Berkshire Women Write!

“Families don’t talk about the most important things in life!!!!!” I found this quote in bold on page 107 of Deborah Golden Alecson’s memoir, We Are So Lightly Here: A Story About Conscious Dying. In this book Alecson tells her story of her husband’s devestating illness and his conscious acceptance of death. It’s our culture’s tendency to present death as defeat: to deny it, talk around it, to avoid facing death head on. In sharing her own story, Alecson presents a message for the reader to understand that we must embrace our impermanent state; our lives are not our own. This changes the nature of hope, she says. “Hope is the acceptance of one’s fate and the courage to live each moment with the awareness that we will die. … Hope is the moment in which we find ourselves. How is this possible?”

“Once upon a time there lived a brave and curious girl named Persa. Her name meant land breeze in the language of her people.”  Persa’s curiosity sends her on an adventure far from home. Her skills, bravery,  and  knowledge of the wind help her to find her way home. Written by Louis Schick, this children’s book includes beautiful illustrations by upper New York state resident Lara B. Sorensen.

Telling stories isn’t only a form of entertainment; often hearing others’ anecdotes can bring us closer together and remind us that we aren’t alone in this world. Storytelling makes the individual experience universal. The beauty of The Funny Side of Autism is that it doesn’t analyze Autism or try to explain it in any way–it leaves the scientific explanations for the doctors. Here you will find anecdotes with a refreshing stance: humor. From parents, aides, and nurses of children with Autism across the country, these little stories average less than one page in length.

One of my favorites:

Re-gifting

My five-year-old son Logan was diagnosed with high functioning autism at age three. Out shopping one day at age five, he was doing what every kid does–picking his nose. I politely said, “Logan, that’s not nice to do. Please stop.”

He said, “But, Mom, it’s a present for you!”

I tried so hard not to laugh. Then I asked where he’d gotten that from and he said, “Me, right now.”

Logan’s mom, Nevada

Green Mittens Covered Her Ears shares the true story of Jessica, a woman with Autism. Author Anna Saldo-Burke and her twin sister, Diana Saldo, who produced the digital illustrations for the book, worked with Jessica on controlling her behaviors and gaining skills so wshe was more socially acceptable and independent. The story briefly tells the details of Jessica’s behavior and how Anna and Diana made plans to help her improve her speech and conduct. We learn how Jessica has good days and bad days, how she likes to play with small pieces of wire, how she enjoyed chirping crickets and people imitating birdcalls, her success as an artist, and many other details that give us insight into the world of Autism.

This book was published in 2007, but it has returned to The Bookloft as a consignment book, so it’s new in it’s reappearance on our shelves. Written by physician Abigail Brenner, M.D., this book explores how rite and ritual and bringing the unconscious to consciousness help us to make sense of life. “Women’s Rites of Passage grew out of my desire to answer some fundamental questions about the role of rites of passage in contemporary women’s lives,” writes Brenner in her introduction. ”What kinds of passages are most significant to women today? Do we consciously recognize and mark these passages? If so, how? And how does this affect our lives? Drawing upon my extensive research in the fields of anthropology, sociology, psychology, mythology, archeology, history, philosophy, and religion, my aim was to distill the best of the scholarly material that would interest a mainstream audience, combine this with personal stories from a wide range of women, and complete the perspective with my own observations, analysis, anecdotes, and guidance as a practicing psychiatrist and healer of many years. I wanted to create a book that would reconnect women to their important life transitions while giving them the tools to honor those transitions and understand their significance in the broader scheme of their lives.”

All of these are available at The Bookloft in Great Barrington. Unfortunately, because these books are sold on consignment and not from our typical distributors, they cannot be bought online. But they’re here in the store!

Tags: The Berkshires, Women Authors

No Comments »

Tags: Women Authors

1 Comment »

Another movie by women about women’s issues showing at BIFFMA (Berkshire International Film Festival) THIS WEEKEND: 

Alysia Reiner, Producer/Actress

Speed Grieving is about the incredibly confusing grief process and how we wish we could ‘fast-forward’ through it. Speed Grieving is excited to be part of the Berkshire International Film Festival  in Great Barrington, MA and will be a part of the Film Shorts #2 Series. The film will be screening on Friday June 4 at 4:45pm (Triplex #3, Great Barrington), Saturday June 5 at 9:15am (Beacon Cinema, Pittsfield) and again on Sunday June 6 at 4:00pm (Triplex #3, Great Barrington). I think this is a film your students and fellow professors and staff would enjoy supporting.

Directed by Jessica Daniels (Morning After, Cycle Unknown, MAN) and written by Dasha Snyder (The D Word),  Speed Grieving, revolves around a driven corporate climber who struggles to balance her hectic work schedule with her father’s terminal illness only to learn that certain things in life can’t be done efficiently. The story is by producer and lead actress, Alysia Reiner (The Vicious Kind, Arranged, Sideways) and is also produced by Katie Rosin, the  PR contact for the film. This powerful all women team has been screened at the San Francisco Women’s Film Festival as well as New York Women In Film & Television (NYWIFT)’s SWAN Day (Support Women Arts Now) events in New York City. NYWIFT also featured Reiner as a “Member to Watch” on their website. The film itself was partially funded by Women Make Movies.

Speed Grieving premiered at the Hamptons International Film Festival in October 2009 and was invited to the Williamstown Film Festival.  Over the past few months the film has screened at:

• Women with Vision Film Festival – Minneapolis, MN
• NYWIFT Celebrates SWAN DAY (Support Women Artists Now) – New York, NY
• Hearts &Minds Film Festival – Dover, DE
• San Francisco International Women’s Film Festival – San Francisco, CA
• Talking Pictures Film Festival - Evanston, IL ( Won “Honorable Mention”)
• Spirit Quest Film Festival – Erie, PA

The next screening in your area is at the:

Berkshire International Film Festival – Great Barrington, MA Friday June 4 at 9:00pm, Saturday June 5 at 9:15am, Sunday June 6 at 4:00pm http://www.biffma.com/

Fredda Wasserman, Clinical Director of Our House and author of Saying Goodbye to Someone You Love said, “In her short film, Speed Grieving, Alysia Reiner poignantly portrays the turmoil and chaos that surround her following the news that her father is dying. The film gives a tender and humorous look at anticipatory grief and society’s unrealistic expectations.”

Allison Gilbert, author of Always Too Soon: Voice of Support for Those Who Have Lost Both Parents wrote:

“If there was an Academy Award for ‘Best Film on Death & Grieving,’ Speed Grieving would walk away with the coveted Oscar. This film is a work of passion, and it shows in every frame.”

For more information please visit our website at www.speedgrieving.org or our Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/SpeedGrieving). This is a film that looks at women’s issues, health and grief issues and does it in less than 15 minutes. It has amazing capacity to stimulate discussion, and this is a piece of work your organization would be interested in. In the fall the film will be marketed along with a Grief Guide (put together by the Cancer Support Community) to help with starting the communication about grief and bereavement.

Tags: Documentary Film

No Comments »

The description Eula Biss’s book as listed on The Bookloft’s website calls it, “A frank and fascinating exploration of race and racial identity,” which it is. But really, this book goes so far beyond that–it’s an exploration of what it means to be a young woman in America, an idealist in New York City, a white woman teaching third grade in Harlem, an Easterner searching for home in Iowa.  These essays are about identity across the board.

“Perhaps it is only through leaving home that you can learn who you are. Or at least who the world thinks you are,” Biss writes in the essay “Back to Buxton.” “And the gap between the one and the other is the painful part, the part that you may, if you are me, or if you are Zora Neale Hurston, keep arguing against for the rest of your life–saying , No, I am not white in that way, or, No I am not black in that way.’”

As a woman about Biss’s age who has lived in the Northeast, the Southwest, the Midwest, and, for one strange summer, Wyoming, my sense of belonging is constantly being re-evaluated. Whether about race, gender, educated or uneducated–I think Biss’s essays get at the core of what it means to be American how we define ourselves, and how others define us.

But the book isn’t nearly as dry as I’m making it sound right now. These essays are richly written, the author including personal anecdotes from her life along with historical facts. Her lineup of characters include Alexander Graham Bell, Zora Neale Hurston, Joan Didion, and NAFTA. Sometimes the essays are loose, scraps of information assembled together, collage like, the reader drawing her own conclusions. The essay “Babylon,” for example is composed of one to two sentence long paragraphs, separated by space breaks, and include historical accounts of the garden of Babyon, Biss’s experience in a garden park in Oakland, details about palm trees, the take-over of abandoned buildings by squatters in New York for the use of city gardens. Through these little clips we can string together Biss’s line of logic–which can’t really be summed up in a sentence (hence the collage-like structure of the essay), but has to do with human migration, how we inhabit and abandon space, and how the story of domesticated plants parallels our own story.

Notes from No Man’s Land: American Essays, is one of the best collections of essays I’ve read in a long time. It’s no wonder ”Miss Eula,” as her Harlem third-graders addressed her, was the winner of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize. I know, she’s not a Berkshire writer (although she did spend some of her childhood  in rural Massachusetts), but any American woman writer can identify with the themes that pulse through Biss’s writing.

Also by Eula Biss:

Tags: Women Writers

No Comments »

. . . some new members of  the Berkshire Women Write! community.  If you’d like to introduce yourself, please send me and email.  And we welcome any detailed posts anyone would like to submit on the writing, publishing, teaching, etc. process.  As always, feel free to comment!

Claudia M. Gold:

 I have been in the Berkshires for over 40 years, the last 10 as a full time resident. I have been writing for a while, but only feel safe to describe myself as a writer now that I have a publisher for my book. My primary profession is pediatrician, but when my kids turned 7 and 11, I realized that with swim practice, dance rehearsal etc. taking call was impossible(my husband is also a doctor-in fact the eye doctor of many Berkshre residents). I stopped doing primary care, limiting my practice to behavioral pediatrics, which did not require call. As an outlet for my creative energies, now that I was no longer caring for newborns in the middle of the night. I resurrected my passion for writing.

 After having a number of op eds published in the Boston Globe on the subject of children’s mental health I was encouraged to write a book. Thus began a 2 year challenging process of getting an agent and then finally a publisher. The description of my book on my website reads:
 
/My forthcoming book, to be published by Da Capo Press, integrates the most contemporary research in child development with stories from my pediatric practice to support parent’s efforts to think about their child’s mind and the meaning of their behavior, which in turn facilitates the child’s healthy emotional development at the level of structure and chemistry of the brain. /
 
If anyone is interested, I have a blog, and my most recent post offers a  preview of what the book will be like:

http://www.claudiamgoldmd.blogspot.com/.

I’m wondering if there is a writing group out there. Last year I took a course for physician writers and we formed groups and discussed our writing, which was really fun.  If there is such a group I would love to join.

Phyllis Carito:

I currently live in Claverack but have been in the Hillsdale area for over 30 years, and I’m a frequent visitor to the Bookloft. I’m an administrator at SUNY CGCC and a writer. I teach creative writing at the college. My writing is memoir, short stories, and poetry. I’m in the process of having a book of poems published by Finishing Line Press.

 It would be grand to have a group to converse with about writing! In watching the brief video [on the blog] I noted that Michelle Gillett mentioned a writers’ group for poets and I would love to know more about that.

Phyllis also has a poem forthcoming in Vermont Literary Review.

Ruth Sidranksy:

I will be in the Berkshires May 30th to late fall. I am the author of the memoir, In Silence, and I teach writing. I thought what fun it would be to be with other writers and those who want to write.

Gina Hyams:

Tags: The Berkshires, Women Writers

3 Comments »

“You want to write? Then write. But write for real from this moment on. Write with intent. With a goal.”

Available at The Bookloft

Marion Roach Smith’s recent guide to writing memoir opens with the advice that all writers know, but can never be reminded of enough: in order to write, you must write. But Smith goes beyond the old “butt in chair” creed endlessly extolled by all writing instructors (“there is no ‘research,’ no ‘right time of day,’ etc., there is only writing…”), and informs us that the act of writing is not enough: “This is serious work. And it cannot be reduced to writing exercises and little prompts. And ask yourself this: Have any of those writing exercises ever gotten you published? Has writing from the right side of your brain, or getting touch with your angel’s feather, or keeping morning pages put you where you want to be as a writer? I doubt it. I suspect those manners of nonsense have instead stolen what little time you had for writing.”

I like this advice. And I like Smith’s snarky tone: “It’s not to light a scented candle, throw on a shawl, and scribble exercises or prompts until you get bored and head back to your macramé,” a later passage in the introduction reads.  In her opening pages, she evokes the “getting down to business” hype that writing advice books often begin with. Robert Olen Butler’s guide to writing fiction–actually a book of transcribed lectures he gave to graduate students–entitled From Where You Dream has an opening lecture literally entitled “Boot Camp.” It works. As writers, this brainwashing could be the most important advice. Our work is important. We have stories to tell, memories to share, human experience to relay to other humans, and nobody’s going to do our work for us. While reading Smith’s introduction, I started to feel a little guilty that I was reading instead of working on that personal essay I started two weeks ago . . . 

But the message was clear. And important. Every time you sit down to the keyboard, or the writing tablet, your words should be invoked with meaning, a part of a piece that will eventually be read by an audience (an article, a blog post, a book chapter), and not some useless exercise. Because everybody has a story, or many stories, to tell, so why waste our time writing anything else?

After Smith convinces us that we should be working our memoirs, our most important stories, the book progresses towards more concrete advice. Like how to choose which stories to tell. I have this problem in my own writing–I want to write it all. When writing an essay about solitude, do I begin with the years I lived in a cabin alone in the woods, or do I start much earlier, in those silent mornings I spent with my mother as a child, she reading or hanging sheets on the clothesline, me befriending the apple trees in the backyard, or slipping between the cool sheets, feeling the damp cotton brush against my shoulders as I hide?  Do I mention my crippling shyness as a child, my contrasting ebullient sibling? “What is this about?” Smith asks us to constantly remind ourselves of the story at hand, choose only the necessary details. She details several ways to stay focused, to tease out only the most important anecdotes. Never, she says, allow the reader to ask “Yeah, so what?”

Write about what you fear, always be 100% honest, write a vomit draft then revise, get feedback, read aloud . . . Smith walks us through the process, providing  parameters without being prescriptive. She doesn’t suggest we start with memories from a specific age, that we have to structure our memoirs any specific way–she trusts we can do that for ourselves. She provides suggestions, and gives plenty of examples from her own writing experiences.  It’s not only a how-to book, but we get several personal essays from Smith herself. The writing is rich and wonderful, and what better way to learn than by example?

Marion Roach Smith, co-founder of TheSisterProject.com, has taught a sold-out class called “Writing What You Know” since 1998.  She is the author of The Roots of Desire: The Myth, Meaning and Sexual Power of Red Hair, co-author with Michael Baden, M.D., of Dead Reckoning; and author of Another Name for Madness. She is a former staff member of The New York Times and has written for The New York Times Magazine, Martha Stewart Living, Prevention, New York Daily News, Vogue, Newsday, Good Housekeeping, Discover and The Los Angeles Times. Marion has been a commentator on NPR’s All Things Considered, and writes and records daily and weekly spots on Martha Stewart Living Radio. She lives in New York’s Capital Region.

Check out these other books about the writing process:

Tags: Add new tag, Berkshire Women Write, Women Writers, Writing Advice

No Comments »

This just in:

I’m a part-time writer from Germany, I work in a bookstore in Munich and in my rare private time I work on a novel which is placed in the beautiful Berkshires.
I spent several vacations there and while working on this novel I felt something is missing. The inspiring place. The Berkshires!

Kind regards
Sandra Knopf

If anyone has any suggestions, I’d be happy to forward them on to Ms. Knopf. Perhaps we’ve all been in a similar situation . . .

Tags: Berkshire Women Write

3 Comments »

Self Portrait as a Lute Player ca. 1615-17 Curtis

Born in the early 1600’s as the daughter of the prominent painter Orazio Gentileschi in Italy, Artemisia Gentileschi is considered to be to one of the most important female painters in the history of art. Her father’s apprentice, Artemisia is credited with being one of the first painters to truly capture the likeness of the female body.  Aside from her success as an artist–she was admired by royalty and wealthy patrons during her lifetime–Artemisia’s story includes traumatic details. Raped by one of her father’s friends, Artemisia refused to deny the incident, as was typical in Rome in her time, and went on trial to defend herself. The case lasted eight months and she eventually won, even though it meant she was outcasted from her father’s life.

We are lucky enough to have a documentary which includes Artemisia’s story in the upcoming Berkshire International Film Festival. In this movie, filmmaker Ellen Weissbrod, as posted on the film’s website (a woman like that):

 ”. . . merges her own coming of middle-age story with her pursuit of the truths behind the legends of 17th century female painter Artemisia Gentileschi’s dramatic art and life. This unconventional but heartfelt hunt upends typical artist biographies and delivers instead a funny, engaging and all together different kind of documentary. “a woman like that” is a freewheeling tribute to an artist whose own bold life and inspiring message leaps across centuries to speak to us all. The enduring power of storytelling – in paintings, in films and in our lives is revealed, as the filmmaker learns that who gets to tell the story matters, and that maybe she too, can be “a woman like that.”

Check out the trailer and learn more about the filmmakers Ellen Weissbrod and Melissa Powell at a woman like that.  The movie will be screening on Saturday, June 5th at the Triplex in Great Barrington at 4:45 pm, and on Sunday, June 6th at the Beacon in Pittsfield,  2:15 pm. The film features authors who’ve written about Artemisia, and The Bookloft is currently in the process of attaining copies of these books (or they can be special ordered). 

 Alexandra Lapierre’s, Artemisia,

Professor Mary Garrard’s art history book, 

and Susan Vreeland’s The Passion of Artemisia (not mentioned in movie).

If there is another book about Artemisia or 17th century art you’re interested in–stop in or give us a call. As always, we do our best to find what you’re looking for. Many special orders can arrive in our store by the next day. . .

Tags: Art, Documentary Film, Women Writers

No Comments »

It’s National Poetry Month—which always makes me feel a little ambivalent. There is a flurry of activity in April and then all will be quiet again.  I have been asked to read at three different venues this month but chances are I won’t be asked to read again until next April. If I am lucky I will sell a few books at each reading.

No one can argue that bringing new readers to poetry is a good thing. But there are those like poet Richard Howard who said that people “can be induced to like it, or they can discover that they like it…. They can be seduced by verse, but …most people don’t like poetry, and they don’t want to be told that they’re going to now be exposed to it. “

When asked if he was going to keep a poem in his pocket on the designated day, he replied, ” I have a considerable reputation as perhaps the only person in America who disapproves of National Poetry Month. And I have spoken so much and so arduously and so hostilely about it that, of course, it would be foolish of me to attend to it at all. I’m an acknowledged enemy of National Poetry Month because what happens to the other eleven? I’m not interested in that idea of ghettoizing poetry to the point where it is only to be attended to in that month, on those subway placards.”

Howard believes that National Poetry Month is “the commodification of poetry, like chocolates for Valentine’s Day.”  But poetry is becoming more like a commodity even without a month to celebrate it. I have an acquaintance who is paying to have her poems submitted to literary magazines for publication. She has had no luck in getting them accepted anywhere and was getting tired of rejections, so she found a business that, for a price, submits your work for you. They sent her poems to thirty publications for consideration. That’s a lot of submissions. That’s a lot of magazines. There are hundreds of places to submit to these days- e-zines, on line journals, traditional journals, experimental ones, ones that publish only cowboy poetry or poetry by Asian- Americans or poems about grief. I get so caught up in reading about each place I could send poems, I become paralyzed by the possibilities. Sometimes I do what my friend Martha does—she gets her poems together to submit and then decides they are not quite ready,  they could use just a little more revision.  My Poetry Month resolution is to send more poems out, even though I would rather be writing and revising them than figuring out each magazine’s submission guidelines.

Despite my ambivalence, I am glad it is National Poetry Month, that booksellers and poetry publishers might sell some poetry books, that I get to give three readings and attend several given by poets in the region.  Whether one chooses to argue for or against the celebration, as Robert Frost wrote,  poetry “begins in delight and ends in wisdom.” Happy National Poetry Month!

Tags: Poetry

No Comments »

That’s not an order, by the way. But if you are considering eating, I highly recommend checking these two books by local women authors. The most recent is The Locavore Way by Amy Cotler. We were lucky enough to have her speak and sign copies of her book here at The Bookloft back in January. Cotler’s book enlightens us on how to enjoy the pleasures of locally grown food. She profiles farmers markets and how to join a CSA (community supported agriculture). She informs us how to buy food that’s in season and how we can still be locavores and dine out–it’s just a matter of finding those restaurants where the chefs are dedicated locavores themselves!

Whether you’re an activist or a food lover, The Locavore Way will give you tips on growing your own  food, harvesting wild edibles, and supporting your local farms. “With pleasure and connection at its core,” Cotler writes in her introduction, “eating locally shifts how we engage with the most seminal ingredients in our lives: our food.” Learn more at: amycotler.com

In a similar vein, Lou Bendrick’s Eat Where You Live was published in 2008, but we thought it deserved a mention, too. Bendrick’s book has a whole chapter dedicated to each month of the year and how you can celebrate specific holidays with local and organic produce. March is the month for fresh maple syrup if you’re in the northeast, and for Easter, why not buy local eggs for your Easter-egg hunt? Eat Where You Live also has recipes sprinkled throughout the pages: try Bendrick’s beignets, page 157–her butter comes from High Lawn Farm and eggs from North Plain Farm. Or try the Russ Cohen’s Juneberry muffins, page 90. Juneberry shrubs–also known as shadbush or serviceberry–are a common shrub throughout the United States and the recipe “works equally well with fresh, frozen, or dried Juneberries, and you can also substitute blueberries, raspberries, or cranberries.”

As the gardening season begins, and as those fiddleheads pop up and begin to unfurl, these two books are a must-have for those dedicated to eating and living more sustainably.

Amy Cotler has worked as a chef, caterer, cooking instructor, recipe developer and cookbook author. She served as the founding director of Berkshire Grown, a regional organization that has received national recognition as a model for local food advocacy. Ms. Cotler was a food forum host for The New York Times on the Web and a major contributor to the revised Joy of Cooking.

Lou Bendrick is a columnist for Grist magazine. Her work also appears in publications such as Plenty, Whole Life Times, and Orion Magazine.  She lives and eats locally in western Massachusetts with her darling husband, two precocious children, and uncommonly handsome dog.

No Comments »