magazine.

Hannah Fries is associate editor and poetry editor of Orion magazine. She grew up in New Hampshire, graduated from Dartmouth College, and earned an MFA in poetry from Warren Wilson College. She is the recipient of a residency with the Colorado Art Ranch, and her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Massachusetts Review, Calyx, The Cortland Review, upstreet, terrain.org, and other journals. She also serves on the board of The Frost Place—a Robert Frost Museum and poetry center in Franconia, NH.

Followed by a Panel Discussion and Q & A with Elizabeth Debold, 
Kristine Barnett, Gabrielle Senza and Maura O’Connor
Lecture Center, Bard College at Simon’s Rock, 7-9:30 p.m.

$5 suggested donation, with admission free to the Bard College at Simon’s Rock community (students, faculty, and staff).

Space is limited, please register in advance at: http://missrepscreening.eventbrite.com/

In our society, the overriding message that we continually receive from media today is that a woman’s value and power lie more in her youth, beauty, and sexuality than in her capacity as a leader. Despite the enormous strides women have made over the past few decades, they are still far behind men as leaders and active agents in creating our culture.

This powerful documentary illuminates the often startling facts about women’s (mis)representation in American culture. Firsthand experiences of young adults, and provocative interviews with politicians, journalists, entertainers, activists, and academics speak to obstacles that must be addressed, as well as to positive actions we can take towards change.

The film will be followed by a panel discussion exploring many of the critical issues raised in the film such as: What more can girls and women do to prepare themselves for leadership? What are the most effective actions we can take for positive change in media, politics, and education? This event is relevant for girls, boys, men, and women of all ages.

Elizabeth Debold, Ed.D., is a bestselling author, pioneering researcher, consultant, and transformative educator who specializes in higher order human development, cultural evolution, and gender. She is a Senior Fellow at EnlightenNext, where she served from 2002-2011 as Senior Editor of EnlightenNext magazine. Dr. Debold received her doctorate in human development and psychology from Harvard University in 1996, where she was a founding member of the Harvard Project on Women’s Psychology and Girls’ Development. She is also co-author of the bestselling book, Mother Daughter Revolution: From Good Girls to Great Women. Dr. Debold directed the Ms. Foundation for Women’s Collaborative Fund for Healthy Girls/Healthy Women and is currently working with a team of adolescent girls to create a film on women’s leadership at Miss Hall’s School in Pittsfield, MA.

Dr. Kristine Barnett is the Assistant Dean for the College of Arts and Sciences and the Director of the Women as Empowered Learners and Leaders (WELL) and Campus Theme Programs at Bay Path College, a small women’s college in Longmeadow, MA. Dr. Barnett has been a professor and administrator in higher education for more than fifteen years, teaching a variety of subjects including writing, literature, communications, public speaking, higher education administration, and women’s topics. She is the co-author of Unlocking the Doors to College and Career Success, as well as articles on assessment and academic support. As a graduate of a women’s college herself, one of her areas of focus is women’s education.

Gabrielle Senza is an internationally recognized, Berkshire-based multi-media artist and activist. Included in the collections of the Whitney Museum, MoMA, Lifetime Entertainment, and others, she has taught art privately and as an adjunct professor at Simon’s Rock, Cooper Union, IS183, and Mass MoCA. Senza is recognized as an important social and environmental activist, whose installation and multimedia work conveys powerful messages that raise awareness and help to inspire change. In 2002 Senza founded The Red Collaborative, a national grassroots organization devoted to empowering survivors of abuse through collaborative public art projects and creative initiatives on tough issues. The Walk Unafraid Project is one of the most popular of these programs and has been installed in several locations throughout the US.

Maura R. O’Connor is a freelance foreign correspondent and magazine journalist. As a contributor to the online international newswire Global Post, she has filed stories from Sri Lanka, South Africa, Tanzania, Haiti, Afghanistan, and New York. Her work has also appeared in the Columbia Journalism Review, Guernica, Slate, NPR, The Daily, Miller-McCune, The New York Post and TIME.com. She holds an MA from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and a BA from Simon’s Rock. In 2010, she received a Robert Novak Journalism Fellowship to research and report on American foreign aid from Haiti and Afghanistan.

Presented by JoAnne Spies
Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, 2:30 p.m.
Fee: $5.

Written and performed by JoAnne Spies, this soulful and humorous interactive performance weaves spoken word, song, and visual art in a (literally) moving meditation on forgiveness, Saints Patrick and Joseph, and the spring equinox.

JoAnne Spies with guitar. Photo by Julie McCarthy

JoAnne Spies is a singer-songwriter in the Berkshires who has been co-creating songs with Alzheimer’s groups and elders for the past twelve years with the CATA Art Cart program. She is the creator of RiverMASS, an ongoing multicultural performance, “Sounding Mohican Pathways,” and “Me & Melville.” Her “Watershed Waltz” songs travel in the schools with Marmalade Productions, and she has three CDs of original music.
http://www.nrm.org/

Hosted by Darra Goldstein and Hannah Fries, with Patty Crane, Elizabeth Graver, Francine Prose, Ruth Reichl, and Ellen Doré Watson
Williams College Museum of Art, 6-7:30 p.m.
Fee: $10

Join renowned food writer Ruth Reichl, poets Ellen Doré Watson and Patty Crane, and fiction writers Francine Prose and Elizabeth Graver for a savory evening of words, art, and light hors d’oeuvres. The writers will read their creative responses to the same work of art: a black-and-white photograph by Walker Evans titled “Kitchen Wall, Alabama Farmstead” (1936). The reading will be followed by a reception.

Patty Crane’s new translation of Nobel Prize winner Tomas Tranströmer’s Sorgegondolen (Sorrow Gondola), was recently published in the journal Blackbird. Her poetry has appeared in American Letters & Commentary, Bellevue Literary Review, RUNES, The Massachusetts Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, and WestBranch, among other journals. Her awards include the 2004 Two Rivers Review Poetry Prize and Atlanta Review’s 2005 International Publication Prize.
http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/v10n1/poetry/crane_p/index.shtml

Elizabeth Graver. Photo by Lee Pellegrini.

Elizabeth Graver’s new novel is forthcoming from HarperCollins in spring, 2013. She is the author of three other novels: Awake, The Honey Thief, and Unravelling. Her short story collection Have You Seen Me? won the 1991 Drue Heinz Literature Prize. Her work has been anthologized in Best American Short Stories; Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards; The Pushcart Prize Anthology; and Best American Essays. Her story “The Mourning Door” was awarded the Cohen Prize from Ploughshares. The mother of two daughters, she teaches English and Creative Writing at Boston College.
http://elizabethgraver.com/

Francine Prose is the author of many bestselling books of fiction, including A Changed Man and Blue Angel, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and the nonfiction New York Times bestseller Reading Like a Writer. Her novel, Household Saints, was adapted for a movie by Nancy Savoca. Another novel, The Glorious Ones, has been adapted into a musical of the same name by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty, which ran at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theatre at Lincoln Center in New York City in the Fall of 2007. Her latest novel, My New American Life, was published in 2011. She is the president of the PEN American Center and lives in New York City.
http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/unbound/factfict/ff9803.htm

Ruth Reichl. Photo by Marcqui Akins

Ruth Reichl was the Editor-in-Chief of Gourmet Magazine for ten years until its closing in 2009. She has also been a restaurant critic for the New York Times and both the restaurant critic and food editor of the Los Angeles Times. She is the author of the best-selling memoirs Tender at the Bone, Comfort Me with Apples, Garlic and Sapphires, and For You Mom, Finally. She has been honored with six James Beard Awards and with numerous awards from the Association of American Food Journalists. Ms. Reichl is the host and executive producer of Gourmet’s Adventures with Ruth and Gourmet’s Diary of a Foodie on public television, and the executive producer of Garlic and Sapphires, a Fox 2000 film based on her memoirs.
http://www.ruthreichl.com/

Ellen Doré Watson’s most recent book is Dogged Hearts (Tupelo Press, 2010). Earlier collections include This Sharpening, We Live in Bodies, and Ladder Music. Among her honors are a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artists Grant, a Rona Jaffe Writers Award, and a National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship. Watson has translated a dozen books from the Brazilian Portuguese, including The Alphabet in the Park: Selected Poems of Adelia Prado. She serves as Director of the Poetry Center at Smith College, and is poetry editor of The Massachusetts Review. Currently she is serving as an Elector of the Poet’s Corner, Cathedral of St. John the Divine.
http://www.tupelopress.org/authors/watson

http://gastronomica.org/
http://www.orionmagazine.org/

Presented by Mary Richie
New Marlborough Public Library, 11 a.m.

Mary will read selections from her journal and those of other writers, encouraging listeners to trust the importance of their own thoughts and observations when starting their own journals.

Mary Richie has published two novels and a number of short stories. She has been a film, theater, and book reviewer for various newspapers, including the Japan Times of Tokyo and the Washington Post. Additionally, she has written about various subjects for numerous publications including Harper’s, Vogue, Sports Illustrated, Cosmopolitan, American Home Magazine, and the Hudson Review. She lives in Mill River, Massachusetts.

Choreographed by Olga Dunn with members of the Dunn Company, featuring Julie Webster
Olga Dunn Dance Studios “Up Close Performance Space,”
321 Main Street, 
Great Barrington, 7 p.m.
Suggested donation $15

Photo of Julie Webster from "Memoirs in Motions," photo by Sarah Edwards

The dance performance “Memoirs in Motions” revolves around a central character played by Julie Webster. Her character provides insight and entertainment as she pursues a self-promoting memoir divided into seven sections. Her authorship is revealed through the use of spoken text, unique recordings, and dance. As the work accelerates and disintegrates, our main character responds viscerally through emotions and physically through movement. Five other dancers augment the piece.

http://www.olgadunndance.org/company/about/

Join us for a special celebration of International Women’s Day, to honor the power of the arts as a vehicle for human rights activism.

Co-sponsored by the Berkshire International Film Festival (BIFF), and the Berkshire Human Rights Speaker Series.

Both the morning and afternoon events are free and open to the public on a first-come, first-served basis.

In the morning:

BIFF Screening of SARABAH, a new documentary film by Maria Luisa Gambale, Gloria Bremer and Steven Lawrence (Women Make Movies, 2011; 60 min.).
Triplex Theater, Great Barrington, 11 a.m.

Rapper, singer, and activist Sister Fa is a hero to young women in Senegal and an unstoppable force for social change. A childhood victim of female genital cutting (FGC), she decided to tackle the issue by starting a grassroots campaign against the practice. Sarabah follows Sister Fa back home to her own village, where she speaks out passionately to female elders and students alike, and stages a rousing concert that has the community on its feet.

About Sarabah: http://www.sarabahdocumentary.com/film/
About Sister Fa: http://www.sarabahdocumentary.com/about-sister-fa/

In the afternoon:

Screening of GRANITO: How to Nail a Dictator (Skylight Pictures, 2011, 103 min.)
Followed by a discussion with Director Pamela Yates
McConnell Theater, Daniel Arts Center, Bard College at Simon’s Rock, 2-4 p.m.

In the early 1980’s, while working on her first documentary film, When the Mountains Tremble, directorPamela Yates filmed the only known footage of the Guatemalan Army carrying out mass killings of the indigenous Mayan people. Twenty-five years later, her footage was used as forensic evidence at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, in a crimes-against-humanity case against former Guatemalan military dictator Gen. Efrain Rios Montt. Hailed as a compelling political thriller set in Guatemala and The Hague, Granito is the winner of numerous human rights and film awards, including Best Creative Documentary at the 2011 Paris Film Festival. After the screening, Pamela Yates will talk with the audience about her experience as a human rights activist-through-the-arts for more than a quarter-century, and her vision for the future of arts-based activism in the 21st century.

“Granito is remarkable for allowing two intertwined stories, one global and the other personal, to unfold together,” says Stephen Kinzer, co-author of Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala. “It presents the hurricane of violence that enveloped Guatemala 25 years ago not just as a historical horror, but as a lens through which the filmmaker examines herself, her values, and her relationship to her art. Subtle, provocative, and deeply original, it is a hymn to both the nobility of Guatemalans and the power of filmmaking.”

American documentary filmmaker Pamela Yates is a co-founder of Skylight Pictures (with Peter Kinoy), a company dedicated to creating films and digital media tools that advance awareness of human rights and the quest for justice by implementing multi-year outreach campaigns designed to engage, educate and activate social change. Four films directed by Yates—When the Mountains Tremble; Poverty Outlaw; Takeover, and The Reckoning: The Battle for the International Criminal Court —were nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, and When the Mountains Tremble won the Special Jury Award in 1984. Her film State of Fear: The Truth about Terrorism has been translated into 47 languages and broadcast in 154 countries. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in support of Granito and she also directed the development of Granito: Every Memory Matters, a transmedia project using mobile applications to restore the collective memory of the Guatemalan genocide.

Skylight Pictures website: http://skylightpictures.com/films/granito

NY Times review by Larry Rohter, “Old Footage Haunts General and a Director”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/11/movies/pamela-yatess-granito-revisits-guatemala.html?_r=2&ref=movies

Wall Street Journal review by Nicholas Rapold, “Chronicle of War, Evidence of Crime”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904353504576567020325666938.html?mod=djemITP_h

Interview with filmmaker Pamela Yates on Univision:
http://univisionnews.tumblr.com/post/10165060596/guatemala-granito-pamela-yates-interview

Rigoberta Menchu speaks at Sundance Film Festival screening of Granito
http://skylightpictures.com/article/rigoberta-menchu-anoints-granito-at-sundance

About our co-sponsors:

The Berkshire International Film Festival (BIFFMA or “The BIFF”) is a world-class festival that is an integral part of the cultural fabric of the Berkshires. BIFF showcases not only the latest in independent feature, documentary, short, and family films but also lively panel discussions and special events focusing on filmmakers and talented artists from both sides of the camera. The 2012 Festival will take place May 31 to June 3 at the Triplex in Great Barrington, and June 1-3 at the Beacon in Pittsfield. For more information: http://biffma.org/

The Berkshire Human Rights Speaker Series is a catalyst and forum for social awareness, provocative thinking and meaningful dialogue.  The issues raised are intended to encourage awareness and inspire social action.  Series organizers are committed to working to build a compassionate and informed public, as a hopeful path toward improving the lives of marginalized citizens within our local and global communities. For more information about this and other talks in the Series visit:   www.uumsb.org. The talks are free and all are welcome.

A reading with author Susan Fox Rogers
Blodgett House, Bard College at Simon’s Rock, 7-9 p.m.

Susan Fox Rogers writes from a fresh perspective: the seat of her kayak. The Hudson River and the communities along its banks become partners in Rogers’s life and vivid characters in her memoir. In a fluid, engaging voice, My Reach mixes the genres of memoir, outdoor adventure, natural and unnatural history. She integrates moments of description and environmental context with her own process of grieving the recent deaths of both her parents. The result is a book that not only moves the reader but also informs and entertains.

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A Reading Hosted by Laura Didyk
Berkshire South’s NOAH Center at The Jenifer House Commons,
420 Stockbridge Rd., Great Barrington,
7-8:30 p.m.

This reading features nonfiction and poetry by women from Laura Didyk’s popular 
local writing classes. New talent, original work, and a great diversity of style and subject will inspire and entertain. Readers include Tina Bardwell, Ani Grosser, Laura Didyk, Anne Harrison, AnneMarie McCormack, Cristie Newhart, Marcia Savage, and others.

Laura Didyk earned her MFA in creative writing from the University of Alabama. Her teaching experience ranges from the college classroom to the inside of a state prison to community classes throughout the Berkshires. Her work has appeared in numerous national literary magazines.

Featuring lyrical and narrative poetry by Jan Conn and short fiction and prose poetry by Jessica Treat
Mason Library, Great Barrington, 5-6:30 p.m.

Jan Conn has published seven books of poems since 1984. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies in Canada and the US, including Barrow Street and Spoon River Poetry Review, and in The Best Canadian Poetry Anthology, 2009 and 2011. Her most recent books are Jaguar Rain: the Margaret Mee Poems (Brick Books, 2006) and Botero’s Beautiful Horses (Brick Books, 2009). She lives in Great Barrington and is a Professor in the Biomedical Sciences Department at SUNY-Albany. She conducts research on the ecology and evolution of malaria vectors in Latin America. More at http://www.janconn.com

Jessica Treat’s short fiction, prose poems, essays, and translations have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Ms., Quarterly West, Black Warrior Review and the American Literary Review. She is the author of the story collections Meat Eaters & Plant Eaters and Not a Chance, and a collection of short-short fiction, A Robber in the House. She lives in Sheffield and is Professor of English at Northwestern Connecticut Community College, where she coordinates the Mad River Literary Festival, now in its 16th year. More at: www.jessicatreat.com

Presented by Hilary Somers Deely and Barbara Sims, co-curators of Made in the Berkshires, under the aegis of the Berkshire Theatre Group

The Unicorn Theatre, Stockbridge, 7:30-9:30 p.m.
$15 admission will benefit the 2012 Made in the Berkshires Festival.
The evening will include Prosecco, sparkling waters and dessert, and a panel discussion with the artists about their work.

Stories: they tell us who we are, who we have been, and who we will be. They stir our imaginations, awaken our senses, confront us with their power, and move us to act. Join us for a scintillating evening of women and their stories as we present scenes from “Adjustments: A Gentle Comedy for Cynical Times” by Gloria Miller and Ilene Tetenbaum; “After Prom” by Jane Denitz Smith; a scene from the new Lifetime film “Lovesick” by Maria Nation; stories by Stockbridge writers Mary Mott and Susan Merrill; poems by award-winning poet Elizabeth Elliott, and original music by Berkshire women composers and lyricists. Share the evening with us as we celebrate, through stories told and sung, women and their stories.

Made in the Berkshires co-curators Hilary Somers Deely and Barbara Sims have gathered together the stories of women writers and composers here in the Berkshire hills for an evening of performances that will conclude with a glass of prosecco and a conversation with the writers about their process. The evening is being held as a benefit for the Made in the Berkshires festival of local art and artists to be held in October 2012.
Hilary Somers Deely is co-curator of Made In the Berkshires, a new works festival that was produced in October 2011 at the Berkshire Theatre Group’s Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield and the Unicorn Theatre in Stockbridge. An actress, director and producer, Hilary has headed three academic theatre programs in leading independent schools, is an emeritus member of the Berkshire Theatre Festival board, a member of the advisory board for the Berkshire Fringe and, most recently, joined the Fringe in their artists’ residency at Mass MOCA in a world premiere production of The Waypoint. She has voiced three roles in Gregory Whitehead’s BBC 4 radio plays, stage managed, and acted in several productions at Joan Ackerman’s Mixed Company, co-produced the third year of Ten Minutes in the Berkshires, directed an Equity touring company of My Children, My Africa, and has appeared in staged productions at the Berkshire Theatre Festival and The Runway Theatre Grapevine, Texas.

Barbara Sims is co-curator of Made in the Berkshires and was a co-producer for the Free Concerts in Lilac Park series in 2010 and 2011. Her theater credits include A Streetcar Named Desire with Natasha Richardson and Noises Off with Patti Lupone on Broadway, as well as roles Off-Broadway in the Roundabout Theater Company’s Entertaining Mr. Sloane with Alec Baldwin; Juno and the Paycock, Arms and the Man directed by Roger Rees at Circle in the Square Theater; The Hope Zone with Olympia Dukakis; Signature Theater Company, Night Seasons, Laura Dennis; Public Theater, Winding the Ball, Communion; Phoenix theater, Trip to Bountiful with Ellen Burstyn, and Laughing Wild. She has also performed at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, Geva Theatre, Shakespeare & Company, Stages Repertory Theatre, and Houston Shakespeare Festival. Her film and TV credits include Law & Order: SVU, Guiding Light, PBS End of the Line, and Cornflower Blue.

Visit Made in the Berkshires on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/MadeInTheBerkshires

More information about the event at Berkshire Theatre Group: http://www.berkshiretheatregroup.org/events/unicorn-theatre-stockbridge.html

Last year’s Made in the Berkshires: http://berkshireonstage.com/2011/09/23/made-in-the-berkshires-a-lively-festival-of-the-arts-coming-oct-14-23/

Home » This Woman’s Work, an evening of performance ~ March 23, 2012 » This Woman’s Work, an evening of performance ~ March 23, 2012, benefiting Made in the Berkshires

Made in the Berkshires 2011

Made in the Berkshires 2011

Made in the Berkshires 2011

Made in the Berkshires 2011

Made in the Berkshires 2011

Made in the Berkshires 2011

Made in the Berkshires 2011

Made in the Berkshires 2011

Made in the Berkshires 2011

A Writing Workshop with Lara Tupper
at the Lenox Library,
6-7:30 p.m.

In this informal writing class, we’ll investigate the notion of “samskaras,” or deeply embedded ideas about ourselves. What are we clinging to that is not serving us and how can we begin to let go? What are the authentic stories we yearn to tell instead? Through writing exercises, we’ll differentiate between the falsehoods that hold us back and the “true” tales we long to express.

Lara Tupper is the author of A Thousand and One Nights (Harcourt), a novel about singers at sea. Her work has appeared in Six-Word Memoirs on Love and Heartbreak (Harper Perennial), The Believer magazine, fivechapters.com and other literary magazines. A former lounge singer, Lara has crooned in a number of Middle Eastern and Asian cities. She taught writing at Rutgers University for almost a decade and now lives in the Berkshires, where she presents writing workshops at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health. She still knows the words to many Eagles songs.

lara@laratupper.com
www.laratupper.com

Presented by Joanna Krotz
at the Lenox Library, 6-7:30 p.m.

The rising tide of women’s wealth and consumer muscle has spawned an armada of preachy books and media know-it-alls. Yet few gurus or tools address the true drivers of women’s relationship to money—the love/hate, the push/pull, the retail therapy/fortress issues. This is especially true for women writers and artists. Understanding these underlying emotional motivations and adopting better tools to take charge of money management can help women control both their lives and their dough. This workshop will surface women’s fears and inhibitions about the power of taking charge of finances to help us live happily ever after.

Joanna L. Krotz is a knowledgeable forecaster for trends in charitable giving, women’s leadership, social entrepreneurship, and money management. She has been a top-level editor at Hearst Corp., Time Inc., Meredith Corp. and other international publishers. Her bylined work has appeared in Money, New York, the New York Times, Reader’s Digest, Town & Country, Worth, and other publications. Krotz is an online columnist for MSN and author of The Guide to Intelligent Giving; Making Philanthropy Count: How Women Are Changing the World; and coauthor of The Microsoft Small Business Kit.

http://joannakrotz.com

A Writing Workshop with Mary Campbell-Case and Amy Webb
Bra & Girl, Railroad Street, Great Barrington 7-9 p.m.

This writing workshop will explore two insidiously damaging lies: that our bodies must meet someone else’s approval to be worthy of adoration and love, and that it’s the size and shape of us that matters most to our happiness. We’ll explore the implications of these lies and celebrate our fabulous breasts in writing and shared storytelling. What helped you love your beauties? And how do you party with what you’ve got? Come in full cleavage if you’ve got it to flaunt or sleek and sexy if not. Just do it up!

Space is limited, so reservations are recommended. Click here to reserve your space.

Mary Campbell Case is the founder of Divining Beauty (http://diviningbeauty.com/about) as well as the creator of Claiming Our Voices (http://claimingourvoices.org) and the Walking Our Talk (http://claimingourvoices.org/walking-our-talk) concept and initiative. She leads women’s inspirational groups throughout the Northeast. Her work and leadership are informed by both her lifelong studies of spirituality, sensuality, and relationship, and her personal experiences as a wife and partner, mother, artist, and human being.

Amy Webb is the founder and director of Sruti Berkshire Yoga Center in Great Barrington. Her primary teacher is Richard Freeman. She began working with Berkshire Ashtanga in the Fall of 2007 and is grateful to receive and share the gifts of yoga. Her heartfelt mission is for Sruti’s doors to be open for all people to experience and cultivate practice, space, and wisdom from our inner and outer teachers. Learn more at http://www.srutiyogacenter.com

Hosted by Melanie Mowinski
PRESS: Letterpress as a Public Art Project,
105 Main Street, North Adams
Exhibition Opening 5-7 p.m., Reading 7:30 p.m.
Free, but please RSVP: Melanie Mowinski, moji29@gmail.com.
Limited to about 30 people.
A reading featuring women poets from Northern Berkshire County; an exhibition featuring work created at the Found Word Collage and Letterpress Workshop.

Melanie Mowinski, owner and curator of PRESS, is committed to sharing her love of art, book arts, and printmaking with as many people as possible. When she was given a Vandercook Universal III press in March 2010, she knew it had to be shared with the general public—hence the birth of PRESS. Mowinski holds an MFA from The University of the Arts and MAR from Yale University. She is an Assistant Professor of Visual Art at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts (MCLA) in North Adams. See www.melaniemowinski.com and www.letterpressasapublicartproject.wordpress.com.

Hosted by Carole Owens, with Hester Velmans, Jana Laiz and Melissa Batalin
Stockbridge Library, 6–8 p.m.

A look at self-publishing as it has evolved over the years, from a poor second choice for authors to a canny business decision. In the rapidly changing publishing landscape, the stigma of the vanity press has begun to fade as authors discover the value of bypassing the gatekeepers of the large profit-driven publishing companies and striking out on their own. More and more authors these days are embracing cheap e-book technologies and social networking strategies in order to take their destiny into their own hands and find their niche audience.

Carole Owens is the author of The Berkshire Cottages and seven other published books. She has written features for numerous magazines and writes a biweekly column in the Berkshire Eagle and The Berkshire Record. In 2006, she was named Scholar in Residence at the Massachusetts Foundation fo City r the Humanities, and between 2006 and 2008 she mounted three exhibitions on Berkshire history: Pittsfield During the Gilded Age, Fertile Ground: Berkshire Artists and Writers, and Rockwell’s Vision of Melville’s World. Owens has been a consultant to or featured on A&E’s America’s Castles and Confidential, PBS’s Chronicles, and other programs.

Jana Laiz is the author of the award-winning novel, Weeping Under This Same Moon: Elephants of the Tsunami, written to raise money for tsunami relief, and the coauthor of A Free Woman on God’s Earth: The True Story of Elizabeth “Mumbet” Freeman, the Slave Who Won Her Freedom. Fascinated by other cultures, Jana studied anthropology and Chinese language at University. Her cautionary faerie tale, The Twelfth Stone, a novel for adults and young adults, is making its debut. Both Weeping Under This Same Moon and A Free Woman On God’s Earth have been optioned to be turned into films. See www.janalaiz.com.

Hester Velmans is a Netherlands-born novelist, editor, and translator of French and Dutch literary fiction. Her translation of Lulu Wang’s The Lily Theater was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and she was awarded the Vondel Prize for Translation for her rendition of Renate Dorrestein’s A Heart of Stone. Hester’s first book for children, Isabel of the Whales, was a surprise national bestseller. By the time the sequel, Jessaloup’s Song, came along, the publishing landscape had shifted, and she decided to give self-publishing a try.

http://www.hestervelmans.com

Melissa Batalin has always been an avid reader — as a young girl, she would often end up reading bedtime stories to her parents. Eventually, her love of art and design combined with her passion for reading led her to book design. Although there were many nay-sayers who declared that books were dead, she soldiered on. She attended Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute then joined up with two long-time independent booksellers to help authors self-publish professionally and affordably. Melissa has been with The Troy Book Makers since its founding in 2006 — and has designed books, covers, websites, and promotional materials, ebooks as well as coordinated book production for over 400 authors.

http://thetroybookmakers.com

Hosted by Hannah Fries, with Elizabeth Bradfield, Amy Dryansky, Jessica Greenbaum, and Cecily Parks
Kellogg Music Center, Bard at Simon’s Rock College, 3-5 p.m.

For thirty years, Orion magazine has been a leading voice at the intersection of literature, art, and environment. Celebrate our anniversary with us at this reading by a selection of distinguished women poets who surprise and inspire us with their deep sense of humanity and reverence for the natural world. Get a taste of some of their work at
 www.orionmagazine.org/poetry.

Jessica Greenbaum. Photo by Angela Jimenez.

Jessica Greenbaum’s first book, Inventing Difficulty (Silverfish Review Press, 1998), won the Gerald Cable Prize. Her next collection has been selected by Paul Muldoon to be published by Princeton University Press in 2012. She is the poetry editor for the Pittsfield-based literary journal upstreet and lives in Brooklyn.

Elizabeth Bradfield

Elizabeth Bradfield is the author of Interpretive Work (Arktoi Book / Red Hen Press, 2008), which won the Audre Lorde Award, and Approaching Ice (Persea Books, 2010), a finalist for the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. She has been awarded fellowships and scholarships from Stanford University’s Wallace Stegner program, the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, the Vermont Studio Center, and elsewhere. In 2005, Bradfield founded Broadsided (broadsidedpress.org).

Cecily Parks

Cecily Parks is the author of the chapbook Cold Work (Poetry Society of America, 2005) and the poetry collection Field Folly Snow (University of Georgia Press, 2008), which was a finalist for the Norma Farber First Book Award and the Glasgow/Shenandoah Prize for Emerging Writers.

Amy Dryansky. Photo by Katryna Nields.

Amy Dryansky is the author of How I Got Lost So Close to Home (Alice James Books, 1999), and her second book, Grass Whistle, is forthcoming from Salmon Poetry. Her honors include fellowships to the MacDowell Colony, Vermont Studio Center, Villa Montalvo, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and a fellowship from the Five College Women’s Studies Research Center at Mt. Holyoke College.