Write Like a River Readings
Since 2006, I’ve taught women’s writing workshops, first in Massachusetts and then also in Connecticut. As of 2020, the two groups meet together online. We write and read together weekly—some of us for well over a decade—and we’ve given many public readings for our communities as well.
Participants have published in The Sun, Daily Hampshire Gazette, Dark Matter: Women Witnessing, Hartford Courant, The Journal of Farmington History, Naugatuck River Review, and The Women’s Times, among others.
These writers, and many others who’ve joined or visited the group in the past two years, supported each other whether we were in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Montana, Florida, Texas, Virginia, New Hampshire, or Kyiv, Ukraine. After 14 years of running in-person groups, I’ve felt astonished by the connection and bond that only deepened via Covid’s virtual world. It’s an honor to write with these remarkable women!
May 2023 Readings
Barbara Cortez-Grieg reads “On the Way” from her memoir
Athena Small reads her prose poem, “At Work,” a profane look at salvation
Susan Wozniak reads “Life is Like a Sonnet,” a short story inspired by William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73
Mary Fletcher reads three poems from her poetry collection
March 2023 Reading
Li-Jun Ma reads “A Love Letter”
Barbara Cortez-Grieg reads “The List” from her memoir
Jane Hikel reads “The Clothesline” from her memoir, Monkey Boulevard.
Athena Small reads her poem, “Names of Grasses”
Joyce Rosenfeld reads “Summer of Tinder” from her memoir, Lost and Found
November 2022 Reading
Joyce Rosenfeld reads an excerpt from her memoir, Lost and Found
Marie Lavendier reads an excerpt from her memoir
Barbara Cortez-Greig reads “Wild Grace: Dancing the Dark Side”
August 2022 Reading
Nora Jamieson reads “Holy Work,” an essay from Bone Woman, her blog
Jane Hikel reads “From Belzec to Auschwitz, 2007,” an essay from her memoir, Monkey Boulevard
Barbara Cortez-Greig reads “Ready or Not (3),” a chapter from her memoir
Joyce Rosenfeld reads “Passageway,” lyric nonfiction from her memoir, Lost and Found
Mary Eichhorn Fletcher reads a poem from her collection
Marie Lavendier reads “The Do-Over,” an essay from her memoir
May 2022 Readings
Jane Hikel reads “Trip to Zamocs: August 2007” from her memoir, Monkey Boulevard
Joyce Rosenfeld reads “Under the Influence” from her nonfiction novel
Susan Wozniak reads from her column for the Daily Hampshire Gazette
Marie Lavendier reads “The Straitjacket,” a chapter from her memoir
Barbara Cortez-Greig reads “Ready or Not (Part 2)” from her memoir
Chivas Sandage reads three poems from her second collection, Summertime in America
February 2022 Readings
While three participants in the winter series were not able to read with us, two due to illness, I hope to add their readings to this collection at a later date, and to post new readings with each new series of workshops.
In the process of creating an order for this particular reading, I discovered that a unifying theme had emerged organically: love and relationship, loss and choices.
Joyce Rosenfeld reads “Snow Day” from her memoir, Lost & Found
Barbara Cortez-Greig reads “The List (Part 2)” from her memoir
Nora Jamieson reads her prologue to A Rite of Grief: A Memoir in Paintings & Words
Chivas Sandage reads from her memoir, The Wildlands of Utopia
Susan Wozniak reads from her play, “Eight More Women”
The characters include two real women: Shakespeare’s elder daughter Susanna Shakespeare Hall and a multi-talented woman who might be the Dark Lady of the Sonnets, Amelia Bassanno Lanier. The others are Shakespeare’s characters. The two Queens are Gertrude (Hamlet) and Elizabeth (Richard III) who was the mother of the two princes murdered in the Tower. The ingenues are Ophelia (Hamlet) and Juliet, who needs no introduction. Then, there are two women portrayed as being in mid-life, perhaps, in their late 30s. They are Kate (Taming of the Shrew) and Beatrice (Much Ado About Nothing).
From the Archives
Write Like a River reads at Collinsville Public Library in Connecticut on June 22, 2013
