BRATTLEBORO — The cover of Write Action's new anthology features a picnic motif - a birthday cake on a checkered tablecloth, a ghosted photograph of writers milling about on a sunny summer afternoon.
A picnic?
It's an important symbol of the organization, says Arlene Distler, a writer who cofounded the organization with other area writers, including her late partner, journalist and writer Marty Jezer.
The annual meeting and picnic, like other Write Action events, offers those attending “a chance to mix it up and mix it up with fellow writers,” says Distler. “Writing is a solitary activity.”
The loose consortium of mostly-southern-Vermont writers exists primarily as “noncompetitive peer support,” says Distler, who still serves as secretary on Write Action's board of directors.
Writers who have had their respective works published within the previous year have the opportunity to participate in a reading at the picnic - a perfect venue, Distler says, with the laid-back ease and supportive audience of others who know the beauty and compulsion of working with the written word.
Now, between the picnic imagery on those covers, readers will find an abundant selection of work from local authors presented in the same spirit.
Ten years after incorporating as a nonprofit, Write Action's second collection, The Best of Write Action No. 2: The Tenth Anniversary Anthology, will feature poetry and prose, fiction and essays, from 70 writers associated with the group.
Distler and fellow board member Toni Ortner co-edited the book, a labor of love months in the making.
Despite a process that Ortner says included some one-step-forward-two-steps-back moments, by both writers' accounts, the collaboration worked beautifully, sometimes with laptops open over microbrews at the Flat Street Brew Pub.
“Arlene and I are almost like sisters,” says Ortner, a contemporary poet and author, and an editor of literature textbooks geared to the needs of students of color. “We have an easy kind of relationship. We can give each other constructive criticism, but it flows very smoothly.”
The 198-page paperback, which will sell for $18, was produced with the help of Brattleboro book designer Dede Cummings. The copies are due from the manufacturer in Maryland on Friday.
The books will arrive just in time for a party to celebrate its publication during the Brattleboro Literary Festival this Saturday, Oct. 2, from 3 to 4:45 p.m., at the River Garden at 153 Main St., featuring readings by a number of the local writers in its pages.
One newsletter, hundreds of readers
Distler says the group began by accident in late 1999 when a Putney writer found her computer stolen and without insurance or the funds to replace the essential tool.
Distler, Jezer and several other writers “formed an ad-hoc committee and came together to raise the money,” she says. They organized a benefit reading and invited area writers to come and read, and everyone to come, listen, enjoy and help their friend in need.
“Thirty-five people showed up to read - there were more people in the audience than readers,” Distler says with a smile, still visibly astonished. “Everybody donated.”
“People came up to us later and said, 'This is so great,''' she adds.
And so Distler, Jezer, and the other writers soon found themselves with an unintentional organization - one of writers connected by community and their receipt of a more-or-less-weekly e-mail newsletter, Literary Matters.
The newsletter, from the beginning, has been produced by Eric Blomquist, Write Action's communications director. Blomquist, a self-employed writer, editor and publishing consultant, works on scientific journals.
Somewhere between 300 and 400 people - professional and would-be writers and those who admire their work - receive the mailing of literary events and work opportunities. This list of subscribers is the closest Write Action comes to a formal membership roster.
Distler estimates that approximately half the recipients are writers.
Blomquist, who does “a really great job,” Distler says, works as a volunteer, like everyone else involved with Write Action.
The group was loosely and democratically controlled by design, Distler says.
“The democratic piece has always been very, very important, and that's because of Marty Jezer,” Distler says of her partner, who died in 2005. “His politics and his person were all about that.”
New projects, new challenges
The group organized a number of open readings in its early years, much like the original event, Distler says, pointing out that writers' names would be put in a hat and the order of reading determined at random.
This method ensured that friends and family attending the readings would most likely come and support the group as a whole.
Over time, however, Write Action's organization of such readings diminished as coffeehouses and libraries began to organize similar events. Now, its only regular reading takes place at the annual picnic.
But that's an example of the normal evolution in the group. As new writers join the six-member board of directors, they each choose a project to spearhead, one that they can fully call their own.
A project “always depends on whether somebody on the board is willing to take it and run with it,” Distler says.
One example: the annual student writing contests for Brattleboro Union High School students - one for creative writing and the other, named in memory of Jezer, for journalism. BUHS faculty determine which graduating seniors receive the $100 scholarships.
In 2007, another project, “Words & Images: A Collaboration Between Writers and Artists,” paired 14 writers with visual artists.
For four months, each duo worked together to create complementary words and pictures. The results were displayed at the Windham Art Gallery, then on Main Street.
Last fall, as part of a large coordinated effort to draw people to town to take workshops in artists' studios, Write Action organized a “Contemplative Poetry Workshop” with Jacqueline Gens, then a Write Action board member, who studied under beat poet Allen Ginsberg.
And Ortner's current board project is the Write Action Radio Hour, a monthly program broadcast on WVEW, Brattleboro Community Radio.
The Radio Hour broadcasts writers with local connections, from acclaimed local poets like Chard deNiord of Putney (“very shy and reticent to give readings,” Ortner says) to student writers at public and independent schools in Windham County.
“How much it means for me to live in a place like Brattleboro where I can contribute,” says Ortner, who also hopes one day to help Write Action launch an annual literary journal.
Despite the evolving list of projects and interests, Distler says, the group hasn't lost sight of how writers rallied to help a fellow writer in need.
Write Action also distributes emergency funds - up to $300 presented by board consensus - to writers in dire need. One writer, for example, received a check after a house fire; another, funds for a plane ticket to visit a direly ill family member on the West Coast.
The fund was established in memory of Lin Harris-Seares, a writer, journalist and cofounder of Write Action who came to Brattleboro in 1997. She died in 2000.
Raising writing's profile
Another overarching mission of the organization is simple, Distler says: Helping writers be included in local efforts to raise the profile of the arts.
When Write Action came together, “nobody realized how many writers there were,” Distler says. “We realized that - wow! - we're a force!”
Consequently, she tries to make sure the community is aware of that force. Despite more than 10 years of the group's projects and the general appreciation of the arts in town, “It seems to be hard for writers to be considered part of the arts community,” she says.
Through Write Action, writers can be present and visible to other arts groups looking to collaborate. Or these groups can simply have a means of communicating en masse to the hundreds of far-flung, subscribers to the newsletter e-mail, broadening the visibility of the writing community and the opportunities for individual writers at the same time.
Something like that happened in 2002, shortly after Write Action's formation, when several bookstore owners got together and planned what would become the Brattleboro Literary Festival.
Distler says Dick Burns, owner of Collected Works, a bookstore in the High Street storefront now occupied by the Blue Moose, “came to me and said, 'We want you guys on board if we're going to be doing this.'”
“We're involved - not as instigators, but we've been part of it from the beginning,” Distler says.
“We're a big source of volunteers,” she says, adding that the group helps choose authors to invite to the annual literary event, which takes place this Thursday through Sunday and draws thousands of people to town.
Ordinarily, Write Action organizes a session of local writers, which this year is replaced by its anniversary celebration.
Distler describes Write Action and the Literary Festival as having “a mutually beneficial relationship,” one where Windham County poets and writers can hold their own at an event that routinely draws A-list world-recognized authors.
Like Write Action itself, the organization has worked to make the Literary Festival inclusive and to create an atmosphere where all are embraced as peers.
“It's so important to local writers to feel invested,” she says. “You can't ignore the local scene.”