News and Announcements

Jean Venable, wife of our friend and fellow-writer, Barry Menuez, is featured essayist at bioStories.

Here's how this online site describes itself-

bioStories is conceived in the belief that every life can prove instructive, inspiring, or compelling, that every life holds moments of grace. We believe stories harbor the essential architecture of biography and that slices of a life properly conveyed can help strangers peer briefly within its whole, hold that life momentarily in their eye, and quite possibly see the world anew through that lens.

A quarterly zine featuring authors living on, near, close to or in the general vicinity of the Hudson River. Submit (500 words or less) to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Subscription info: email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Inaugural issue out April 2013 Editors: Cathy Schmitz and Jeff Paggi

Interested in reading your favorite poem in front of an audience that will include former US Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky? Submit your favorite poem, along with a brief personal statement about the poem's significance in your life, to DCC English Professor John Desmond at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. by March 9. Approximately 15 entries will be chosen for the reading, which will happen April 18. The event is part of the Favorite Poem Project, created by Pinsky.

This morning I received in overnight mail from Oxford, one copy of my new book, HOW THE LIGHT GETS IN: Writing as a Spiritual Practice.

It's a little bit like seeing a new baby for the first time, only this baby took nine full years to make its appearance -- seven writing, and two waiting for, then working with, Oxford. I am so grateful for all the people in my workshops and among my friends who read and commented along the way. Their generosity co-created the book.

If you live in my area, I hope you will join me at the east-coast book launch in the Paradise Room at Smith College, Northampton, 7 - 10 PM, Friday, April 5. The west-coast launch will be Saturday, April 27, at Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley.

Listen to Greg's winning story from TMI, February 14, 2013. The video is dark, but you can hear his words clearly.

Hudson ValleyWriters Guild Announcement

2013 Short Fiction Contest

The HVWG writing contest alternates genres annually. This year's contest is in short fiction.

Poets & Writers Read

1. January 13
2. January 20
   
3. January 27
4. February 3
5. February 10
6. February 17
7. February 24
8. March 3
9. March 10
10. March 17
    

At one of wVw's Winter Poetry Salons, the poem, South, Natasha Trethewey's Native Guard, was shared and discussed. I  shared with the group that the collection is written, in part, to honor and recognize the Louisiana Native Guards. The link will take you to a web site with a video by Trethewey, as well as a brief history of the Guards and links to books and other resources.

Other poems presented and discussed in Winter poetry salons:

Mary Oliver, Red Bird

We seem to be sharing as many recipes as we do stories. Here's another for the collection.

On Thursday evening, which felt more like August in New Orleans than the summer soltice in upstate New York, we refreshed ourselves during break with cups of strawberry-mint sorbet. Everyone loved it ancd requested the recipe, so here it is:

3 cups (11/12 pints) strawberries, hulled and cut in ahlf