AUTUMN AT WORD HOUSE & IN CONVERSATION

Dear friends of Word House,

This has been an exciting year of growth for Word House. This July we held our first Word House Summer Writing Retreat at the Farmhouse, my family house up the road from the original Word House writing cabin. Eight writers came from New York, Boston, and across New England to share meals, share work, and, most importantly, devote sustained time to their creative projects.

My grandparents, John and Margaret MacArthur, bought this 1803 farmhouse in 1950, and spent the rest of their lives there, filling the rooms with artists, environmentalists, academics, books, eclectic artwork from around the world, and conversation. It is a great joy to fill this house again with creativity, delicious meals, art, and revelry.

writers at the summer writing retreat

IN CONVERSATION

I have also been busy coordinating a new reading and dialogue series here in Marlboro, in partnership with The Campus at Marlboro Music. This series, IN CONVERSATION, brings acclaimed Vermont writers to this beloved hillside and campus in Marlboro.

Each event will begin with a short reading, followed by a moderated conversation and audience discussion, followed by a wine and cheese reception. More than a traditional reading series, we hope these events will create space for thoughtful, generous exchange around the role of literature and art in shaping our understanding of history, memory, ethics, civic life, environment, and place.

The conversations will take place in the historic Whittemore Theater, a space that has long hosted artists, writers, and community gatherings on this hillside. At a moment when Vermont continues to lose educational and cultural institutions, it feels especially meaningful to create opportunities for literary and humanistic dialogue in a rural setting like this one.

I am thrilled by the lineup, and can’t wait to bring these writers and friends to this beloved campus, and to my beloved town.

Sunday, September 20, 4pm: Jill Lepore and Dan Chiasson

Sunday, November 1, 4pm: Bianca Stone and Mark Wunderlich

Sunday, December 13, 4pm: Bill McKibben and Tim Weed

Sunday, February 7, 4pm: Major Jackson and Ellen McCulloch-Lovell

more to come in the spring

IN CONVERSATION is supported by a generous grant from the Vermont Humanities Council. Bartleby’s Books will be there selling books before and after the event.

Registration is required for all events. You can RESERVE A SEAT HERE.

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As many of you know, these have been some challenging years in my little town of Marlboro, Vermont. In 2020 Marlboro College, founded in 1946, closed its doors, leaving behind a gorgeous campus empty for most of the year. (My great-grandparents moved here in 1946 to found the science department at Marlboro; my grandfather taught there for over sixty years.) This spring, due to low enrollment, our beloved public elementary school closed. My work at Word House is a humble attempt to continue fill these hills and backroads with the rich opportunities, voices, creativity, ideas, and conversations that have flourished here for so long. My aim is to make this a more vibrant place to live for our local community, and a place where others can visit and thrive. Thank you for being part of this community, this work, and this vision. We look forward to sharing space with you soon. 

With care,

Robin Marie MacArthur

Director of Word House

www.wordhousevermont.org

Word House has fiscal sponsorship from The Marlboro Foundation, a 501c3 non-profit founded in the wake of the closing of Marlboro College, which aims to supports educational spaces, events, and programs based in Marlboro, Vermont and the surrounding bioregion, thereby nurturing resilient creative communities that are responsive to the challenges and opportunities of our time and place. To support Word House’s programming and events, you can make a tax-deductible donation here:  https://www.marlborofoundation.org/support.

February Newsletter

 

 

Dear Friends of Word House,

Welcome to the February Newsletter! We are excited that Word House, in its new iteration (a building on our farm in Marlboro, Vermont), has been operating for six months now. We are slow movers (and believers in slow growth), but we’re excited by all we’ve created and offered in the past half-year:

1. Weekly writing gatherings (free and by donation)

2. A beautiful and warm in-person fall writing workshop, with eight writers coming to work on non-fiction, fiction, poetry and hybrid forms

3. NaNoWriMo co-writing three days a week during the month of November

And more ideas (so many ideas, too many ideas) to come!

One of those is to launch this monthly newsletter that will include what we’ve been reading, news about upcoming workshops and events, and a writing prompt for each of you. Here it is. As always, you can unsubscribe from this newsletter at any time. It is a gift and offering—to accept or decline.

Thank you for being here with us. We’re sincerely grateful for your presence, attention, and time.

What We’re Reading:

ALPHABETICAL DIARIES, by Sheila Heti. This is not a book for those of you looking for plot, characterization, setting, or scene. Claire dederer describes it this way in The Guardian. Lynn Steger Strong describes it this way in the LA Times. (Both critics and thinkers I follow and admire.) I loved the book like they did. It made me feel less unhinged and alone, and also less of a stable or concrete self, a sensation which is both terrifying and liberating, and a fabulous reason to read.

A MAP OF FUTURE RUINS: ON BORDERS AND BELONGING, by Lauren Markham. Two years ago Lauren sent me the opening thirty pages pages of a new book she was writing. She said she didn’t know if it was a thing. She wanted me to tell her if it was something, or nothing, and if she should keep working on it. I told Lauren (a dear friend) that yes, indeed, it was a thing, and a powerful one at that, and important, and beautiful, and here it is, two years later, a thing indeed. This book is necessary, nuanced, as brilliant as Lauren, and essential reading for our times. I hope every one of you goes out tomorrow to buy or borrow it.

FIFTY BEASTS TO BREAK YOUR HEART, by GennaRose Nethercott. GennaRose comes to Word House once a week to write (she likes to sit on the golden couch and sip her coffee), so although this book wasn’t written here, it still feels a bit like a Word House Baby. And what a beautiful and mystical one it is. Fantastical beasts, ghost tweets, bittersweet yearnings: this is a master class in fabulism, experimentation, language, and form.

I also loved this essay in Orion Magazine by my former student Heidi Lasher. We worked on this essay in a class I taught last summer, and it has just become more tender and nuanced and polished since then. Congratulations, Heidi!

What We’re Offering:

An in-person spring writing workshop, running April through June. You can read the details here. Applications are due March 1st. Please spread the word: tell your sister, tell your friends. Or apply yourself. Quick decisions=good decisions. It’s nearly spring. :)

Coming Soon:

I’m creating a four-session class called WORK IT: DESIGNING A SUSTAINABLE, CREATIVE LIFE. This is new for me. I’ll bring in some fabulous pros, gather lots of tools, and create a supportive community where we can share, ideate, collaborate, and make concrete and unique plans for the future together. Stay tuned!

A Writing Prompt for You:

Late-winter/spring, sap running, birds returning to the feeders, bulbs pushing up from the wet, dark earth. What has been hiding under the soil for you? What has been fallow, and what is waiting to spring forth? What might that moment smell like, sound like, feel like, look like? To emerge, to be reborn?

Support:

Word House has fiscal sponsorship from the Marlboro Foundation, a 501c3 non-profit I helped found over the past two years. This means we can accept tax-deductible donations. If you would like to support Word House scholarships and help our vision grow, you can donate HERE. We appreciate you.

See you next month. Keep writing.

With sincere gratitude,

Robin

founder of Word House, 2018