The sun on the turning leaves, everything pumpkin spice and chilly and dark, that way the sun slants as we dip toward winter. Write it!
Join us for a double header. Deborah Lee Luskin leads a nature writing circle on Saturday, October 3, and reads from her novel Into the Wilderness on Sunday, October 4.
Luskin, author of Into the Wilderness and Reviving Artemis, moved from New York City to Vermont in 1984 to write, garden, keep bees, and raise daughters—but she has also been an editorial columnist, radio commentator, pen-for-hire, and blogger.
“Writing circles help writers of any ability to overcome fear, loneliness, and procrastination by writing in community with support,” she says, adding, “I create a safe space.”
In her workshops, she says, “Participants focus and fly, letting loose the unknown in the wonder of words. Those who wish may read this new work aloud while all participants bear witness to the strange and wonderful stories that emerge.” Luskin employs a positive response practice, inspiring participants to write more, write better, and write with greater confidence.
Luskin has also enjoyed a long career as an educator, teaching writing and literature-based humanities to gifted elementary writers, college students, new adult readers, lifelong learners, healthcare workers, and prison inmates. Since 2016, Luskin has been facilitating the ongoing Rosefire Writing Circle, a place to write in community and with support. Engaged in civic life, Luskin practiced restorative justice as a volunteer at the Brattleboro Community Justice Center and served as the elected Town Moderator in Newfane, Vermont. She holds a PhD in English Literature and expected to become an academic, not a homesteader, deer hunter or novelist.
Both her memoir Reviving Artemis: The Making of a Huntress and her novel Into the Wilderness are set in Vermont and very much arise from the contrasting lifestyles she’s lived. The memoir tells her story of coming of age at sixty and finding her place in the natural world, while the novel envisions a romance between a former New York City liberal Jewish woman and a dyed-in-the-wool Vermont conservative man. Into the Wilderness is also a perfect novel for this fall, set against the backdrop of Vermont’s changing politics and seasons, and a testament to the endurance of the human heart.
Into the Wilderness, from which Luskin will read at The Sparkle, was originally published by White River Press in 201 and won the Independent Publishers Gold Medal for Regional Fiction. The novel relaunched this year from Sibylline Press.