Join us on Tuesday, November 1, 7-9pm at Big Bear Used Books & Café for Writers Night Out with featured writer Ellen Meeropol. Big Bear Used Books & Café is located in the Keystone Building, 122 Pleasant Street, Easthampton, MA. There is ample parking right across the street. Food & beverage available for sale. No
By Patricia Lee Lewis The Northampton State Hospital floats in memory and in fact above a small city of people—alive and dead—who, over a span of one hundred years, worked or were incarcerated within its walls. It is a place of nightmare and of dreams, and it is where the characters of The Lost Women Read More
The Longmeadow Adult Center and Straw Dog Writers Guild present “A Writer’s Night” with Ellen Meeropol, Thursday, September 15, 6:45-7:45pm. You may register by calling 413-565-4150, option 1. (Or just show up.) The Longmeadow Adult Center is located at 211 Maple Road, Longmeadow. Masks are not currently required for indoor events. Please wear a mask
Join Straw Dog Writers Guild and Forbes Library for an online Author Showcase on Wednesday, September 8 at 6:30pm Brief readings from new books by members of Straw Dog Writers Guild: Dusty J. Miller, Eileen P. Kennedy, Howie Faerstein, Kathryn Holzman, Meg Thacher, Jane McPhetres Johnson, Celia Jeffries, Rebecca Hart Olander., J.A. McIntosh, Lesléa Newman,
By Ellen Meeropol We’re all terrified about what Covid-19 means for our communities, our loved ones. If we’re not frightened, we should be. Many of us are self-isolating, working remotely, not visiting friends and family except virtually. We’re washing our hands often, trying not to touch our faces, attempting to balance our reading about the Read More
Originally published in Fired Up! Green Fire Writers When the picketing started at Glen Echo Amusement Park, I was 14 and my mother wouldn’t let me go. “It’s too dangerous,” she said. “Besides, you have a job.” My family had moved to the suburban Maryland neighborhood called Bannockburn two years earlier. I had my first Read More
May 1 was the last Valley Gives Day — at least in this incarnation of the regional online nonprofit extravaganza — and Straw Dog Writers Guild participated, for the third year. Our fundraising goal was $5000. We asked for your support on our website, in our newsletter, at events, and on social media. You really Read More
Listening to Other Voices Guest Blogger: Ellen Meeropol We read for so many reasons – to be entertained, to armchair-travel, to be goosed into other ways of thinking, to learn, to experience lives very different from our own. To expand our world. We choose our books in many ways too. We browse bookstore and library Read More
Sisterhood is Still Powerful Guest Blogger: Ellen Meeropol Sisters are great, for people and for nonprofits. Sisters share the ups and downs of life. They share friends and values (well, not always), and clothes (okay, so nonprofits don’t wear clothes). For a nonprofit organization like Straw Dog Writers Guild, relying entirely on volunteer labor, sister Read More
Writing on the Fault Lines I believe that literature can contribute hugely to positive social change. That stories and poems and essays and theater can illuminate injustice, open minds, and inspire us all to work to transform in our world. My favorite writers—like Kamila Shamsie and Paule Marshall, Rosellen Brown and Sadie Jones—position their Read More
