Dewey Drop-In: Use Your Words on Literature and Loss with Hannah Van Sickle and Beth Robbins

Dewey Drop-In: Use Your Words on Literature and Loss with Hannah Van Sickle and Beth Robbins

Wednesday, January 4, (1st Wednesday)

Dewey Hall, 91 Main Street, Sheffield, MA 01257

Doors at 6:30, Event at 7pm. $10 at the door

Special Roberto’s Menu and beverages available at the Hall, wheelchair accessible. Come early to order. No outside food or beverages allowed.

Contact: deweymemorialhall@gmail.com

www.deweyhall.org for info

The Dewey Drop-In presents Use Your Words: Literature and Loss. Join Beth Robbins, Hannah Van Sickle, and Simon Winchester for an exploration of memoir — both as a vehicle for navigating grief and a creative act that ultimately gave shape to the authors’ respective experiences. The discussion mediated by Simon Winchester, will include a reading from both memoirs: Robbins’ A Grief Sublime (Keats & Company, 2019) and Van Sickle’s Circle of Control.

Use Your Words brings writers, readers, and listeners together for evenings of sharing and conversation. Each date will be hosted by a different local writer, with readings by colleagues, students, writing groups, published authors, and storytellers. Themes will include Emergence, Grief, Creaturely Stories, Lives Gone Off Script, True Tales, Memoirs, and more. The hosts will open conversations around each evening’s themes, but also talk about writing practices, writing groups, and other skills to empower the art of writing and to encourage reading.

Simon Winchester He was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) ‘for services to journalism and literature’ in the New Year Honours list for 2006. He was elected an Honorary Fellow of St. Catherine’s College, Oxford, in October 2009.

Hannah Van Sickle is a freelance storyteller who has been fine-tuning her craft for seven years. An educator by training, she spent a decade teaching high school English at public and private schools across Berkshire County and Southern Vermont and another as a one-on-one academic tutor. Her work has appeared in myriad print and online publications from Upstate House to Business Insider; essays about her journey parenting daughters can be found at Modern Loss, Refinery 29, and SheKnows. She is a writer for the Berkshire Edge.

Beth Robbins published her first book, A Grief Sublime, in 2019, and is currently working on her second, Box of Bones. She received her Mlitt (2022) and MA (2016) from Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College. She was the inspiration for and starred in Sproutland, a short narrative fictional film that reimagines the story narrated in her book. Beth is a longtime English and drama teacher at the Berkshire Waldorf High School in Stockbridge, MA.

Dewey Drop-In: Use Your Words dates, hosts, and themes:

02/01/2023 Laura Didyk Lives thrown wildly off-script
03/01/2023 Suzi Baum Emergence
04/05/2023 Evelyn Battaglia Ode to Earth
05/03/2023 Maria Black The Thursday Group
06/07/2023 Melanie Greenberg Real Life Stories
10/04/2023 Barbara Newman Life is a Bowl of . . .
11/01/2023 Sheela Clary true tales of lived lived
12/06/2023 Peter Murkett | Bonner McCalister Creaturely Stories

You may order hot food at Dewey Hall from a Roberto’s Pizza special menu. Beverages available. No outside beverages or food allowed.