Creative & Resilient Voices NYC Literary Salon

## October Literary Salon: And You May Find Yourself

Saturday, October 17 | 10:00 AM–12:00 PM
Virtual Gathering via Zoom

For our October Literary Salon, we’ll read and discuss Sari Botton’s And You May Find Yourself: Confessions of a Late-Blooming Gen-X Weirdo, a candid, funny, and reflective collection of personal essays about the unexpected turns a life can take.
Botton writes about relationships, work, creativity, identity, aging, and the sometimes winding road toward understanding ourselves. Her essays invite us to consider not only the lives we thought we would have, but the lives we actually lived and what we can see differently when we look back.

During our gathering, we’ll talk about the essays that resonated with us, explore Botton’s use of humor, vulnerability, and hindsight, and consider how ordinary experiences become meaningful stories.

And, as always, we will write.

Inspired by our reading, we’ll spend time responding to guided writing prompts, inspired by Botton's essays, exploring an unexpected turn, realization, or life transitions. Utilizing the Amherst Writers & Artists method, there will be an opportunity to share your writing with the group if you choose.

No writing experience is necessary. Come ready to read, reflect, talk, write, and connect.

Bring your book, something to write with, and your favorite Saturday morning beverage.

Saturday, October 17
10:00 AM–12:00 PM ET
Virtual via Zoom

Zoom information will be provided to registered participants.

What does it mean to belong to a place, a community, a family, or even to ourselves?

For our November Literary Salon, we’ll read and discuss bell hooks’ Belonging: A Culture of Place, a deeply personal collection of essays exploring home, land, race, class, community, nature, memory, and the places that shape who we are.

Returning again and again to her native Kentucky, hooks considers what it means to leave home, to return, and to reclaim a relationship with place.
Along the way, she asks larger questions about belonging: Who gets to feel at home? What do we lose when we become disconnected from land and community? And can we create a sense of belonging for ourselves?

During our gathering, we’ll discuss the ideas and passages that stayed with us and consider our own relationships with home, place, community, and belonging.

And, of course, we’ll write.

Our conversation will lead into a guided writing session inspired by the themes of the book. There will be time to write quietly and an opportunity to share your work with the group if you choose.

No writing experience is necessary, and you certainly don't need to arrive with literary analysis prepared.

Come ready to read, reflect, talk, write, and connect.

Have the book on hand, something to write with, and your favorite Saturday morning beverage.

Zoom information will be provided to registered participants.

Come as you are. Bring your thoughts, your questions, and your stories.

What does it mean for a woman to find her voice?

For our final Literary Salon gathering of the year, we’ll read and discuss Terry Tempest Williams’ When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice.

After her mother’s death, Williams inherited the journals her mother had kept throughout her life only to discover that the pages were blank.
From that discovery, Williams reflects on voice and silence, mothers and daughters, memory and inheritance, nature, grief, spirituality, and the stories women tell or sometimes choose not to tell.

For our December gathering, we’ll slow down and spend a winter morning considering some of the questions Williams raises:

What do we inherit from the women who came before us?
What gets spoken in families—and what remains silent?
How do we find our own voices?
What have we learned from listening to the voices of other women?
And what happens when a woman decides that she has something to say?

As always, we will also write.

The writing portion of our Literary Salon will invite us to explore voice, silence, inheritance, memory, and the women whose lives have shaped our own.

You don't need to consider yourself a writer. There will be quiet time to follow whichever prompt calls to you, and anyone who wishes to share will have an opportunity to do so.

Can't purchase the book? Please still join us. Free excerpts and supplemental materials will be shared before our gathering so that cost doesn't have to prevent anyone from participating in the conversation.

Bring your book or excerpt, something to write with, and your favorite Saturday morning beverage.

Zoom information will be provided to registered participants.

Come as you are. Bring your thoughts, your questions, and your stories.