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!

The cold days of March may seem like a distant memory, but the seeds of community we planted in our 2013 Festival are continuing to grow and bloom now, as we move on into the lovely Berkshire springtime.

The first meeting of the newly established Berkshire Women Writers Lean In group brought a roomful of enthusiastic women writers together to share ideas and visions for how to use our new monthly meeting time to strengthen us as individual writers and as a writing community.

We’ll hold two more meetings this spring, on Sunday May 19 and Sunday June 16, both from 3-5 p.m. at the Berkshire Museum, hosted by Museum Director of Communications Lesley Ann Beck and Festival Founding Director Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez.  No RSVP necessary—just join us!

This will remain an open group, with the expectation that women writers will come in and out of the circle as time permits, so please know that even if you can’t make it this spring, the door will be wide open for all when we start up again next fall!

On May 19, in addition to doing some more visioning work for the future, attendees are invited to bring a piece of writing to share (no more than 500 words or so), intended as a way to introduce our writerly voices to each other.  Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez will also give a short presentation on starting up a new WordPress blog, and will facilitate a discussion on the value of blogging for women writers.

In the months to come, we anticipate a varied format, with topics ranging from the business side of writing (finding an agent, self-publishing, freelancing, grant-writing, marketing and promotion, etc); the craft of writing (in different genres, from poetry to press releases to blog posts, fiction, essays and memoir); and opening up new spaces for women writers to share their work in progress and receive thoughtful, constructive feedback.  We will share our own areas of expertise, as well as consider inviting in guest speakers.

We are also open to the possibility of meeting at different times and in different places in the county, but decided that at least for this May and June we’ll stick with our central location at the Berkshire Museum, and the Sunday afternoon time slot.  Please feel free to email us at bfww@simons-rock.edu if you have suggestions for format, venue, times and topics.

Our hope is that this new Lean In group will serve as a monthly creative catalyst for many women writers of the Berkshires and environs—we’re here for you!

It’s not too soon to start thinking about your contribution to the 2014 Berkshire Festival of Women Writers! 
 


The call for proposals will go out next month, but in the meantime, put on your thinking caps!  We are especially interested in proposals that address next year’s special focus theme: “Individual and Planetary Health: Women Writers Make the Link.”
 
Stay tuned for information on how to submit your proposal; the submission cycle will begin June 15.

News and notes of interest
 

Festival favorite Suzi Banks Baum, editor of the new book An Anthology of Babes: 36 Women Give Motherhood a Voice, will be gathering with several of the contributors for a special Mother’s Day reading at the Mason Library in Great Barrington, on May 7 at 7 p.m.
 


Suzi is also offering a new series of her popular Powder Keg writing workshops this spring, on May 19 and June 30, from 1 – 4 p.m. at Eleven, 11 School Street in Great Barrington.   For more information contact Suzi by email: Suzi@laundrylinedivine.com.

We’re also excited to announce that the Berkshire Festival of Women Writers will be partnering with the organizers of the Lift Ev’ry Voice Festival in bringing famed African American poet Nikki Giovanni to the Berkshires this summer.  More details coming soon!

Summer plans
 


During the summer, we’ll be working on a new Festival initiative: creating an online directory of all the books by Festival presenters, dating back to our first Festival in 2011.  A basic listing will be free, but there will also be opportunities for enhanced visibility, with fees going towards supporting the website development this directory will require.  Stay tuned for more information, coming soon!

We are also on the look-out for new Festival friends and supporters.  If you would like to become involved in the Berkshire Festival of Women Writers in any capacity, from joining the organizing committee, to helping out with specific tasks like fundraising, selling advertising, working on our Festival Program or serving as a Festival Representative at events next March, please get in touch by email: bfww@simons-rock.edu.

The Festival needs your financial support—we can’t continue to do this work without a strong base of sustaining underwriters.  Please join our founding circle of Festival Godmothers, or let us know if you’d like to make a more targeted gift—say, for an honorarium for a special speaker, or a gift to support the development of our new Festival Bookshelf or our vision of an annual Festival Anthology.  Your gift will enable us to continue to grow a vibrant community of women writers here in the Berkshire region.

Thank you for supporting the Berkshire Festival of Women Writers!
 

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.

Hosts, presenters, organizers and Festival friends met at the Y-Bar in Pittsfield to mingle and raise a toast to the close of an extraordinarily successful 2013 Festival season.

Approximately 2,000 people attended the 56 Festival events held throughout the county during the month of March, and a preliminary review of the audience evaluations indicates that everyone was well-pleased by the events they attended.

Below are some photos from the party, for those who were there in body and those who were with us in spirit!

Alison Larkin & Kristen Van Ginhoven

Festival Program Coordinator Claudette Webster, left, with Festival presenter Pauline Dongala

Keith Emerling carves the luscious duck and lamb he cooked and brought to the party!

Festival host Suzi Banks Baum with Festival Rep. Lorrin Krouss

Festival presenters Susanna Opper and Robin Catalano

Nina Ryan and her husband with Claudette Webster

Festival presenters JoAnne Spies and Lynnette Lucy Najimy

Festival essay contest winner Deborah Swiatek samples the great Mission tapas fare

Lorrin and Andrew Krouss

Drawing for prizes!

Festival organizers Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez and Judith Nardacci

It takes many villages and many people to create a grand Festival like the month-long, county-wide Berkshire Festival of Women Writers, and I want to thank everyone who helped make it happen: the more than 150 women who participated as presenters and hosts, the venue hosts who generously donated their space, the Local Cultural Councils of fifteen Berkshire towns who helped with funding, along with the John A. Sellon Charitable Trust, the Massachusetts Council on the Humanities, Bard College at Simon’s Rock, Quality Printing, the Shoppers Guide and the many other donors and advertisers who helped bring the 2013 Festival of Women Writers to the more than 2,000 people who packed the audiences of events throughout the Berkshires during the month of March.

I have been asked, why limit the Festival to just women writers?  Why not make it open to all?  My answer comes right from the voices of many of the women who participated in this year’s Festival, who underscored how hard it is, still, for women to overcome structural barriers to their full creative and economic participation in the literary world.

Research has shown—from Carol Gilligan to Mary Pipher to Leonard Sax—that in mixed-gender gatherings, women tend to become more reserved, to hesitate and lose the self-confidence needed to assert themselves in public.  The current controversy over Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg’s book Lean In, which urges women to be aggressive into order to succeed professionally, underscores the fact that women must overcome strong cultural conditioning to succeed in what is still a male-dominated world.

In addition, it is still true that women bear a disproportionate responsibility on the home front, which can make it hard for them to give their all to their literary careers. A woman who is continually on call as the primary homemaker and child care provider will have a much harder time writing that Great American Novel or becoming a senior editor at a major news organization or publishing company.

Some women, like Sheryl Sandberg, are wealthy enough to be able to employ others to do the housework, but even for these few, it is still true that women are underrepresented in the annals of “great writers” of the past as well as the present, which creates unspoken but powerful expectations—for example, that women only write “chick lit” about “women’s issues.” The truth is that women today are writing about every topic under the sun, making our Festival of Women Writers sessions of great interest to the men as well as the women in our audiences.

I hope that one day there will no longer be a need to provide a special platform for women to step out and share their voices in the public sphere, but right now, from everything I’ve heard back from presenters and audience members, it is clear to me that women still need that extra encouragement, that sense of being welcomed into a space that explicitly seeks their perspectives.

The Berkshire Festival of Women Writers aims to give women writers the boost of a dedicated space of their own, where it is a given that they will have the spotlight and the full attention of all present.  I thank the Berkshires for providing such a welcoming, enthusiastic response to the upwelling of women’s creative expression during the Festival month, and look forward to all the ripples that will continue to spread out in the coming weeks and months as we lay the groundwork for the 2014 Festival season.

Second prize winner Deborah Swiatek waits her turn to read

The winners are pictured below:

L-R, Hilda Banks Shapiro, Ellen Bliss, Joan Embree, Deborah Swiatek

They were introduced by Essay Contest organizers Michelle Gillett and Nina Ryan, as well as this year’s Essay Contest Judge, Katherine Bouton.

Michelle Gillett

Nina Ryan reads from Edith Wharton's autobiography

Katherine Bouton

The winners have graciously agreed to share their essays with our Festival website audience.  Read on!

First prize winner, Ellen Bliss

What Do You Mean Ken’s Pants Zip Up the Front?

by Ellen Bliss

 Nobody struggles with the meaning of masculinity more than a lesbian. I should know, I come from a long line of lesbians.  Technically, I know this is not possible, but let’s face it, once you have one lesbian relative the “aunts” come crashing in like brides to be at Filene’s annual basement sale.  You’ve got the current lesbian lover, the former lesbian lover, the lesbian’s other lover, and her ex-lovers.  You’ve got the lesbian friends of lovers, not to mention the honest to goodness sisters of the lovers (lesbian or not).  And the queens well, they’re a whole other story.

 So, I had a lot of “aunts” growing up.  This was good because I was an only child being raised by a single mother and we didn’t have many actual relatives; bad because they did kinda seem to come and go.  Also bad because I didn’t really have a clue about what was going on until my mid-twenties.  (Yeah, I know. Again, a whole other story.) I didn’t think it was unusual to call all female friends of my mother’s “aunt.”  I also didn’t notice that a lot of them dressed like men.  I was eight years old, I thought Ken’s pants zipped up the back. What did I know.  What did I care.

If Chaz Bono and Donald Trump had a love child, her name would be Aunt Shirley.  Aunt Shirl was a sturdy, robust woman, perhaps even burly.  She had golden hair that swooped around in the most feminine masculine quiff that was possible in 1964.  She was smart, she was funny, and she dressed like a man.

Shirley had an apartment across the courtyard from my mother’s.  She shared it with Ginny, a tall, glamorous, moody blonde who wore her hair in a DA and dressed like Kim Novak (for whom she was often mistaken). They both worked in offices in THE CITY.  By which I mean, in case you’re not from New Jersey – Manhattan.  I loved this about them, that they worked in New York.  I knew that meant they were the best at what they did.  Someday, I wanted to work in New York too.

My mother was living with my Aunt Marilyn, Aunt Shirley’s sister, which was how I knew her.  When I visited my mother on weekends, sometimes we’d go over for dinner. Eventually their friends would show up.  After a while, I was handed a piece of cake and a bottle of coke and sent to the livingroom to watch television.  I sat there straining my ears to hear their conversations.  Adult talk was always far more interesting than anything on TV.  Eventually, I fell asleep watching Chiller Theatre.  In the other world, in the kitchen, there was a lot of Rheingold drunk, a lot of Pall Malls smoked, a lot of laughing, sometimes even a lot of yelling (Ginny was a jealous woman.) and occasionally some all night poker.

Aunt Shirley genuinely adored kids and I adored her.  She talked, she listened, and she was generous with her time. One Sunday we made a deal.  I would help her clean her apartment and she would teach me how to play chess.  I’m not sure that she made out on this deal, but it was a win/win for me.  How I loved those Sundays.

Aunt Shirley’s apartment was like a Pan Am commercial, glamorous and foreign. It was filled with mementos from around the world and I got to clean them! Over her couch hung a painting of Big Ben and Parliament by the river Thames. The other wall held a street café with the Eiffel Tower in the background.  I sprayed Bon Ami on the coffee table and studied those paintings, the way the light reflected on the rainy streets, the way the people sipped their drinks.  How did those people get there?  Someday, I’m going there.  I’ll have coffee in that café and I’ll walk across that bridge.

In the bedroom was a black lacquer suite which included an armoire and a full-sized bed.  There was just one bed. It never occurred to me to ask where Ginny slept.  There was Chinese calligraphy on the wall and jade lions on the dresser. These lions captivated me.  Smooth and cool to the touch, I could only imagine the splendor of the place from which they came. Gently, I wiped them clean.  To me they were incredibly exotic and more importantly, an escape hatch to a world of beauty, free from want, loneliness, and my mother’s continual reminder of what I cost her.

Shirley was the first person to lend me a book to read for pleasure.  I didn’t know people read books that were not required at school. I didn’t know you could actually enjoy reading.  She loaned me “The Good Earth.” I didn’t understand a lot of it, but I tried because she thought I could.  Back then, I thought she was giving me her time.  She knew she was giving me something far bigger, a love of reading, a key to endless possibilities.

For me, the line between masculine and feminine was blurred even before I understood what gender meant. My Aunt Shirley was a butch lesbian, a walking contradiction in 1960s society. She believed in me and showed me that the big wide world was just waiting for me to grab it. She was the ideal father. If the definition of masculinity is “the quality of looking and behaving in ways conventionally thought to be appropriate for a man or boy,” then I learned many good aspects of masculinity not from a man, but from a woman. I learned that not all men go out for a pack of cigarettes and never come home, that they don’t all beat you with a belt buckle. Sometimes, they nurture and encourage you and, most importantly, believe in you. Sometimes, they really do love you.

Deborah Swiatek reading her second-prize-winning essay

My Father

By Deborah Swiatek

Townspeople called my father a gentleman.   He was a successful businessman.  A gentleman farmer.  A proud Roman Catholic: a member of the Irish Academy as he called it.  A sword carrying 4^th degree member of The Knights of Columbus.  He had a great sense of humor with an Irish twinkle in his eyes.  He wore a suit and tie to work and a heavy plaid flannel shirt at home.   All of his shirts had to have a breast pocket to hold his hearing aid.  He was deaf.  The device was tucked in the pocket and a wire went from the pocket to his left ear.  He held his arm to his waist with bent elbow for my mother to place her hand on even before her unsteady gait due to her illness.   For the Carnation Ball he dressed in a pink tuxedo coat and proudly escorted my mother decked out in her ball gown as they paraded through the gauntlet of their four children.   He was the perfect gentlemen.

My family called my father an alcoholic.  This is only the second time I have put into writing that my father was an alcoholic.   I thought of him as a drunk, yes, but also as a wise businessman, as a good story teller, and often I thought of him as a very sad person.  But I never thought of my father as manly.  I used to wish that my father was like one of my friend’s father: a farmer.  He seemed so accessible.  He wore dungarees:  it was the 50’s.   He worked in the fields and brought warm raw milk from the barn to the bustling family kitchen.   The family was lively and fun and physical.  The family dinners were noisy with laughter and easy banter.  The father was not a drunk.  I loved going there.

My family’s dinner table consisted of the four children, my older brother and sister, my younger brother, my father, and me.   Most of my memories do not include my mother as she died from a long battle with breast cancer when I was fourteen.  There were rules for the dinner table: sit up straight, don’t talk with your mouth full, say please before asking for the salt or butter, and be respectful.  My father sat at the head of the table, often at a 45 degree angle as he was too drunk to sit up straight.  Somehow the food always made it to his mouth though my brothers and sister and I would sit with bated breath and wonder if the slow airplane to the mouth moves of the fork would make it without spilling anything.  It always did.  And he always ate every bite.  Then he waited for dessert to be served and he ate every bite of that, too.   My sister and I would send eye signals to each other.  Sometimes with anger, sometimes with disgust, but often we had all we could do to keep a straight face.  I mean, really.  Our father was at the head of the table at a 45 degree angle straining every muscle of his body to be very proper all the while insisting that we behave like proper young ladies.  There were several options of response: cry, storm out of the room, scream, argue, or sit there and accept it.  But many times the best solution was to let go and laugh.   It was a quiet laugh, a private laugh, often a laugh with the eyes, but it helped us get through the evening.

Then my father re-married.  He married a woman so unlike my mother.  A woman I could not accept.  A woman I would never accept.  I could not forgive him for that.  How could he do this?  He could do it drunk as a skunk, that’s how.

I used to see these portraits as two separate men.  The first portrait, the father most people knew, was the father I was so proud of and loved.  The second, the alcoholic, was the secret father, the father that evoked anger and embarrassment.  The two could not be reconciled so I kept them locked in separate chambers in my heart.

Then I grew up.    I realized how hard it must have been for him to reconcile the two people also.  My father’s illness was as cruel as my mother’s, but he had to live with it a lot longer.   As my father aged, he seemed to come together more.  He showed more of his gentle side. He laughed more, he drank less often.  He hugged his children though awkwardly. He hugged his grand children with great warmth.

I remember my father’s love for my mother, how the only time I saw or heard him choke up was when her coffin was lowered into the ground and the first shovel of dirt hit with a thud.   How despite his alcoholism, he got up every morning and ran a successful business.  How despite his deafness he lead a normal life.  How he provided an arm for my mother, for me at my wedding.   I remember how he did it all with dignity.  Yes, even those nights at the dining room table, though perverse, he was trying to hold on to his dignity, to the dignity of the family.

Today I no longer wish my father was like my friend’s father.  Now, when I think of that dinner table long ago, I wish I could have seen my father with today’s eyes.  I wish I could have seen that it was an illness that kept him from being the man I so wanted him to be, the man he so wanted to be.  In living through his vulnerabilities, he held on to his dignity.  For that I am proud.

Hilda Banks Shapiro reading her second-prize-winning essay

 Untitled

by Hilda Banks Shapiro

Masculinity.  That’s a funny subject.  I mean, really.  Not funny like laugh but funny like odd.  If you have lived a long time, and I have, you have seen masculinity change.  Over and over.  And then some.

When I was a little girl, I would sit on the edge of the bathtub and watch my father shave.  He used a brush and a lot of creamy foam and he twisted his face to accommodate the razor.  I would twist my face too and wonder when I could do what he was doing, until my Mother explained that I would never do what he was doing.  It was a disappointment.  I thought my father was perfect.  I admired his strong shoulders as he stood in front of the bathroom mirror in his striped pajama bottoms and his white ribbed narrow-strapped undershirt.  When he went to a Masonic Lodge meeting dressed in a dark suit, a white shirt with a starched collar and a small patterned bright tie, I thought no one could possibly look nicer.  His face was soft and smooth and he smelled of baby powder.  It seemed to me that men had all the answers and all the power.  They did all the important things.

A few years later I was taking piano lessons.  My first teacher had taken me to play for a man who taught at New England Conservatory.  His name was Leonard Shure and he was exotic-looking.  He had moody eyes, black slicked-back hair and an interesting, faintly foreign accent.  his voice was deep and resonant.  I had never met anyone like him.  He scared me but he also fascinated me.

When I was ten years old I played a house recital.  My parents invited many people; furniture had been moved about and folding chairs placed in rows.  I played Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and Chopin.  People seemed to think I did very well.  Afterwards as I walked along the hall to the kitchen my teacher hugged me tightly and longer than I had ever been hugged.  I liked it because he seemed very pleased but it frightened me a little.  He smelled of something strange but somehow delicious and I realized quite suddenly that he was a man.  He wasn’t my father or one of my Uncles or my older brother.  I don’t think I knew the word masculine then but I did understand that there was a mystery to life that I was just beginning to wonder about.

Two years later, I learned what a “crush” was. I thought about my teacher a lot and began to fantasize about him.  I sort of understood what masculine meant.  Mr. Shure didn’t dress like my father or any of my father’s friends.  He wore soft, light colors, open sandals on his bare feet and he told jokes I didn’t understand.  I felt more and more as if men had all the answers.

They were special, different, attractive in a puzzling way. When I began reading books that explored love and touched on intimate relations I felt nervous and bewildered.  I never asked questions; I listened for answers but I didn’t get any.  Masculine meant powerful, all-knowing–someone to look up to, to hold on to..  I didn’t date until I was eighteen and I had a very mixed-up idea of what masculine was.  Masculine was strong, always sure of oneself, someone who would take care of you, keep you from harm.  Masculine had something to do with ownership in some way.

When I got married at twenty-two I carried a lot of those ideas and those misconceptions with me.  I had been raised in a home by parents who came from Europe and they had many conservative ideas about the gulf between men and women, the importance of rules and regulations, the differences between masculine intelligence and feminine intelligence.

My husband and I began a family quickly and there were seven boys among twelve babies.  They took their cues from their father who came from Danzig and definitely believed in the magic of the masculine.  I re-enforced that belief myself–at least until most of their “growing up” and making their way in the world.  My childhood reverence for my father carried over into my adult life–even after I finally asserted some independence.  I still love what masculine stands for in my mind–self-confidence, irresistible charm and success–the key to every door, simply by being masculine.

Today, when I see young fathers carrying children in back packs on their shoulders, I am impressed.  I am pleased and admiring.  I like the changes.  But I am not sure they belong with the word masculine.  The idea of a woman’s strength and independence is amazing.  But has something been lost?  Has the masculine arm to lean on, the masculine way of leading or guiding lost some of its mystique?  Some of its excitement?  What IS masculine anyhow?  Do we need to bring it back?  Shall we throw it away?  Do we want it?  Do we miss it?  Has it become extinct??

After the readings, the entire group enjoyed a delicious wine and cheese reception sponsored by Rubiner’s Cheesemongers of Great Barrington, and many were already looking forward to the chance to enter next year’s Festival Essay Contest!

Michelle, Jennifer and Nina at the reception

Author and writing instructor Dara Lurie presented an interactive workshop on writing as a process of personal growth and self-understanding.

Dara Lurie

Afterwards, three women adventurers–Susan Fox Rogers, Dawn Paul and Dorothy Albertini–took the stage to talk about writing their experiences of solo adventuring.  As it turned out, some of the adventures were more inward and imaginative than outward-bound, but all offered provocative insights in using writing as a vehicle for exploration.

Solo panel, L-R, Dorothy Albertini, Susan Fox Rogers and Dawn Paul

Susan Fox Rogers

Lara Tupper

The final session in the four-part Festival series at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health featured author and writing teacher Lara Tupper.  Festival rep Lorrin Krouss spoke glowingly of her experience:

“Lara Tupper is a teacher with the ability to bring forth the very best in her students. In only a two hour session at Kripalu, Lara turned a room full of people (about 72) into confident writers – pros and novices alike. We wrote from the heart, soul and depth of past and present feelings.  The sharing of our stories made all of us believe in our own creativity, abilities and in ourselves.”

At the Lichtenstein Center in Pittsfield, Rosemary Starace and JoAnne Spies led an Elemental Orchestra in a performance of music and poetry that had the audience spellbound.

Rosemary Starace; photo by Cheryl Luft

JoAnne Spies; photo by Cheryl Luft

Meanwhile, down at the Railroad Street Youth Project in Great Barrington, a group of teens led by Festival rep Kirsten Peterson and spoken word poet Alexis-Marie Wint, both seniors at Bard College at Simon’s Rock, met to put words to action in a workshop on speaking up and speaking out in poetry.

Spoken word workshop by and for teens at the Railroad Street Youth Project

Leigh Strimbeck leads a talk-back with her actors and choreographer

On this day we rested and reflected over some of the many thought-provoking moments in the Festival!

Persistence is all, she said, and writing, let’s face it, is mostly a sport for tortoises….slow but steady wins the race….

K.A. Laity

“The whip of the wind and the heavy snowfall desist. Instead, the interplay of birdcalls and running river awaken from the shadows. Spring is here. The feeling of winter has left me gloomy. I always hated to shovel the front driveway, or have no wood left for the fireplace. Such things have their ups and downs—sledding, skiing, and snowman building are some of the many enjoyments winter brings. Even though I love such things, spring sets a different mood: the awakening of wildlife, and the special wisps the trees give, I especially love. It’s both a new beginning for us, and for others. We all begin to take off our heavy jackets and jump into the seasonal shift towards spring.”

Meanwhile, down at the Bushnell-Sage Library in Sheffield, another group of writers gathered for a workshop on the prose poem offered by Festival presenter Jessica Treat.

Jessica gave this report, with a few representative poems that were produced in her workshop:

On Sunday, March 24^th from 2-4pm I gave a workshop on The Prose Poem.  For each of the participants I’d prepared a packet with various examples of prose poems, from Charles Baudelaire to W.S. Merwin to Anne Carson. We also looked at definitions by Mary Oliver and others. The final poems we read and discussed were “Self-Portrait in Green” by Brian Johnson and “Against Green,” by Sean Thomas Dougherty.  Participants were then told to write in response to a color: green, red, orange or purple.  What follows are three poems from the workshop. Jane Bernstein, Betsy Selfo and Tony Palmieri generously agreed to share their poems.   —Jessica Treat

Self Portrait in Green
Green is for me the color of life — green fruit smoothies dyed vibrantly verdant by the cleansing tide of kale and parsley. Springtime and moss. Valley full of fully dressed trees. Pine and hemlock green all year long, improbable color in the white winter snowscape. Green peas, green beans, green chard, green chives, green tea, green giant.  I’m still surprised my blood isn’t green. Why iron instead of chlorophyll?

–Jane Bernstein, Sheffield, MA

Self-portrait in purple for these ropy hands that pat the cat and the homemade noodles and I can’t think of where else these purple hands haven’t been. Oh, a baby’s butt, never in my life. I didn’t want a purple screaming baby yelling for me. “MOMMY, MOMMY.” I had to run away.

–Betsy Selfo, Harwinton, CT

If you’re waiting for an explanation, you’ve come to the wrong house. There is a reason for the red, but it isn’t important. I’ll tell you this: it was about the feel, about changing the texture of the hardwood, the walls, bumpy and mottled but now smooth, waxen. And red. The crayon broke once, like magic, a piece for each hand, and the circles have made my shoulders burn. But the blue is gone, the crayon is gone. When summer comes, the sun will change it anyway, it’ll run or sweat. So just go ahead, you can’t fix it and I won’t explain. So stop asking questions and use your razor.

–Tony Palmieri, Middletown, CT

Finally, up in Pittsfield, mid-county, another group of about 50 gathered at the Lichtenstein Center to hear the oral stories of presenters Carla Oleska, Pauline Dongala and Vera Kalm.

Just another rich and varied day in the Berkshire Festival of Women Writers!

Vera Kalm, Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez and Carla Oleska

In the afternoon, almost 150 people gathered in Edith Wharton’s beautiful living room at the Mount to hear the four winners of the 2013 Festival Essay Contest read their winning essays exploring the topic of masculinity.  Writing about their fathers, brothers, sons and–in the case of first prize winner Ellen Bliss–their favorite “butch dyke aunt,” the essays were moving and insightful, and had the audience spellbound.

Afterwards, a good time was had by all at the Gala Reception, fortified by sparkling water, wine and beautiful cheese platters supplied by Rubiner’s Cheesemongers of Great Barrington.

Essay contest winners, L-R: Hilda Banks Shapiro, Ellen Bliss, Joan Embree and Deborah Swiatek

First prize winner Ellen Bliss wrote afterwards:

Katherine Bouton introduces the winners

Lashonda Katrice Barnett

The final Festival event of the day was “Talk to Her: Interviews with Women Musicians,” a presentation at the Get Lit bar at The Bookstore in Lenox, by Dr. LaShonda Katrice Barnett of Brown University.  Festival rep Judy Nardacci reports:

“LaShonda Katrice Barnett took a rapt audience through her process of writing I Got Thunder, her book of interviews with black women songwriters that describes each woman’s process of creating music and making a career through both her gifts and her strength and persistence. Besides describing how she made connections with such renowned women, she made us all part of a conversation about such giants of the music industry as Odetta, Cassandra Wilson, and Miriam Makeba. Her gracious and engaging interactions with a group of more than twenty five knowledgeable and delighted fans of various music genres made this event a lovely way to spend the afternoon.”

Tuesday, April 2, 5-7 p.m. at the Y-Bar, 391 North St in Pittsfield.
Click here for directions: goo.gl/maps/U8aQH.

Your $10 admission will benefit the Festival; cash bar.
See you there!

“Each artist’s piece was a gem. We heard Barbara and Graham Dean’s songs about Mumbet and Walkin to Freedom as we walked through the Four Freedoms rotunda, Ben Friedman’s ‘Seeking At-one-ment’ by the ‘Golden Rule,’ Nathan Smith’s sonnet about shaking hands by the ‘Golden Rule’ and ‘The Marriage Counselor, ‘Pastor at Church on the Hill Natalie Shiras and Chief of Police Rick Wilcox speaking about trusting oneself and authority by ‘The Runaway.’

“On to the next gallery, led by the eagle flute played by Windrose Morris we heard different artists throughout the room. Teresa Thomas danced to my song ‘Beloved Friend.’ Wendy Rabinowitz, (Satyena Ananda read by Wendy) and Ani Grosser read prayers and poems. Jan Hutchinson read her poem by the 3 Boys Fishin’. Eric Reinhardt sang his ‘Jemma’s Waltz’ by the ‘Fortuneteller.’  Mari Andejco read a poem, Pooja Rue danced to the tunes of Windrose Morris, Dylan Keating and Vikki True.”

The piece ended on a high note, with JoAnne leading the group in singing her song “The Survivor Tree.”

Later in the day, up at MCLA Gallery 51 in North Adams, Rosebud Ben-Oni and Arisa White read poetry and talked about their lives growing up in gritty, uncompromising environments in central Brooklyn and Arab East Jerusalem.

Festival rep Judy Nardacci was there, and reports:

“Rosebud Ben-Oni and Arisa White shared their writing with a small but welcoming and enthusiastic audience at Gallery 51: Rosebud, reading poems that helped her channel and express feelings of frustration and anger; and Arisa, about a difficult but resilient childhood. Both welcomed audience questions and encouraged us – especially several students in a writing program at MCLA – to send work to their HER KIND blog, the official site for their forum VIDA: Women in Literary Arts.The readings helped us see both the challenges and the deep satisfaction of the writing process, and specifically, the advantages of a supportive outlet and connections with other women writers in a new social-network format. They clearly enjoyed reading together as friends and colleagues, and provided a most memorable afternoon.”

And in the evening, Leigh Strimbeck and her students from Russell Sage College, took to the stage at Bard College at Simon’s Rock with a stunning performance of Leigh’s adaption of “The Trojan Women,” set in a post-apocalyptic landscape along the banks of the Hudson River in Troy, NY.  The audience was spellbound and wrapped up in the tremendous power, passion and outpouring of cathartic grief of the women of Troy in the face of the losses they faced as a result of war.

Nancy Slonim Aronie

Nancy Slonim Aronie gave an inspired presentation to about 80 people at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health as the third of their series of Festival offerings.  She talked about the necessity for writers to tell stories from their hearts and their guts, not trying to protect readers from the stuff that is painful and raw–the work of the writer is alchemical, she said: “to turn shit into gold.”

Alchemy was also on the mind of writing instructor Laura Didyk, whose workshop was entitled “Garbage into Gold.”

Festival rep Lorrin Krouss was there and had this report:

“The lively, interactive writing session with Laura Didyk was wonderful.. About 25 people attended. Laura never stops smiling and somehow helps people find their inner creative voice.  We wrote to prompts and shared our writing. We created a story from  a random picture that we were handed.  We laughed, we applauded, we learned from each other and we ate cookies and chocolate.  What could be better!”

Just another busy, thought-provoking day at the Berkshire Festival of Women Writers!

Laura Didyk

Festival rep Hannah Fries reports:

In Laura Didyk’s workshop/reading on memoir, many of the fifty or so writers present experienced some kind of breakthrough or realization as we followed the steps of her writing exercise.  We found that writing out of two different voices–the voice of innocence and the voice of experience–was illuminating and helped us get to the heart of our stories.  And Laura’s own reading exemplified so movingly what we were all trying to do.  If you missed this event, try this exercise out on your own:

Writing Exercise from Women’s Interfaith event: “Illuminations”

The Voice of Innocence & the Voice of Wisdom*

1.  Make three columns

Label the columns the following way:

Column 1:  1–15

Column 2:  16–30

Column 3:  30+

2. In each column, make a list of stories or events for each age bracket.

These should be events that have stuck with you over the years. (In Column 1, list events from the ages of 1 to 15 years old, etc). Try and keep it to three events max for each age range. Use just enough words to prompt your own recall.

Consider events related to the following:  Personal/family events (birthdays, funerals, graduations, weddings); natural phenomenon (storms, excessive heat, extreme cold, earthquake); accidents/illness; personal rites of passage (first love, first kiss, losing virginity, coming out, moving in with; getting engaged); travel; geographic moves; cultural and/or political occurrences (JFK assassination, death of Elvis, the Gore/Bush recount, 9/11, Occupy Wall Street).

3. Now pick ONE event, the one that stands out most to you. (You can play with other ones later.)

4. Distill the event you’ve chosen down to a single moment

For example: If you are writing about a death, focus on the moment you got the phone call, or the moment of passing, or a moment at the funeral.

A. Write for 7–10 minutes on this moment, following these guidelines:

*Write in the present tense. (“I am sitting in the living room watching a repeat of Seinfeld when the phone rings…”) and from the point of view of whatever age you are writing from.

*Just tell the story straight. State what’s happened/happening. Who is there. What feelings are present. What thoughts go through you mind. But do not interpret your emotions or thoughts.

B. Write for 7–10 minutes about this moment from your present-day self, following these guidelines:

*Use the prompt: “Looking back at this now, I….”

*You can also re-tell the event in the simple past tense. Allow yourself to reflect on the event. (ex: If in the present-tense write you describe being lonely, in this one you seek to understand why you’re lonely.)

*What do you understand now that you couldn’t understand then?

5. If you want to take it one step further:

Write a third paragraph, experimenting with combining the present tense paragraph (a.k.a. “the voice of innocence”) and the looking-back paragraph (a.k.a. “the voice of wisdom”).

*Exercise inspired by Sue William Silverman’s contribution to The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Nonfiction.

Festival rep Claudette Webster reported that about 30 people attended and the presentations were fantastic and varied, with songs, spoken word, poetry and essays.

Mistress of Ceremonies Francine Ciccarelli

Ellen Russo

Darlene White

Jennifer Holey

Joan Embree

 

Meanwhile, up at the Lenox Library, Susanna Opper engaged her audience with a fascinating, pragmatic look at “writing for the web.”

Susanna Opper

Festival rep Lorrin Krouss reports:

“Susanna brought her over 40 years’ of experience in business communciaitons for top Fortune companies and small businesses to the Lenox library on a very snowy night. Her newsletter, WEB WORDS, reaches nearly 1,500 subscribers monthly.  Susanna spoke, accompanied by a power point presentation, about creating your own blog or on-line newsletter and the differences between the two.  Then  the group broke into pairs in order to discuss what they would want to include in a blog or newsletter and she encouraged each team to keep in touch on their progress.

“Susanna is a warm and charming person and it came through in every aspect of her presentation.  She never stopped smiling during her entire talk!  Susanna Opper’s event received rave reviews on all of the evaluation forms.”

Panel organizer and Festival rep Kirsten Peterson performed a powerful poem, which she agreed to share with Festival blog readers:

Cold Dog on the Mountain, With a Wolf Beside the Fire                

By Kirsten Peterson

It’s assumed that in the history of her domestication the common bitch has lost her bite.
So it’s said that she would do anything rather than live as a love lost stray
that to do so makes her savage.
A wild thing willing to be taken in-
many believe she is just waiting to be thrown a bone
so eager for your heavy petting and it makes her meek
and so obedient and so loving in return…
Quiet too, if you train her right.

But strays do exists
and my stray dog strut is my own to be left alone
but on the street my nervous flash of teeth is seen as a come-hither smile.
Why would I roll over and apologize for growling
when he tried the trick of stating ownership and came too close
whistling and grasping
because I am his desired pet?
Why would I see him as anything but the threat he is?

They assumed that it is in my nature and breeding to both love and obey,
that my devotion and love is all encompassing and limitless
and thus I am rebuked or dismissed if I dare to howl in protest.

I’ve had the catcher’s noose descend and welcomed the change of pace
but when caught and kicked enough I learned to duck away.
I learned the hard way the hand that feeds is too often a fist-
how could they think that a bitch won’t fight back like a true hound dog?
When backed into the corner would you blame me when I begin to snarl and snap-
fighting through a panicked scramble of foaming mouths and twisting bodies
just trying to get away and back to that stray sense of self.

Denied my voice
I remembered mouths could bite.
It starts with the slow process of working off that muzzle
chew away his belt and rolled up newspaper
and when we square off it’s my teeth
my speech
my gut instinct telling me I fight or I die
encased in my hide which by now has been numbed to his heavy palms.

He taught me the word bitch
now I have my own words to impart
and I will be understood.
When I speak back now my teeth aren’t smiling.
and my growl isn’t playful-
if I whimper it’s because I am in pain.

But by threat of tooth and nail I will speak
against the leash, the clip, the collar-
I rile up
pull against.
When they tell me to follow the ways I was trained
tell me to obey the command and to heel
tell me it’s in my nature to follow
I sit back with my mouth wide and laughing,
tongue cool and eyes open,
and I do nothing but look them in the face as equal.

Push me further-
you will see me raise my lips and hackles-
not a milk-drowsy pup,
not a sleek and shining pet,
when I bite, I bite for blood.
This is cold reminder
that every dog is just one meal too few
and one beating too many
from becoming a wolf.

They will know this
and assume nothing more.

Festival rep Judy Nardacci had this to say about the morning screening of the film “Water Children,” hosted by the Berkshire International Film Festival at the Triplex:

“An audience of forty attended the Sunday morning screening of the beautifully filmed and moving “Water Children” at The Triplex. We were taken, through music and the creation of a moving art project, into the lives of women and a natural event in their lives in a wholly unique, sometimes unsettling, and always mind-expanding way. Watching people move through Tomoko Mukaiyama’s “cathedral” composed of thousands of white silk dresses, we experienced with them the depth of emotion evoked by the project; and had an opportunity to think of “art” – and the women the artist invited to participate in it, in a new way. The artist and the director collaborated to create a quiet, deeply felt and captivating work of film-making. One audience member called it a “life-enhancing and probably life-changing film.” Most felt a “talkback” would have added depth to the experience.”

Festival rep Lorrin Krouss attended the “From the Top” writing workshop with Alison Lobron, and reported that on every evaluation form she received, “the comments were all excellent and each and every person that attended stated that they wished that the session was longer.  That  is indeed the height of compliments!”

Alison Lobron

At the well-attended Orion reading in the afternoon, writers Ginger Strand, Melissa Holbrook Pierson and Andrea Cohen read from their works, which all explored the intersection of nature and culture.

Hannah Fries

Andrea Cohen

Melissa Holbrook Pierson

Ginger Strand

Lisa Greenwald

Teens Michelena Mastrianni and Emilee Logan enjoyed the presentation.

Later in the day, a power group of women took the stage at Bard College at Simon’s Rock for the kick-off of a new series, Radio2Women Talks, hosted by Serene Mastrianni.  The room was packed with about 100 people, to hear Evelyn Resh, Joanna Krotz, Sheila Keator and Diane Patrick share their perspectives on what it takes to be a woman of power, and what obstacles get in the way of achieving that goal.

First Lady of Massachusetts Diane Patrick and host Serene Mastrianni

Evelyn Resh

Joanna Krotz

Sheila Keator and Serene

Young women from the Rites of Passage program, organized by Shirley Edgerton, pose with the speakers

And the winners are:

Ellen Bliss

First Prize: Ellen Bliss

Ellen is a “Jersey Girl” born and raised.  She has lived in Pennsylvania, California, England, and now Massachusetts.  She earned a bachelor’s degree from Penn State University and has worked as a nanny, cake decorator, publications designer, and technical editor coordinator.  She writes for herself and to bear witness to the lives of others because, “in the end, all anyone really wants is to be remembered.”  She was delighted to be asked to read her essay at Edith Wharton’s home in Paris.  “Wait.  What?  We’re not going to Paris?”

Second Prize: Hilda Banks Shapiro and Deborah Swiatek

Hilda Banks Shapiro

Hilda taught piano at Berkshire Music School for 25 years, retiring six years ago. She was a student of Leonard Schnurr and Arthur Schnabel, and the youngest student ever at Tanglewood Music Center. She has appeared in this country and Europe in solo recitals and with orchestra. She has twelve children, twelve grandchildren and ten great grandchildren.

Deborah Swiatek

Deborah grew up in the Connecticut Valley of Massachusetts and moved to the Berkshires in 1985 with her husband and son to run their own small business.  After selling the business, she taught 7^th and 8^th grade English in the Berkshire Hills Regional School District from which she retired in 2011.  Presently, she lives in Ashley Falls with her husband Richard.

Third Prize: Joan Embree

Joan Embree

Joan is a mother, grandmother, former co-owner of Embree’s Restaurant, caterer, private chef, yoga teacher, gardener and wanna-be writer, happily living in Glendale with her beloved dogs and cats.

Kristen and Caroline introduce the evening

An engaged crowd of nearly 200 streamed into the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center tonight to see Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, presented by Kristen van Ginhoven ofWAM Theatre, Caroline Wheeler of Sisters For Peace. and the Berkshire Festival of Women Writers.

Following the screening, a spirited community conversation ensued with special guests Jeanet T. Ingalls, Maia Conty, Janis Broderick, Bryan Nurnberger and Ananda Timpane all of whom hit home the message that each of us can contribute to making the world safer and more promising for women and girls here in our own communities, as well as internationally.

L-R, Kristen Van Ginhoven, Bryan Nurnberger, Jeanet Ingalls, Janis Broderick, Ananda Timpane, Maia Conty

Hats off to Kristen and Caroline for putting together this fantastic Festival event, and

thanks to Beryl Jolly of the Mahaiwe and McTeigue & McClelland for making it possible.

Workshop leader Jennifer Young

For hundreds of generations, our ancestors’ primary relationship was with the earth. They felt themselves part of an intricate community of life. Today, most of us live in towns, cities, and suburban neighborhoods.

We may no longer live in the wilderness, but it still lives within us, and connecting to that part of ourselves can be a powerful and healing process.

In this workshop, participants explored in writing and discussion a variety of landscapes: deserts, forests, oceans, rivers, and mountains, seeking to discover what these landscapes bring up for us, and how they can empower, inspire and support our lives.

Workshop co-leader Elizabeth Young shared the following brief essay she wrote during the session, about writing with the women in the group:

“Why is it so comfortable with women?  Why can we talk together, strangers here, about the secrets we keep bottled inside? Remember Alice?  She finds the bottle, it says “Drink Me,” and she does, without fear.  In the world outside this room, would we drink something unknown, or would we be afraid of poison, of harm, of ever more abstract loss and destruction?

“This session feels like an Alice moment, when we’re fearless, ready to unbottle the secrets, to allow them out of the bottle and into the room.  There’s a bottle.  It’s small, thick blue glass with a wax seal holding the cork tight.  The label is attached with hemp string.  It’s linen paper, faded ivory.  The handwriting is curved and elegant.  It says, “Open Me.”

“This group is the liquid inside: each drop of female courage is what we, like Alice—and like Grace Slick, too—needs to drink.  One woman in the group starts it, uncovering loss, and we’re off, laughing as we encourage and daring ourselves to put the secrets into words.  I don’t remember what happens when Alice follows directions:  “Drink Me.”  She may become small first.  But I like Grace Slick’s version (sorry, Lewis Carroll, it’s a girl thing)— “Go ask Alice, when she’s ten feet tall.”

“And that’s what happens, isn’t it, when we drink the bottle of courage?  We get big, and brave, and strong.  The minute we share with each other, woman to woman to woman, and we feel with love and joy each other’s drops of courage, we become ten feet tall.  I’m struck by how rare this is, a coming together to solidify female bravery, which takes the form of words and serves the functions of unlocking, creating, building, connecting.

““Drink Me.”  That’s what we hear the minute we’re out of the womb: a woman saying, “Here, baby, Drink Me.””

Festival Rep Betsy McTiernan, who attended this session, wrote:

“An inspiring evening. The first prompt–write a letter to a body part–got us off to a provocative start.  Everyone wrote; everyone read, and judging from the laughter, everyone had a good time. Angela and Elizabeth created a warm, welcoming atmosphere, including some great snacks. I missed WRites of Passage #1, but I’ll be returning on the 20th for WRites of Passage #3.”

The film SWEET DREAMS was uplifting, inspiring and very real, and sparked a lively conversation with director Rob Fruchtman, which continued out in the lobby over a special Blue Marble Ice Cream social, sponsored byRubiner’s Cheesemongers & Grocers.

If you missed it and wished you were there, come to theSisters for Peace and WAM Theatre present: Screening: Half The Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide program next Friday at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, brought to you once again by the Berkshire Festival of Women Writers.

SWEET DREAMS Director Rob Fruchtman talks with Berkshire Dining For Women organizers Leslie Heilig and Linda Baxter

Ricky Bernstein scoops Blue Marble Ice Cream

Jan Hutchinson, Marion Jensen and Dolores Stein

Earlier in the day, there were two lively workshops at the Mason Library in Great Barrington: Iris Bass on “Return to Little Women,” and Sondra Zeidenstein on “Women, Creativity and Aging.”

Festival Rep Judy Nardacci reports:

“Iris Bass led an enchanted audience to a new understanding of a favorite childhood book. Louisa May Alcott, like her character Jo, was a main support for her 19^th century family. But Louisa was far from satisfied with the “ideal family” she created, and although she made a living from the series about the March girls and their families, she also wrote (under pseudonyms) the lurid gothic-style novels that would have surprised many of her young fans.

“Iris used her knowledge of the real history of the Alcott family under the leadership of its utterly impractical and even neglectful father, as well as her delightful sense of humor- and sometimes outrage- to explore both Louisa and the March family.Excerpts from Mark Adamo’s opera  of the same name expanded our understanding of the depth and poignancy of the March family’s lives and marriages; and gave us a new appreciation for a feminist writer who lived with her own set of challenges and disappointments.”

Judith Nardacci introduces Iris Bass

Festival rep Lorrin Krouss reported on Sondra Zeidenstein’s workshop in the afternoon, which had about 30 attendees.  ”Sondra spoke a bit and then added some insight into her own life and  health issues and how all of this impacts her writing.  The guests sat in a circle and Sandra encouraged all to “share” where they are now at their current age and  where they are in their creative life.  It was interesting to listen to everyone’s stories especially those women who were 80+ —- very encouraging.”

Sondra Zeidenstein talks with a workshop participant

Millie Calesky had this report on her Festival workshop in Pittsfield:

“My workshop was well attended (25 + attendees) and, in my humble estimation — a great success.  Folks came from as far away as Kingston and Glens Falls NY, Bennington and North Adams. We were together for three hours and did some deep work together. I am honored to be a part of the festival, and look forward to participating next year!”

Festival Rep Judy Nardacci, who attended Millie’s workshop, described it this way:

“Millie Calesky truly brought out the “genie” in each person, in a workshop that drew a large (25+) and enthusiastic group from as far as Glens Falls and Kingston, NY; Bennington, VT; North Adams, and Canaan, CT on a sunny pre-spring afternoon. They gathered to hear about the process of journaling for the first time, to become reacquainted with an activity that had been missing from their lives recently, or to explore new ways of continuing a process that is part of every day but needing some fresh insight.

“Using written exercises and small group conversations, participants were invited to consider journaling to look at their own feelings, relationships with others, a way to stimulate creative writing, to think through and resolve problems, to bring completion and catharsis to troubling situations, or purely for enjoyment. As Milllie said in her summary, “we did some deep work together”. The comfortable and informal setting (upstairs at The Lichtenstein), the care and planning Millie had put into making the afternoon productive and flexible so that it met a range of expectations and needs, and the thoughtful inclusion of breaks, snacks and handouts made this workshop useful, relaxing and fun! It was a lovely and enlightening way to spend the afternoon.”

Suzi Banks Baum

Also, today Festival friend, host and supporter Suzi Banks Baum posted a great testimonial to the Festival today on her blog, Laundry Line Divine.   Check it out here.  Thanks Suzi, for all you’re doing to get the word out about the fabulous Festival we’ve got going on in the Berkshires this month!

Despite a snowstorm just winding down, Carole Owens hosted a lively, informative and delightfully intimate discussion with Roberta Sillman and Edith Velmans, both writers, and Julia Lord, who runs a small literary agency.  Carole’s advice to fledgling writers was to begin by asking: who are you writing for, and what do you want to say? Her own answer was to write her book The Berkshire Cottages for “the woman with green spandex pants and bright red hair” who wanted to know “where the castles are?”

Julia worked at home, before picking her young children up at school. Roberta wrote stories and novels at home, with small children around. Edith created a memoir for her grandchildren; it was eighteen years in the making and published because of a chance conversation between her son-in-law and a friend who happened to be the chief editor at Viking!

The conversation ranged from book recommendations to the unlikely renewal of interest in historical figures and events because of recent film releases (Argo and Lincoln) to how to select an agent, the importance of having a strong voice and a good team to work with; and the interest now in new voices, especially those of women.

The Stockbridge Library’s reading room provided a comfortable and welcoming place for an engaged audience and four open, warm and funny women who clearly love their work and are generous about sharing their passion and knowledge!

Sally-Jane Heit

Sally-Jane talks with members of the audience

Julia Cameron

One thing I learned from Julia Cameron’s Festival presentation at Kripalu on March 7 is that she was once married to the director Martin Scorsese, and helped him write the screenplay for TAXI DRIVER!

Cameron shared the outlines of her early life, showing over and over how her audacity and refusal to be discouraged served her creative muse and helped her become the celebrated and successful writer she is today.

Like Socrates, who always said that he followed his “daemon” or inner voice when it came to decision-making, Cameron said that at crucial moments in her life, she heard a voice giving her direction on what to do next.

It was in response to a “voice” she heard while rambling in the West Village of New York City that she began to teach back in the 1980s, and her teaching led to her phenomenal best-seller, The Artist’s Way, which has sold millions of copies and has, in her words, paid the bills so that she could write what she wanted.

“If we exercise our creativity,” she said, “there is a force that comes to support us.”  The question becomes, how do we tune out, ignore or respond to our inner censor (Cameron calls hers “Nigel”), in order to allow the creative juices to run uninhibited?

Julia Cameron still swears by the practice that she outlined in The Artist’s Way, the faithful writing of three “morning pages” a day.  “The morning pages are a greased slide to autonomy,” she said with absolute conviction.

In the morning pages, we can learn to respond to our own “Nigels” with equanimity.  “When Nigel attacks, I just say, ‘Thank you for sharing,’ and I move on,” she said imperturbably.  “The truth is that the more original the work you’re exploring, the more vicious the attacks will be.  But those vicious attacks are actually telling you that you’re heading in the right direction.”

Cameron emphasized that creative people need to find “believing mirrors,” people who will “reflect back to you your genuine possibilities as an artist. Optimistic, enthusiastic, and generous, such people are friends to our work. They bring us courage to go forward,” as she said in a recent interview.

It is essential, Cameron says, to have what she calls a “creative cluster” of kindred spirits to encourage and stimulate each other to overcomes obstacles and do the creative work we were born to do.

“Creative clusters,” she says, “where we gather as peers to develop our strength, are best regarded as tribal gatherings, where creative beings raise, celebrate, and actualize the creative power which runs through us all.”

Cameron calls this a “Sacred Circle,” which allows us to “midwife dreams for one another.  We cannot labor in place of one another, but we can support the labor that each must undertake to birth his or her art and foster it to maturity,” she says.

This is exactly the spirit we are trying to create with the Berkshire Festival of Women Writers this month.

It was quite an honor to welcome Julia Cameron into our Sacred Circle of women artists here at the Berkshires.

With any luck (and a little help from Kripalu!) she will return often to bring us the inspiration, wisdom and encouragement we need to sidestep our own “Nigels” and unleash our full creative powers.

At the WRites of Passage workshop

L-R, Anni Crofut, Angela Vuagniaux and Suzi Fowle

Angela

Coming to America

Two of the women married men they barely knew (one had stepchildren who still kept a shrine to their deceased mother, and resented this stranger in their home). One woman taught history at a college in Beijing, but fled because of the repressive government. Several, college graduates, had difficulty finding meaningful work in the United States. All six struggled to find work, friends, and ways to connect in unfamiliar surroundings and in a language and culture as foreign as the landscape.

That was the background for the “Coming to America” event at Williams College on Wednesday, facilitated by the Berkshire Immigrant Center in Pittsfield where the women find support and guidance, and with mentoring by Elizabeth Kaidah, a junior at Williams. Hearing stories told by such strong, resourceful, resilient and yet at times very vulnerable and isolated women, gave the audience a deeper appreciation of what is needed to survive and make a full and meaningful life here.

Students, friends, teachers, supporters, husbands and children, and many others filled the hall to cheer them on- and sample homemade cookies, salsa and other snacks. These images, by photographer Marcela Villada Peacock, will give a sense of this joyous occasion.  Everyone is already looking forward to next year’s event!

(More precise captions to come)

Yuko Takaya with friends

Two of the presenters

Greta Phinney (English teacher, center) and presenter Youlin Shi (right) with a friend

A presenter with Marcela Villada Peacock

All the presenters receive gifts and applause

Presenter Liliana Sills

Marjorie Cohan and Hilary Greene from the Immigrant Center, with Marcela Villada Peacock, presenter

Holly Brown

Abby Smith presenting

Paola Garcia presenting

Mary Campbell Case led a group of about 30 Festival attendees in her own infectious brand of “writing, passion, power and play.”  She waxed enthusiastic about her workshop the next morning:

“BIG BRAG!! 30 great women sat around me tonight as I led us in deep, crazy, and even loud body-heart-soul meditations to access and then journal our Inner Wisdom for the Berkshire Festival of Women Writers. I called it Writing Power Passion and Play: Letting Your Soul Have Its Way With You!!!

“And best if all, I was improvising THE WHOLE TIME!! Two years ago when I began teaching my work I was panic stricken, notes in hand, in front of 8 women. Tonight it was FUN! Great ideas popped thru and I just kept saying YES! Yippee for this one glorious life!!!”

This is what our Festival is all about: giving women the courage and confidence to claim their own unique voices, put their ideas into words on paper and in speech, and share them with supportive, stimulating audiences.  YIPPEE indeed!

Mary Campbell Case leads her workshop

The three winners will be reading their essays at a special gala celebration at The Mount from 3-5 p.m. on Saturday, March 23.

Please join us!

Marie-Elizabeth shared her gorgeous underwater photographs and film clips from recent scuba trips in Indonesia, and read powerful, poignant and often funny poetry, giving the endangered creatures of the tropical reefs a voice, and using them as avenues into a moving exploration of her own life and place in the world.

Lynnette showed photographs she had taken at the decaying Great Barrington Fairgrounds, and read a personal narrative that moved gradually off the perimeter and into the heart of the Fairgrounds proper, and into the heart of her own unfolding life story.

At the end of her presentation, she introduced Janet and Bart Elsbach, who recently purchased the Fairgrounds with the intention of turning it into an outdoor community center dedicated to education, sustainable agriculture, local economies and recreation.

A lively discussion with the audience ensued, with questions for both Marie-Elizabeth and Lynnette, as well as Janet and Bart.

Marie-Elizabeth and Lynnette will be continuing to develop these projects–we’ll bring them back to share more in future Festivals for sure!

Lynnette with Bart and Janet Elsbach

Marie-Elizabeth Mali

“Berkshire Magazine’s event was praised in the evaluations for the diverse points of view, the realistic insights into the world of writers trying to survive in a changing and challenging time, and the honesty of the panel. Only one of the six said she is able – barely, at times- to earn a living from writing alone.

“Others have a variety of part-time work from editing to public relations work. Some value being able to work from home, and others need to flee from the phone calls and demands of running a household to find a quiet space to write. They found working with an editor variously helpful, frustrating, collaborative, or crushing. They all – no matter what the personal difficulties are that they each encounter – gave us the sense that writing is as much a part of themselves as breathing. We came away from the morning much more appreciative of both the obstacles and the craft that are part of their lives.”

Berkshire Magazine Editor Anastasia Stanmeyer and Ellen Lahr

Later in the day, The American Institute of Economic Research hosted a panel of women whose work is moving to change the dominant paradigms of humans’ relationship with both the environment and the economy.

L-R, Phyllis Webb, Judith Schwartz and Billie Best

Please send your thoughts about these events to bfww@simons-rock.edu, we’ll be happy to post them on the blog!

Mary Kate Jordan

“Today was amazing!  There were over 30 women at Mary Kate Jordan’s “Sedna” event – she is an incredible story teller.”

Sonia Pilcer

“At the “Women of a Certain Age” event there were over 75 people!!! Sonia Pilcer mentioned to me that next year, she would like a bigger space!  The women who read from their stories or their poetry were excellent and the crowd went wild after each one spoke.  It was a fascinating and diverse group.”

 Festival Rep Pauline Dongala was also there, and she wrote:

“This afternoon’s program was standing-room-only. I cannot find words to describe how good all the women writers were. I was proud of all of them. We have talented women around here and it takes a festival like this to bring them out. I am still flowing with joy.”

 

Barbara Slate also drew a great crowd at The Bookstore in Lenox, where she talked about her latest graphic novel, Getting Married and Other Mistakes, and the art and craft of the graphic novelist.  Here are some photos from her event, contributed by Richard Minsky.

This is how Festival Rep Judy Nardacci described it:

“Barbara Slate was fabulous! She had the audience right with her, from her first words, and Matt (Tannenbaum, owner of The Bookstore) said he hadn’t heard so much laughter in a long time. Barbara read from a tall stack of her comics- and even a sheaf of rejection letters. She took us on a tour of her evolution as a feminist graphic artist, starting with her line of “Ms. Liz” greeting cards in the early days. Women picked them up, read them, laughed – and then they “put them back and picked out a Hallmark card”. The world wasn’t ready yet for her pointed, acerbic wit.

“Besides Archie and Beauty and the Beast, she even drew Barbie comics (“with a breast reduction”, she said). It was fun to see the range of her work, and her colorful, very individual style as both artist and person.

“She expressed her disappointment that her overtures to schools and libraries haven’t been more successful, so one woman promptly suggested she do a workshop on “Graphic Art for Adults” right here at The Bookstore. She already has seven people enrolled!”

Barbara Slate

 

Let the joy flow on at the Berkshire Festival of Women Writers!

Please send us your impressions and responses to the Festival events you attend, as well as any photographs you’d like to share with us, and we’ll be happy to post them here on our blog.

Let’s keep the Festival spirit burning brightly in these gloomy last days of winter!

Women of A Certain Age panel, 3-2-13. L-R: Ellen Meeropol, Barbara Janoff, Lee Schwartz, Susie Kaufman, Alyson Dineen and Sonia Pilcer.

cover art by Suzi Banks Baum. graphic design by Rose Tannenbaum.

Out of the Mouths of Babes: An Evening of Mothers Reading to Others opened the Festival with over 115 people crowded into Dewey Hall in Sheffield. The evening also served as the launch party of An Anthology of Babes: 36 Women Give Motherhood a Voice edited by Suzi Banks Baum.

The program featured readings by book contributors Alana Chernila, Janet Reich Elsbach, Nichole Dupont, Jenny Laird, Michelle Gillett, and Suzi herself, as well as a story-in-song by Stephanie Campbell. Psychologist, author and Williams College professor Susan Engel served as a respondent, and the Q&A with the audience afterwards was lively and engaged. Among the audience were contributors to the anthology Hester Velmans and Linda Jackson of Berkshire County, Sharon Pywell of Newtown, MA and Sou McMillan of Wooster, MA. The audience enjoyed rice pudding and tea along with art by Anthology contributors Gabrielle Senza, Karen Arp-Sandel, Christine Casarsa and Jennifer Currie. More art was shared by Laurie May, Rose Tannenbaum and Sarah Nicholson.

For a complete view of the March 1 event go to Laundry Line Divine. And if you’d like your own copy of
An Anthology of Babes: 36 Women Give Motherhood a Voice, you can order it here. Proceeds from book sales benefit Volunteers in Medicine Berkshires and the Community Health Programs offering women in Berkshire County free and low-cost health care.

We’d love to hear your response to the event. Please post your thoughts in the comment section here or on Laundry Line Divine. Here is what Festival attendee Jennifer Clark said:

Thank you from the bottom of our many hearts for your work in developing community and the gifts we have among us.

Suzi Banks Baum on the air at WAMC!

Presenters and organizers are fanning out to share news of the Festival throughout the Berkshires and beyond!

Berkshires Week editor Katherine Abbott wrote a great pair of stories about the “Anti-heroine” panel hosted by novelist Edie Meidav of Bard College.  Here is her news story, and here is her related column.

Click here to hear Sally-Jane Heit, Suzi Banks Baum and Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez live on The WAMC Roundtable with Joe Donahue!

Check out this great story, “Write Makes Might,” by Jessica Provenz in the March issue of Berkshire Magazine.

There’s a marvelous story by Karen Schoemer in Rural Intelligence this week!

And you won’t believe the fantastic coverage in Berkshires Week, from editor Kate Abbott and writer Margot Welch!  If you missed it in print, you can check it out here–but look at the webpage carefully, there are not just one or two but THREE separate stories on the Festival here for you to enjoy.

Here is the Festival story as told by Berkshire Creative.

Although the Berkshire Record  posts only its Page One online, if you pick up a copy of the March 27 Record and turn to the Berkshires section, you’ll see a fabulous photo of Suzi Banks Baum from last year’s Out of the Mouths of Babes event, taken by Christina Lane.  The story that accompanies the image, by writer Emily Kramer, is quite fabulous too–go out and get a copy of the Record, and see for yourself!

Suzi Banks Baum; photo Christina Lane

But wait, there’s more!  Download this hour-long conversation between Radio2Women host Serene Mastrianni and Out of the Mouths of Babe founder Suzi Banks Baum, and listen to it the next time you’re out in the car or have a quiet moment to yourself–they talk so movingly about their love for the Festival, and give a great overview of this year’s events. Be sure to pick up your tickets for Serene’s March 16 R2W interview–tickets must be purchased in advance, and benefit WBCR-LP.

We’ll continue to add press coverage here as it comes in; if we miss something, please let us know at bfww@simons-rock.edu.

See you at the Festival!

Walking into the WAMC studios with none other than Dr. Alan Chartock, President and CEO!

One of the hallmarks of homo sapiens is that we love to tell each other stories. Our sophisticated use of language is one of the reasons we have been so successful as a species—we have been able to pass on valuable knowledge down the generations, building exponentially on the wisdom of our elders.

But it is only in the past fifty years or so that the ideas and perspectives of women—who make up more than half of humanity—have begun to be adequately represented in the written annals of our species. Even now, in many parts of the world, women’s voices are marginalized and kept out of the public sphere.

Many researchers in psychology, from Carol Gilligan (In a Different Voice) to Mary Pipher (Reviving Ophelia) to Leonard Sax (Why Gender Matters), have found that girls tend to lose self-confidence around the time they hit puberty, with the result that they cede the floor to the boys around them in classrooms and other public arenas.

The result, as shown by recent documentary films like the popular MISS REPRESENTATION (2011; dir. Jennifer Siebel Newsom), is that women are still under-represented in top leadership positions worldwide, and are still frequently misrepresented in the media as being more focused on how they look than on what they think, believe and do in the world. This becomes a self-reinforcing cycle, as girls looking for role models see more women getting accolades for their beauty than their brains.

The annual Berkshire Festival of Women Writers aims to counter this prevailing social ethos by opening up multiple platforms for women of all ages and from many walks of life to raise their voices and share their stories with supportive, appreciative audiences.

I founded the Festival, now in its third season, after ten years of organizing an annual International Women’s Day Conferenceat Bard College at Simon’s Rock in Great Barrington, MA, where I teach world literature by women, human rights and media studies.

For the one-day IWD conference, we would bring in women leaders in a variety of fields to share their expertise with local audiences. But what I noticed over the course of the decade was that the part of the conference the audience loved most was the Q&A period and the lunch—both of which were interactive and afforded the women in attendance the chance to exchange ideas and share their own knowledge with each other.

I realized that there were so many talented, experienced and enthusiastic women right here in the hills of Western Massachusetts, just waiting for more channels to be opened up to let their voices be heard loud and clear in the public sphere.

The Berkshire Festival of Women Writers does just that. Running throughout the month of March, Women’s History Month, the Festival features 56 events at venues from one end of Berkshire County to the other, offering more than 150 women the chance to share their ideas with each other and the world through readings, panel discussions, performances, screenings and workshops. . . . Read more

This year for the first time we are starting a Godmother’s Circle of sustaining supporters of the Festival. Please give generously and help us grow our Festival to the next level!  Godfathers welcome too, of course!

Among the initiatives we’d like to undertake:

• an annual “Best of the Festival” journal or book;
• a series of day-long writing retreats for women and girls;
• a jazzier website;
• and of course, year after year of stimulating, inspiring Festivals during the month of March, Women’s History Month.

We need your help to make this vision possible!  Please become a Founding Festival Godmother and make it happen.

Please visit this page to learn more about joining the Godmothers Circle of Festival supporters.

Thank you for doing your part to make our vision of an annual Berkshire Festival of Women Writers a reality!

Click here to download the Festival Program

Check out the latest post on Berkshire on Stage, where Larry Murray focuses especially on the performances and films that will grace this year’s Festival, including the trailers for the International Women’s Day film screening of SWEET DREAMS.

Spread the word; this is one March you won’t want to miss here in the Berkshires!

The Festival, sponsored by Bard College at Simon’s Rock with the collaboration of many other organizations, includes the participation of more than 150 women writers, at 55 separate events.

Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez

Festival director Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez, a professor of comparative literature and gender studies at Bard College at Simon’s Rock, founded the event to give more women the opportunity to share their writing with local audiences.

“Research has shown that while boys and men tend to over-estimate their own talents and abilities, girls and women tend to second-guess themselves or have such high standards for themselves that they hesitate to speak up or take the limelight,” Browdy de Hernandez says.

“The ethos of this Festival is supportive and inclusive—we’re not so much about big names as about opening up multiple platforms for talented girls and women to share their writing and gain confidence in their own abilities.”

Diane Patrick

The 2013 Festival does feature a few women of national renown, such as the writing guru Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way and many other books, who will be speaking at Kripalu on March 7, and First Lady of Massachusetts Diane Patrick, who will be speaking about women’s empowerment at Bard College at Simon’s Rock on March 16.

But there will also be spaces opened for student writers, older writers, and immigrant writers, many of whom will be sharing their work in public for the first time.

Students from Monument Mountain Regional High School in Great Barrington will be sharing their writing at the Guthrie Center on March 11 under the leadership of faculty member Lisken Van Pelt Dus.  And the Railroad Street Youth Project will sponsor a poetry workshop for teens led by two teenage women writers on March 14.

Sonia Pilcer will return with her popular panel of older women writers, “Women of a Certain Age,” on March 2 at the Mason Library in Great Barrington.  The Mason Library will also host Sondra Zeidenstein, octagenarian poet and publisher of Chicory Blue Press, a press dedicated exclusively to the work of women over 70, for a talk on March 9 on “Women, Creativity and Aging.”

Yuko Takaya

The Berkshire Immigrant Center is sponsoring a special event called “Coming to America,” at Williams College on March 6, which will give four Berkshire immigrant women from different countries a chance to share their written autobiographical stories.  There will also be a bilingual panel on March 5 at Bard College at Simon’s Rock entitled Cuatro mujeres, Cuatro generos / Four Women, Four Genres, featuring student presenters reading and discussing the work of four Latin American women writers.

In addition, any Berkshire woman writer is welcome to enter the 2013 Essay Contest, sponsored by Michelle Gillett and Nina Ryan, with special guest judge Katherine Bouton of The New York Times.  The topic is “masculinity,” and the postmark deadline is January 28.

A special feature of the Festival is the International Women’s Day observance, which has been held annually at Bard College at Simon’s Rock since 2002.

from SWEET DREAMS

This year’s IWD event, co-sponsored by the Berkshire Human Rights Speaker series, will offer a screening of the new documentary film SWEET DREAMS, about the partnership between a dynamic women’s drumming ensemble in Rwanda and the founders of the Brooklyn-based Blue Marble Ice Cream, which brought the first ice cream shop ever to Rwanda.  A talk-back with filmmaker Rob Fruchtman and Blue Marble founder and film star Jennifer Dundas will follow the screening, and the event will end with an Ice Cream Social featuring Blue Marble Ice Cream.

Other special events include:

• the screening at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center on March 15 of several segments of the film HALF THE SKY, based on the book by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, with a community discussion to follow led by Caroline Wheeler of Sister for Peace and Kristen Van Ginhoven of WAM Theatre;
• a staged reading of a new, 21^st century version of “Women of Troy,” written and directed by Leigh Strimbeck, at Bard College at Simon’s Rock on March 22;
• Out of the Mouths of Babes on March 1, hosted by Suzi Banks Baum and Gina Hyams, focusing on the complex relationship between mothering and creativity, and featuring readings by Baum and Hyams as well as Michelle Gillett, Janet Elsbach, Nichole Dupont, Jenny Laird and Alana Chernila;
• a gala reading at The Mount on March 23 of the winners of the 2013 Festival Essay Contest, coordinated by Michelle Gillett and Nina Ryan, and judged by Katherine Bouton of The New York Times;
• A reading of women poets hosted by Orion Magazine on March 17 at Bard College at Simon’s Rock, and a panel on the relationship between writers and editors hosted by Berkshire Magazine on March 3 at the Triplex;
• and much, much more!

Most events are free and open to the public on a first-come, first-serve basis, though tickets are available for advance purchase at the events at Kripalu and the Berkshire Theater Group.

The Festival is made by possible by grants from the Massachusetts Council on the Humanities, the Local Cultural Councils of many Berkshire towns, and generous support from many organizations, businesses and individuals.

For more information, contact Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez at 413-528-7224 or email bfww@simons-rock.edu.

Celebrating the book launch of An Anthology of Babes: Thirty-six Women Give Motherhood a Voice.

Dewey Hall, Sheffield, 7–9: 30 p.m. (see map below)
$5 suggested donation

Returning this year after a standing-room-only premiere at last year’s Festival, “Out of the Mouths of Babes” offers readings from six Berkshire women authors, ranging from a young single mother to a mother of adult children. Join us to be entertained, challenged, echoed, and encouraged. Favorite bedtime snacks will be served at intermission, and following the readings, special guest Susan Engel will join writer and editor Gina Hyams and Suzi Banks Baum in a discussion of motherhood and creativity.

Suzi Banks Baum, by Christina Lane Photography

Suzi Banks Baum, an artist, writer, and full-time mom, can be found creating community wherever she goes. While writing her first book, Laundry Line Divine: A Wild Soul Book for Mothers, Suzi discovered the vital voices of mothers who make art while raising children. Suzi is a theater professional, group facilitator, mixed-media collage artist, and mother of two teens. She lives in Berkshire County.   laundrylinedivine.com

Alana Chernila writes, cooks, sells fresh vegetables, and teaches kids to cook. She created the blog Eating from the Ground Up in 2008. Alana is a graduate of St. John’s College in Santa Fe and lives with her husband and two young daughters in Great Barrington, MA, where she is a selectman. Alana’s first book, The Homemade Pantry: 101 Foods You Can Stop Buying and Start Making, was published by Clarkson Potter in spring 2012.  www.eatingfromthegroundup.com

Nichole Dupont is a freelance writer and editor based in Sheffield, MA. A native of the Berkshires and a fourth-generation logger, she has cultivated a passion for food, farming, and community. Her work has appeared in Newsday, Berkshire Magazine, the Advocate Weekly, and Rural Intelligence, where she is an associate editor. She also writes for the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation. Sometimes she reads poetry in public, fishes for stripers in the Atlantic, and roller-skates. A former literature teacher and observer of people, she has written short stories. She also maintains a blog about the snarkier side of rural feminism and single motherhood.   www.ruralintelligence.com

Janet Reich Elsbach is a mother of three. Her interests include: what to have for dinner tonight; what to have for dinner tomorrow; whether her children are rested, fed, and encouraged; getting out of the grocery store with as little plastic packaging material as possible; and saving the bees, the oceans, and the last vestiges of true democracy. With her husband, the artist Bart Elsbach, she is managed by a small sheep farm. She writes about all of this when she can stay awake long enough.  araisinandaporpoise.com

Michelle Gillett has been a regular op-ed columnist for the Berkshire Eagle for over twenty years. An award-winning poet, she was a longtime contributing editor to the former Women’s Times. Her work has appeared in the Boston Globe, Orion, Sanctuary, Art of the Times, and other publications. Her works include A Kitchen Gardener’s Cookbook; a collection of essays entitled In Celebration of Motherhood; and two collections of poetry, Rock & Spindle, a letterpress chapbook published by Mad River Press, and Blinding the Goldfinches, published in 2005 and chosen by Hayden Carruth as winner of the Backwaters Poetry Prize. She received her MFA from Warren Wilson College and a BS from Skidmore College. Michelle lives in Stockbridge, MA.   www.gillettandryan.com

Gina Hyams is the author of eight books on various confounding subjects and creator of the “In a Box” cooking contest series of book-kits for pie, chili, and Christmas cookies. She lives in Housatonic with her family. ginahyams.com

Jenny Laird was a longtime Chicago Playwright and Arts Advocate before settling in the Berkshires. She is the author of several award-winning plays: Ballad Hunter (Chicago’s Cunningham Prize for Playwriting), Sky Girls (NEA Distinguished New Play Grant, Selma Melvoin New Play Award), and Only the Sound (Illinois Arts Council Grant, Chicago’s Jeff Award for Outstanding New Work, 2002). With her husband, composer Randy Courts, Jenny is currently adapting a series of musicals based on The Magic Tree House books for Music Theatre International’s Broadway Junior Collection. When she is not writing plays, she is busy running an intensive home-based play therapy program for her wondrous son, Quinn. Ballad Hunter at Amazon

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Sedna, an ancient Inuit archetype, gave her name to a planetary body discovered in 2003. Sedna’s story matters to women who honor—or would like to honor—the rich possibilities of their own life stories. Women who like to get beneath the surface of things with words will find Sedna’s assistance invaluable. In this morning of storytelling followed by a Q&A, we’ll explore aspects of Sedna’s silent presence among us. We’ll discover that myth accompanies meaning at the deepest levels and experience why the deepest levels of meaning are called mythic. We’ll invite ourselves and our writing into the shamanic depths where ancient mystery and contemporary science merge into story.

Mary Kate Jordan is the author of The Bridge Called Grief, a book-length photo essay on loss, grief, and the hope of renewal. She lives in Monterey, MA, and takes photos both at home and away.  thejordancenter.com

Mason Library, Great Barrington, 1–3 p.m.

Perhaps age and experience give us the courage to express things we kept under wraps when we were younger. Certainly our writing skills improve with time, as does the desire to say the unsaid. Come and hear a group of older women writers share their passions and what they know. There will be a discussion and Q&A afterward. Come and join the dialogue.

Novelist, playwright, and poet Sonia Pilcer began publishing novels in her twenties. She has taught for many years at the Writers Voice in Manhattan and at Berkshire Community College. Her books include Teen Angel, Maiden Rites, Little Darlings, I-Land: Manhattan Monologues, and The Holocaust Kid. She will be reading from her new novel, The Last Hotel.  www.soniapilcer.com

Allyson Dinneen has a BA in environmental science and an MA in family therapy. She is at work on a semiautobiographical novel. She has always been attracted to the mysterious, both in nature and in family life. She lives in Housatonic, MA, with her two youngest children.

Barbara Janoff’s essays and poetry are published in Columbia: A Women’s Journal, Communication Arts, the Berkshire Review, and by Allworth Press. She is an associate professor of English at the Fashion Institute of Technology, State University of New York, which has granted her a sabbatical next semester to explore themes of grief and recovery in her writing.  Fashion Institute of Technology

Susie Kaufman’s spiritual writing has appeared in the Jesuit magazine America, as well as in Presence, the quarterly journal of Spiritual Directors International. She recently won second prize in the New Marlboro Mystery Writer’s Contest. “Man About Town” is a version of a chapter from a novel she was working on in 2002. Another chapter of the same work was published in Lilith.

Ellen Meeropol’s writing explores characters at the intersection of political turmoil, ethical dilemma, and family life. Publishers Weekly gave her debut novel, House Arrest, a starred review, calling it “thoughtful and tightly composed, unflinching in taking on challenging subjects and deliberating uneasy ethical conundrums.”    www.ellenmeeropol.com

Lee Schwartz is a two-time winner of the Allen Ginsberg Award. Lee has been a Poet in Residence at the 92nd St Y, and read with Allen Ginsberg at NYC’s St. Mark’s Church, Billy Collins at the Bowery Poetry Club, and local poets at the Mill River General Store. This spring she will be mounting a takeoff on Brecht/Weill entitled The Two and a Half Penny Occupy Opera.

Barbara Slate will be reading from her semiautobiographical graphic novel, Getting Married and Other Mistakes (Other Press, 2012), the story of a woman who trusted everybody’s voices except her own. Ms. Slate will talk about her career in the fiercely male-dominated, super-spandexed world of comic books and how, by being the voice for Barbie, Betty, Veronica, Angel Love, Pocahontas, and many more, she was able to get her own voice heard. Barbara’s tale begins in the early ’70s with her creation of Ms. Liz, the first feminist greeting card.    www.barbaraslate.com

Barbara Slate has written over three hundred comic books and graphic novels for DC, Marvel, Archie, and Disney. She is profiled in the seminal work A Century of Women Cartoonists. Barbara teaches the art of the graphic novel in schools and libraries, using her critically acclaimed textbook You Can Do a Graphic Novel. (at Amazon)

Choice: n. the act of selecting or making a decision when faced with two or more possibilities. adj. of very good quality

Join us as we eavesdrop on women who are exploring the exquisite dilemma of choosing how to live their lives. You’ll go from glee to sorrow and back again with Before I Forget, a delicious look at one woman’s life, loves, and losses, written and performed by Sally-Jane Heit with music by Uel Wade. We’ll reprise the 2012 Made in the Berkshires audience favorite The Rabbi Auditions, by Joy Spivak, in which the temple’s three-person search committee kvells, kvetches, and finally chooses a new rabbi. And we’ll round out the evening with humor, insight and personal recollections from Susan Merrill, the Berkshires’ favorite storyteller.

Sally-Jane Heit grew up in Brooklyn, NY, and trained at the High School of Performing Arts, Hunter College, and Yale Drama School. After raising three daughters in Washington, DC, she moved to New York and was cast in Michael Bennett’s Broadway musical Ballroom. Her impressive list of professional credits includes theater, television, and film. It was an inspired encounter with Lily Tomlin that ignited the passion that has evolved into her latest production, Before I Forget . . . A Musical Memoir.  www.sallyjaneheit.com

Stockbridge painter and writer Susan Merrill has exhibited her paintings in numerous local venues, including, for the past five years, an annual solo show of farm animal paintings at Hancock Shaker Village.  She began writing when Lyn Austin, the head of the Music Theater Group,  asked her to write something for her annual Berkshire Writers evening. As no one could ever say no to Lyn Austin, that’s when it all started. For many years Susan read stories at the Williamsville Inn, at the request of innkeeper Gail Ryan, as part of her Stories for a Winter Evening series. The stories eventually turned themselves into two novels. Warm Morning, published in 2010, is about growing up in a magic house on a farm in rural Maryland, where Susan spent  her childhood winters. The other novel, Cool Evening, not yet published, is about another house, this one in the Berkshires, and it is from this book that Susan will read tonight. susanmerrill.com

Prior to playwriting, Joy Spivak made records and performed in Las Vegas, writing her own shows and comedy. She later changed careers, becoming the second female police officer in New Jersey. She and her husband, Jerry, reside in Naples, FL, and West Stockbridge, MA.

Made in the Berkshires is a locally grown festival of new works including theatre, film, dance, poetry, music, short stories, performance, and visual art, under the aegis of the Berkshire Theatre Group.

Hilary Somers Deely is co-curator of Made in the Berkshires. An actress, director, and producer, Hilary has headed three academic theater programs in independent schools and is an emeritus member of the Berkshire Theatre Festival board and a member of the advisory board for the Berkshire Fringe. Most recently, she joined the Fringe in its 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; coproduced 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 in Grapevine, TX.   www.madeintheberkshires.org

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. Her Off-Broadway roles include the Roundabout Theatre 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 Theatre; The Hope Zone, with Olympia Dukakis; and Trip to Bountiful, with Ellen Burstyn. She has also performed at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, Shakespeare & Company, Stages Repertory Theatre, and the Houston Shakespeare Festival. Her film and TV credits include Law & Order: SVU; Guiding Light; PBS’s End of the Line; and Cornflower Blue.   www.madeintheberkshires.org

Join Berkshire Magazine writers and editor Anastasia Stanmeyer for a panel discussion on the challenges of being a woman journalist today. Many Berkshire writers are women who must juggle second, and even third, jobs while taking care of households. The challenges are even greater for them as they try to keep a writing career going. We will also explore the many facets of the role of the editor and its importance to the development of new and established writers.   www.berkshiremag.com

Anastasia Stanmeyer is the editor of Berkshire Magazine. She is an active member of the Berkshire community and lives with her three children and husband on a farm in South County. She spent twelve years in Asia, writing and editing for Time, Asiaweek, Newsweek, Stern, and other magazines. She has written extensively for dailies such as the Dallas Morning News, the Christian Science Monitor, and the San Francisco Chronicle.

Robin Catalano has been a freelance writer and editor for fifteen years, with articles appearing in Gourmet, Culinary Trends, Berkshire Magazine, Berkshire Living, and Dance Spirit. She has edited more than three hundred titles for publishing companies such as Penguin Putnam/New American Library and Simon & Schuster. She is content editor and copywriter for the Annie Selke Companies and oversees the company’s social media strategy and content.

Berkshire native Nichole Dupont is a freelance writer and editor living in Sheffield, MA. Her work has appeared in Berkshire Magazine, Newsday, Rural Intelligence, and the Advocate Weekly. When her time permits, you will find her at risqué venues, reading her poetry and fiction among sequined burlesque dancers and jazz performers, or fishing for stripers and blues in the Atlantic.   www.ruralintelligence.com

Ellen G. Lahr is a writer, editor, and journalist. She spent more than twenty-five years at the Berkshire Eagle and has freelanced for Berkshire Magazine, the Boston Globe, the New York Times, Field and Stream, the Women’s Times, Berkshires Week, and other publications. She entered the PR world in 2008. She established EGLahr Communications in 2012, serving clients in the Berkshires and Albany region.

Gladys Montgomery, an award-winning writer and editor, contributes regularly to Berkshire Magazine. She has penned hundreds of feature articles on architecture, design, and other topics for regional, national, and international magazines. She was founding editor of Berkshire Living Home + Garden, and authored five books about architecture and antiques. She is a full-time real estate agent based in Stockbridge, MA.

Abby Wood is a freelance writer and social media specialist living in Pittsfield, MA. In addition to Berkshire Magazine, her work has appeared in the North Adams Transcript, the Berkshire Eagle, and Berkshire Living. A North Adams native and Williams College alumna, she enjoys venturing into South County for writing projects. She is also social media specialist at the Annie Selke Companies.

The way we see the world and its challenges is often framed by the stories we hear and tell ourselves. This panel will focus on stories for the new economy and new solutions to problems in which we feel stuck, including the stories Judith D. Schwartz found that led to her upcoming book, Cows Save the Planet. We will highlight both global and Berkshire-based narratives of resilience and renewal. We will explore how narratives can be honed and shared so as to harness optimism and create momentum for change.

Judith D. Schwartz, a freelance writer based in Bennington, VT, has written about environmental economics for Pacific Standard, Time, and the Christian Science Monitor. She is the author of Cows Save the Planet: And Other Improbable Ways of Restoring Soil to Heal the Earth, due out from Chelsea Green Publishing in May.

Billie Best is a writer, farmer, and community activist. She spent many years in the corporate world as a marketing consultant. Recently, she became executive director of Project Native, a nonprofit farm in the Berkshires.

Phyllis Webb and her husband own and run the Magic Fluke Co., a ukulele manufacturing company in Sheffield.  She has held numerous leadership positions in community organizations and has been an advocate for strong local economies for more than twenty years. She currently serves on the boards of BerkShares and Music in Common.

Join photographer-writers Marie-Elizabeth Mali and Lynnette Lucy Najimy as they share their creative works in photographs and words inspired by places on opposite sides of the earth. Captivated by the underwater lifescape in Indonesia, Marie-Elizabeth wants to “capture” as much of it as she can before it disappears due to climate change and unsustainable fishing practices. She will share underwater photos, poems, and prose from her travels. While exploring the old Great Barrington Fairgrounds, Lynnette discovered through the lens of her camera a parallel between the site’s transformation and her own past, present, and future. She expresses her shift in perspective in words and images over a four-year span.

Marie-Elizabeth Mali

Lynette Lucy Najimy

Marie-Elizabeth Mali is the author of Steady, My Gaze (Tebot Bach, 2011) and coeditor, with Annie Finch, of the anthology Villanelles (Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets, 2012). She lives in Housatonic, MA, and New York.

Lynnette Lucy Najimy is a multimedia producer with an MA in philanthropy and media from Suffolk University. She is a Berkshire native and currently lives in Housatonic, MA.

This writing workshop will guide participants a deeper connection with their divine spark and allow that marriage to express itself in the world through the body, heart, and word.

Mary Campbell hosts Divining Beauty workshops and offers private coaching in the Berkshires and NYC. She guides women to listen and to express the full range of their creative energy and potential. She will be ordained in spring 2013, upon completion of her ministerial training, at One Spirit Interfaith Seminary.

To browse through most contemporary anthologies of Latin American literature is to come away with the misconception that Latin American women have no voice in the Spanish-speaking literary or artistic world. In support of these underrepresented female artists, this workshop will showcase four examples of different creative genres by women from Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia, and Brazil. The bilingual presentation will be led by Holly Brown, professor of Spanish language and literature at Bard College at Simon’s Rock, with student presenters Olivia Dhaliwal, Paola Garcia, Melissa Sherman-Bennett, Abby Smith, and Mayu Suzuki. There will be a round-table discussion plus an opportunity for participants to engage in an unstructured creative writing activity at the close of the presentation.

Brief biographies of artists to be showcased:

Poetry:

Gabriela Mistral

Gabriela Mistral (b. 1889) was a Chilean educator, poet, and feminist. She was also the first Latin American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, in 1945.

Painting:

self-portrait by Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo (b. 1907) was a Mexican painter well known for her distinctive self-portraits. She was an autodidact.

Short Story:

María Teresa Solari Ormachea (c. 1910) was a Bolivian born Professor, poet and political activist. She was also Director of Eco femenino magazine.

Essay:

Clarice Lispector

Clarice Lispector (b. 1920) was a Ukranian born, Brazilian novelist and journalist.

Brief biographies of event participants:

Olivia Dhaliwal is a student in her first year of Bard College at Simon’s Rock. She doesn’t know what her major will be yet, but she looks forward to seeing the world and helping people in her future with whatever career enables her to do so.

Paola Garcia

Paola Garcia is a student in her second year at Bard College at Simon’s Rock. She majors in Digital Media and Cultural Studies and looks forward to doing a lot of different film related work documenting various cultures and countries.

Melissa Sherman-Bennett is a first year student at Bard College at Simon’s Rock hailing from Taos, New Mexico. She is planning on majoring in mathematics and physics, unless the world of literature lures her away from her beloved variables. Graduation is much too far away for her to imagine what she might be doing after college, but it will probably be exciting.

Abigail Smith is in her first year at Simon’s Rock and plan on majoring in Biology. After Simon’s Rock I’ll probably study pediatric medicine. Gracias.

Mayu Suzuki is a sophomore in Simon’s Rock. She majors in literature and creative writing, and upon completing her degree she plans on going to graduate school.

Holly Brown teaches Spanish language and literature this year at Simon’s Rock as a faculty fellow hailing from Bard High School Early College in Queens and is pursuing her PhD. in Medieval Spanish Literature.

Participants will be invited to explore some of the pivotal moments in their lives through writing prompts, discussion, free writing, and sharing.

Angela Vuagniaux

Angela Vuagniaux writes nonfiction in order to understand her life as a menopausal stepmother to a pubescent eleven-year-old, while healing from her experience as a teenage birth mother. Over the years she has been a writer, teacher, vagabond, grant writer, and caregiver. She has participated in numerous writing workshops and led a few of her own.

Anni Crofut

Anni Crofut, who lives in Housatonic, MA, has chosen an eclectic path, mixing her work as jewelry designer with her passions for Indonesia, writing, and movement. Her musings appear on her blog Anni Maliki.com.

Suzie Fowle is a wildlife biologist and mother. She enjoys delving into and asking questions about menarche and fertility. Her essay “Mothering by Moonlight” was featured at the 2012 Berkshire Festival of Women Writers Gala Finale.