Artsmith Partners with Doe Bay for Weekly Salons

Contributed by Jennifer Brennock

Doe Bay Resort and the nonprofit Artsmith have collaborated to bring a weekly salon for writers and thinkers to meet and read each other their work.

The Artsmith Salon Series begins Monday, Sept. 21 at 7:30 p.m. at the Doe Bay Resort café and will continue every Monday evening. The weekly salon will host featured writers working in all genres from poetry to screenwriting who will come to Orcas from all over the western United States.

Each Monday night, the featured writers will be followed by an open mic for local writers of all genres. The open mic participants can read their creative writing for 10 minutes.

The salon is free to attend.

Located in Eastsound, Artsmith is a nonprofit that supports writers and visual artists.

Information is available at www.doebay.com, www.orcasartsmith.org, or email: salonseries@orcasartsmith.org. For rides offered and needed to Doe Bay call: 376-2025.

Featured writers at upcoming salons:

Sept. 21 Ellen Welcker, poetry, Al Bentley, nonfiction

Sept. 28 Susan Wingate, fiction, Ron Herman, drama

Oct.    5 Karen Fisher, fiction, Barbara Lewis, fiction

Oct.  12  Michele Griskey, fiction, drama

• Ellen Welcker is a poet and a recent transplant to Vashon Island. She has work forthcoming in Tinfish 19, Gently Read Literature, and Picayune Review, and is completing her MFA at Goddard College in Port Townsend.

• Award-winning novelist, Susan Wingate, is also a poet, playwright and screenwriter. Wingate has written one short story collection and three novels. Her latest in-progress novel entitled Camouflage is receiving acclaim in this year’s 2009 Textnovel Writing Contest. Her second novel, Bobby’s Diner, was a best selling ebook in 2008.

• Ron Herman was born in the roller coaster capital of the world. Before making his way to Orcas, Ron spent time exploring college, the Haight-Ashbury, Santa Cruz, and the lands of single parenting. When Ron’s daughter told him to stop working to pay the mortgage, he followed her advice and wandered the country, eventually finding the support of chosen family and the most passionate pursuit of his life: acting and playwriting. “Watching my words come alive on stage is the closest I’ll come to giving birth.” Ron has acted on Orcas in a number of roles. His play “The Birthday Present” was staged in April at the Actors Theater PlayFest.

• Karen Fisher is the author of A Sudden Country which won many awards in 2006  including an MPBA Award, Best Fiction finalist, PEN/Faulkner Award finalist, Los Angeles Times First Fiction Award, Spur Award finalist, Virginia Commonwealth University First Novel Award, and the Sherwood Anderson Fiction Award.

• Barbara Lewis is a freelance writer and Director of the Orcas Island Writers Festival. She is also the founding director of The Children’s Creative Workshop, a dance theater group based in Richmond, Virginia. She holds a Masters in Fine Arts in fiction writing from Vermont College.

• At the age of eighteen, Michele Griskey decided she would love to write poetry like Emily Dickinson or Sylvia Plath. The realization that these women weren’t exactly the most emotionally stable role models compelled Michele to seek other writing goals. Michele has published four biographies for middle grade readers. She is currently working on a young adult novel. She also has written three plays for the Orcas Island Ten Minute Play Festival.