On November 7, 2023, the Notebooks Collective hosted Michael Kleber-Diggs & Danusha Laméris. Each read from their own poetry collections and discussed their friendship, poetry craft, what it means to revise and more.
We were so honored to host Portland, OR writers Jennifer Perrine and Jen Shin in October. After their reading, they delved into healing modalities, grief, writing and the body, and more. Please enjoy the event!
From the Introduction:
This is new for us at The Notebooks Collective. We’ve never hosted an artist before. We’re doing so tonight because Shu and Trish have collaborated on an exhibit that’s currently on display at the Hamilton Grange Library in New York City. Titled In a Garden of Small Dreams, Art + Poetry in Conversation, the exhibit is a study in collaboration, concision, and compromise in the best possible way.
It’s also about the blossoming of a friendship that started with a shared love of, well, gardens. And art. And words and the worlds we can enter when we speak to each other through art, through poetry, through the beauty and shine of life, the fear and underbelly of the darkness we all sometimes feel.
As individual creatives, Trish and Shu are accomplished, focused, fiercely loyal to their respective crafts. As collaborators, they learned to speak yet another language, one in which they learned to listen to and see each other not just as friends, but as artists with something to say. Together, they said those things in a way they may not have have, had they not accepted an invitation from Isaac Sorell at Hamilton Grange Library to display their work as an ekphrastic exhibit.
And this is why they’re here tonight: to talk about the genesis of this collaboration, how they worked together, what they learned from one another and how their friendship changed–or didn’t–through the process.
We were so honored to host Mark Turcotte and Suzanne Frank, two poets who have known each other over 40 years. They read from their collected works and discussed the importance of friendship and community in the writing life.
What a joy to host three poets who know and love each other’s work. Poet Ellen Austin-Li moderated a beautiful conversation between Sara Moore Wagner and Pauletta Hansel, where they touched on persona and masks, cultural heritage, mentorship, and more.
On April 23, we invited Mark & May-Lan to be in conversation about their writing and friendship. They are champions of each other’s work and you can hear it in this conversation.
Our speakers for this conversation are poets, are editors, and are a part of a writers group in Salem MA. Kathi & Jennifer have spent their time locked up with their work and also time with each other revising, workshopping, reviewing, reading. They know each other’s work intimately and while the words are their own, they were supported and propelled by others. Writing is writing. Writing is also revising, reading, talking, mentoring, editing, sharing, and supporting.
A reading and conversation with novelist and memoirist Amy Hoffman and poet Meg Kearney. Amy reads from her new book, Dot & Ralfie, and talks with Meg Kearney about humor in the face of challenges, craft, and transcending genres.
“Amy Hoffman creates unforgettable characters, and her scintillating wit keeps things lively even in the face of the decline that awaits us all” writes Alison Bechdel, author of The Secret to Superhuman Strength.
A writer, editor, and community activist, Amy Hoffman is the author of the novels Dot & Ralfie and The Off Season, and three memoirs—Lies About My Family; An Army of Ex-Lovers: My Life at the Gay Community News; and Hospital Time. An Army of Ex-Lovers was short-listed for a Lambda Book Award, and both An Army of Ex-Lovers and Hospital Time were short-listed for the New York Publishing Triangle Judy Grahn Award. Hospital Time was also a New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age selection and has been adopted in college and university courses. It is the subject of chapters in several works of literary criticism.
From Lisa’s Introduction:
So let’s talk about my week instead. I spent it with Anne-Marie Oomen’s newest memoir in essays, As Long As I Know You: The Mom Book, winner of the Sue Silverman Prize for Creative Nonfiction. It was my companion as I sipped my first cup of coffee on weekday mornings, my lunch date on Saturday, and my break at work, between meetings and desk shifts. It made me smile. It made me cry. It reminded me that good memoirs are built from tight yet breathable essays, that essays are constructed from paragraphs weaved together to tell a bigger story, and that paragraphs don’t sing without exquisitely written sentences. And, even if someone accomplishes all of that with technical skill, a good memoir in essays needs an invisible scaffolding: lacework of deep thinking and a willingness to be vulnerable, to show our bruises, to face ourselves in the most unflattering light without being so focused on the I that we exclude the reader from the truths we’re trying to share.
Please enjoy this in conversation with Anne-Marie Oomen & Patricia Ann McNair:
When Lisa and I began planning this project over a year ago, we had the same vision in mind. Our hope was that we could provide a non-competitive space, a space where people at all stages of their writing life could feel welcome and bolstered by the creativity they see in others. We also wanted to give creatives the time and the platform to do what they might not get to do in the course of a normal reading at a bookshop.
And another reason for doing what we do is selfish, but selfish in the way that it nurtures us. We get to participate in the events we host and revel in the curiosity, the motivations, and the practice of being a poet. We are so honored to host Jessica Cuello and Jan Beatty for this conversation. We are so grateful to them for their time and for sharing with us.
Both of them are fierce writers about womanhood, exploring themes of the body and autonomy, the changes we experience as we grow from child to adult. This conversation doesn’t shy away from menstruation, death, or neglect… and it also celebrates the work, the words, the moments that give us peace.
Please enjoy Jessica Cuello & Jan Beatty.
