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Tuesday, January 2, 2018
The Basement, 21 Center Street
(Down the drive, in back of building, next to the
Northampton Police Department)
Northampton, MA
7:00 to 9:00 p.m.
Doors open at 7 - with an Open Mike. If you'd like a chance to read, place your name in the hat up until 7:10. Ten names will be randomly selected. The reading starts at 7:15, and each reader will have five minutes.
Admission is free; participants are encouraged to buy a drink (alcohol and non-alcohol available) and tip well in support of the venue.
Please join us!
Further information: Beth Filson at wno@strawdogwriters.org
SAVE THE DATE
Featured Reader for February 6 - Ruth Lehrer
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Words at the Mic!
A new Challenge for people who attend
Writers Night Out
Each month, host and MC Jacqueline and Beth will select words or phrases from those we hear during the open mic. We’re listening for whatever strikes our fancy, and that we hope will get your Muse talking. We will announce the phrase at the end of the presentations.
Your challenge is to use those exact words, or phrase, in a poem, short story, or prose piece -- no more than 500 words -- and submit it by the 15th of the month. That gives you about two weeks.
To get us started, the phrase chosen for the first Words at the Mic Challenge is, "My brother's curse."
Make sure your name is on your submission. In the subject line of your email, put Words at the Mic Challenge!
The winner will be chosen by anonymous vote, and it be read at the next Writers Night Out and will appear in the SDWG month-end circular. Send to bethfilson@gmail.com This is open only to those who attend Writers Night Out.
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January 7, 2018
3:00–5:00 pm.
The Inn at Norton Hill,
(across from Elmer's)
10 Norton Hill Road, Ashfield, MA
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Bring Your Poetry! Bring Your Prose! Find Your Public! Uplift Our Souls!
Here's how it works: On the first Sunday of each month, a featured writer reads recent work and describes the journey to publication, followed by Q & A. Then the floor opens to other writers. If you want to read, put your name in the hat before 3:15. (Hint: you get five minutes.)
Featured Reader: Jane Yolen
2018 is the year that you will be able to read a book a day by Jane Yolen for the entire year, even on a Leap Year. Her 365th and 366th books will be out on March 6th. Eight of her books are adult poetry books. She was the first writer in the Valley to win the New England Arts and Humanities Award, first woman to give the Andrew Lang lecture at St. Andrews University in Scotland (the lecture series began in 1927), and one of her awards set her good coat on fire. She lives in Hatfield and is working on two more books of poetry.
Photo credit ©Jason Stemple
The featured reader will read for 15 minutes, followed by Q&A. Open mic starts at approximately 3:40.
Hosted by Jane Roy Brown
Co-sponsored by Straw Dog Writers Guild, The Inn at Norton Hill, and Elmer's Store.
A great article about Writers Read HERE
INTERESTED IN BEING A FEATURED READER?
please email Jane Roy Brown at brownjaneroy@gmail.com
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You’ve written and rewritten, on your own and in a group, but how do you decide when your writing could benefit from the input of an editor? Where do you begin the process, and what should you expect when you put your manuscript in the hands of a stranger? You might be surprised at how positive the experience can be. Come for answers to all your questions about engaging an editor’s services and making the most of the editorial relationship.
Libby Maxey, of Conway, MA, is a senior editor at the online journal Literary Mama, where she has worked in the Literary Reflections Department since 2012. She also edits for Amherst College and as a freelancer (libbymaxey.com). Her clients include short story writers, academics, translators, novelists, memoirists, poets, essayists, journalists, and writers for whom English is a second language. Her own poems and reviews have appeared in Mezzo Cammin, Crannóg, Kestrel, Naugatuck River Review, The Mom Egg Review, Solstice and elsewhere. Locally, she has won both the Poet's Seat Poetry Contest and the Robert P. Collén Poetry Contest, and her work was selected for the Northampton Arts Council’s 2017 Visual Arts and Poetry Biennial. Her nonliterary activities include singing classical repertoire and mothering two sons.
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"What's So Important About Setting?
Presented by Jennifer Jacobson
Saturday, February 10, 2018
Lilly Library, Florence, MA
10:30-12:30
Are you curious about world building? Do your characters inhabit living rooms in the future, or trek miles at the turn of the century? Setting connects readers to a narrative and is part of the allure that transports them from one place to another, but setting is so much more than the streets our characters walk down, the oceans they swim. In this Reading like a Writer we’ll use short stories and novel excerpts to examine setting and explore how writers use it to establish the worlds in which their protagonists live, foreshadow plot, create mood and tone, and reveal psychological traits. We’ll work on a passage of our own to see how different approaches to setting can add various layers to our work. This session is good for beginning and established writers who want to develop revision strategies to make their fictional worlds breathe.
 Jennifer Jacobson is the Director of the Juniper Summer Writing Institute and the Juniper Institute for Young Writers. She is also the Associate Director of the MFA for Poets and Writers at UMass Amherst. She founded the non-profit organization When Children Save the Day to unite language arts and social action. Her work has been honored with a Creative Teaching Fellowship from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the National Storytelling Network’s Brimstone Award for transformative community projects, along with support from the Solidago Foundation and the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts. Her short story “Heat” received an honorable mention from Glimmer Train, and “Trouble and Bones” was a Tennessee Williams Festival’s Fiction contest finalist. Jennifer teaches creative writing at Smith College’s Young Women’s Writing Workshop and, with Voices From Inside, created the Family Storybook Project curriculum for incarcerated women and their children.
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A benefit for our members
Applications will be accepted starting January 1, 2018
A Straw Dog Writing Residency includes 6 days, 5 nights, starting Sunday at 3:00 pm through Friday noon, in one of the lovely, unique places at Patchwork Farm Retreat in Westhampton MA.
Residencies are self-guided and residents provide their own meals, with access to cooking facilities. Cost of accommodation are covered by a grant from a generous Straw Dog member.
More information HERE
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