For more than a decade, older adults have been attending weekly writing sessions at the Senior Center in Shelburne Falls. They are not, in general, professional writers. They are people with a lifetime of experience who take the time to share some of that experience in a supportive atmosphere.
Some people have been members since the group began. Others are relatively new. Clearly, all take their writing and their lives seriously, as the book “Writing from the Center” attests.
The book was edited by Joan Livingston, a former editor of this paper who wears many writing hats. She led the writing group for a couple years.
Livingston explains in the introduction to the book that she started each meeting with a prompt and then gave her writers a period of time in which to respond to that prompt.
She notes that she was impressed by the quality of the writing and asked for submissions for a possible anthology. The book includes contributions from seven writers, all female, as well as reproductions of art from some of the contributors. Livingston edited the material lightly for publication.
“Writing from the Center” is subtitled “Selected Memoir in Prose and Poetry,” and it provides a nice mixture of the two.
The stories, reflections and poems have a lot of heart. Some are fun; others, wistful. Many are courageous.
The authors discuss the weather (always of interest to New Englanders), food, motherhood, grief, pets, ailments and their own childhoods.
Particularly striking are a piece by Margaret Payne about a baby’s ability to charm a hardened prisoner, a recollection of a long-ago Halloween by Debra Hoyle and a renunciation of a lifelong identity as the middle child by Ellen Kaufmann.
Actually, all the essays and poems offer wisdom, often adding a little humor.
Nancy Brewer meditates on the pleasures of reading aloud. Marie Noyes Fuller shares the toil and satisfaction of caring for cows. Caroline Mack finds art in stacks of wood.
And Julie Seaver presents the eminently relatable “Ode to an Onion.”
The selections are multifaceted. Complaints lead to lessons learned. Grief ultimately holds a modicum of hope. Memories are maintained and enriched by the ability to look back on the past from the present.
Each piece and each author explore lives well led and well thought out. The book should inspire readers to ponder, laugh and cry … and perhaps to create their own memoirs in response.
“Writing from the Center” may be purchased at the Senior Center in Shelburne Falls or in paperback or Kindle form at Amazon.com.
Tinky Weisblat is an award-winning writer and singer known as the Diva of Deliciousness. Visit her website, TinkyCooks.com.