It's True What They Say
It's said all the time - that if you want to succeed as a writer, you must join a writing group, share your work, and give and get support from your fellow writers.
Well, damned if it isn't true.
We writers who've shared our work and our dreams at the Women At Woodstock Writers Retreats tend to hang together all year long; to send new work out for comments and critiques, to listen to one another's struggles with a story or memoir, to share news of publishing opportunities, to bitch and moan, and above all to encourage each other to keep on writing our stories.
And look what happened:
Three Women At Woodstock Writers Retreat alums got: broadcast, published, and recognized, all in the same month!
Ginnah Howard
Ginnah HowardGinnah, our fearless leader of Track 1 of our Writers Retreat, performed a reading of "Tupperware Story," an excerpt from her novel Rope & Bone, A Novel in Stories as part of a podcast aired on "The Strange Recital." See below for a teaser and a link to the podcast.
Ann Stoney
Ann StoneyAnn's short story, "Soldiers and Lovers" was placed on the "Highly Commended" list for the Sean O'Faolain International Short Story prize. The competition is sponsored by the Munster Literature Center in Cork, Ireland. Just 32 stories were selected from 900 entries. Although the story has yet to be published, it's quite an honor to be selected for the list.
Ann Voorhees Baker
Ann Voorhees Baker
Ann's (yes, that's me) short story, "Midnight In the Garden of Sid and Eva," will be published in the fall edition of the Chicago Quarterly Review. This is her second short story publication this year; her first, "Changing Lanes" was published last spring in the Noyo River Review. Ann also was awarded a one-week writer's residency this coming spring at the Dorland Mountain Arts Colony.
(From Rope & Bone, A Novel in Stories by Ginnah Howard.) Originally published in Square Lake as "Circling-'84"Other things are on my mind when the Tupperware lady says, “First, let’s move your couch over by the door and the table here.”Before her words reach my brain, she’s got one end of that maroon monster, a cast-off from Steve’s mother, waist high and swinging away from the wall. Vaguely I register the crap underneath: a package of zig-zags, a pizza crust, a dried puddle of something.“Get under it good,” she directs.And just like that, I’ve got the other end up. I believe in those mothers who lift cars to free trapped children.“You know,” she says, as she backs me toward the corner, “a successful Tupperware party doesn’t just happen; it has to be orchestrated.”This is what they all keep telling me: all those teachers all those years, the judge, last week. Like it can all be organized into an outline:I. Get Straight
A. Your Drawers
B. Your Life"Okay," the Tupperware lady says, "put it down right there."As I'm trying to remember what comes next 1. or a., she says, "While you you get the vacuum, I'll start clearing the records off the table. They'll be here in an hour."a. Radically change1. Do what other mothers doIt's this kind of outline thinking that got me into having a Tupperware party in the first place. Me, Carla Morletti, once a distinguished member of the Pagans Motorcycle Club Women's Auxiliary, taking directions from this middle-class matron in a flowered shirtwaist in my own living room...