March on the Vineyard can feel a bit like a houseguest who overstays a welcome, which is why I am delighted to announce an event that we hope will help break up the monochromatic monotony of the month. Islanders Write, the annual MV Times writers’ festival that takes place in August, will be expanding into March with a weekend of free-to-attend writing workshops at Featherstone Center for the Arts.
Islanders Write March will take place on March 15 and 16. The workshops on Saturday will be focused on the art, craft, and business of writing, and will be appropriate for writers of all levels and abilities. On Sunday, the workshops will be specifically for school-age children, 5 to 19. (Unlike our summer event, there won’t be any panel discussions at IW March).
While we are still figuring out many of the details, I will use this column to reveal what we already have locked in. I’ll begin with the workshops on Saturday.
Nancy Slonim Aronie, whose new book on essay writing, “Seven Secrets to the Perfect Personal Essay,” was just published, and is a must-read, will be giving a workshop on writing your memoir. Aronie, as many of you know, founded and runs the Chilmark Writing Workshop, and is also the author of “Memoir as Medicine.”
Those of you interested in developing your essay-writing skills can come to “The Art of the Essay” workshop that MV Times Publisher Charles Sennott will be giving. Sennott will discuss how to weave a point of view into nonfiction narrative writing, whether it is to publish in magazines, memoirs, newsletters, or just for your own diary.
Jennifer Smith Turner’s “The Art of Layering for Scene and Character Development” that she gave at last summer’s Islanders Write was so popular that we asked if she’d offer it again in March, and she has agreed to do so.
John Hough, Jr., will be giving a workshop in writing dialogue. As Hough says, “There is all the difference in the world between dialogue as we speak it and the dialogue of the characters in our fiction.” Hough is the author of eight novels, and the extremely helpful book “A Fiction Writer’s Guide to Dialogue.” He has also been running workshops and helping writers on the Island for more than two decades.
Elisa Speranza, who had a long career in marketing and strategic communications, self-published her fascinating novel “The Italian Prisoner” in 2022. Speranza’s workshop will focus on self-publishing, as well as marketing and publicizing your work.
Marcia De Castro Borges will be offering a bilingual English/Portuguese writing workshop, using Brazilian and American music to inspire your own writing. Participants will listen to two laureate musicians and songwriters in their original languages, analyze the translated version, and then do a freestyle creative writing exercise.
Admittedly, I’m particularly excited about the workshops we are developing for Sunday, March 16, which will be for school-age children. And while these workshops will be for children, they will not feel like school.
As of this writing, I can confirm that James Jennings will be leading a workshop on journaling. Jennings has been a teacher on and off the Island, and his powerful semi-autobiographical debut novel “Wings of Red” uses journal entries in service of the story.
M.V. Poet Laureate Claudia Taylor will be joining us, and offering a workshop to high school students on writing poetry — more details on this will be forthcoming.
Marcia De Castro Borges will be back for day two, this time for a bilingual (English/Portuguese) writing workshop focused on writing about environmental issues, like the dump. This will be open to students from fifth to eighth grades, and will include a short, awardwinning movie.
And I will be working with younger students, ages 5 – 9, on creating clever, kooky, and creepy characters. This workshop will also include drawing, as we will render what the characters that we are creating might look like. The characters in the books we read as children stay with us for a lifetime — think Charlotte, Harry Potter, Eloise, and so many others — and I am thrilled to get back to my children’s-books roots and create some memorable characters with the younger set.
Because writers need readers and readers need writers, and because we love independent bookstores, Edgartown Books will be joining us at the event.
The MV Times is extremely grateful to a grant we received from the Martha’s Vineyard Community Foundation, which will help cover the costs of these workshops. The M.V. Community Foundation is one of the bright lights of this Island. The foundation is also the nonprofit fiscal sponsor for Islanders Write. Please consider making a tax-deductible donation to help support and run these programs. We are excited to expand in March, and are dedicated to keeping Islanders Write free to attend. To make a donation, visit bit.ly/MVCF_IslandersWrite.
I welcome your ideas and thoughts about this event at kate@mvtimes.com.
Kate Feiffer is the event producer for Islanders Write, and the author of 11 books for children and the novel “Morning Pages.” For more about Islanders Write, go to islanderswrite.com.
