Last book events of the year coming up. After that, you’re on your own.
Two local authors, two profound books
EZRA: A Mother’s Portrait
If you know the painter Stella Elliston then you probably know the mother Stella Elliston. Now meet the author Stella Elliston who has taken up the memoir brush to paint a portrait of her son Ezra.
Bottom’s Dream from Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream is as close as I can come to tell you about this book, this story, this family here amongst us in Berkshire County, late 20th century, early 21st.
“…The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was. . . “
In other words, don’t listen to me try to describe this most rare volume, a mother’s portrait of her lost son. Come and hear her read from and talk about her first published literary work this coming Thursday evening, Dec 15 at 5:30 pm right here at The Bookstore.
If the first and last word about writing is ‘write what you know’, Stella Elliston gets an A+. she’s turned a life into art, and in so doing has recreated that life again. “Ezra: A Mother’s Portrait” is as head-on a literary experience as you are likely to get in your lifetime.
SECRET WOUNDS
Rich Berlin is a medical doctor turned psychiatrist turned poet.
His latest collection, “Secret Wounds”, won the 2010 John Ciardi Poetry Prize from the University of Missouri – Kansas City and just last month was selected as best poetry book of the year by USA Today newspaper. His poems have an immediacy dictated by the subject matter and are as timeless as the profession they illuminate.
Rich’s first collection of poems “How JFK Killed My Father” won the Pearl Poetry Prize, the money from which he used to establish a creative writing prize for medical students at Umass Medical School. We also held quite a publication party for that one, here at The Bookstore, I remember!
He also edited “Poets on Prozac: Mental Illness, Treatment, and the Creative Process”, a collection of essays by sixteen contemporary poets who write about how their psychiatric treatment influenced their creativity.
Both earlier books are still in print and available.
Please join us for a reading from “Secret Wounds” on Friday Dec 16 at 7 pm.
Two events: Stella Elliston this Thursday at 5:30 and Rich Berlin on Friday at 7.
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