RBWG Guild Events at a Glance

Regularly Scheduled Guild Events

• Readings
• Book Club
• Classes (New class, see below)
• Free Writes!
• Newsletter
• Delmarava Literary Events Calendar

Night of Literary Prose, Poetry and Songs, third Tuesday of the month, 7 to 8:15 p.m., RSVP to Maribeth, see Tom's email for place.

Book Club for Writers, 2nd Thursday of the month, 5:30-7: 30 , location in Tom's weekly email.

• December 12  -  Jess Walter. Beautiful Ruins. This beautiful novel, told from different POV's includes within it segments of a character’s novel, an excerpt of a character's memoir, and a play, so it has a little bit of everything. Walters makes us care about every character, fully inhabits different points of view, and moves through various times and places--196O's Italy to contemporary California, weaving together a multitude of diverse stories.   
• January 9  - Tennessee Williams. The Glass Menagerie. Though this breaks the rules a bit (reading a play for a book club), I am constantly amazed by all this piece has to offer in just over 80 pages. The fiction and nonfiction writer can see how Williams incorporates an historical period and tackles strong characterization, brief but effective descriptions, and, of course, razor-sharp dialogue. If you've never read this play or haven't read it in years, there is much to discover.
• February 13 - Markus Zusak. The Book Thief. This is a well-told story, narrated by “Death,” about a young woman, Liesel, who lives with foster parents in a small German town near Munich after the demise of her own family during World War II. This novel is too good to be considered as only a Young Adult (YA) book. The writing appears to be amazingly simple because it is so clear.
• March 13 - Khaled Hosseini. And The Mountains Echoed. “Mountains” spans several generations and moves back and forth between Afghanistan and the West. . . it shares a . . . penchant for mapping terrain midway between the boldly colored world of fable and the more shadowy, shaded world of realism. . . we finish this novel with an intimate understanding of who his characters are and how they’ve defined themselves over the years through the choices they have made between duty and freedom, familial responsibilities and independence, loyalty to home and exile abroad.
• April 10 - Diane Gilliam Fisher.  Kettle Bottom.  A poetry book by Diane Gilliam Fisher that consists of narratives from twenty different speakers that include miners and their children and wives/widows, a schoolteacher, black miners who are given the most dangerous jobs in the mine, a family of Italian immigrants who have been tricked into working in the mine, and even the mine owners. The distinctive voices of the characters relate the history of the West Virginia mine wars (1920-21) through monologues, reports, letters, and journal entries.
• May 8 - Grace Paley. Enormous Changes at the Last Minute. One review says that Paley's work makes "the novel as a form seem virtually redundant." That may or may not be true, but the lean, solid stories in this collection are timeless. They capture relationships, deal with human foibles, and show how fickle and ever-evolving the world and its cities can be)
• June 12 - Alice McDermott, Someone.  Wisely written and full of insight. It is the story of first generation Irish in Brooklyn over the 40's and beyond. McDermott is an elegant writer with a distinctive style--this is a story of a woman’s life told out of chronology, jumping from memory to memory and leaping across time. Helpful to both memoirists and fiction writers

Click here for more on the book club.

Classes

Click here for a schedule and a complete description of classes sponsored by the RBWG classes or email Maribeth to inquire about enrollment.

Writer's Library, Lewes Public Library

The Lewes Public Library has opened a Writer’s Library in its Delaware Room, a unique collection of literary journals and magazines for use by Delaware authors and anyone else who wants to read great contemporary fiction and poetry. It's purposes are to acquaint Delaware authors with a greater number of literary journals than they were previously aware of, allow them to physically review the journals, looking for editorial bias, style, length, form, or topical interest preference by that journal, and to help Delaware authors make a better match for the submission of their work to appropriate journals and thereby improve their chances for publication.

Links of Interest

• Delmarva Discussion web site
• Delmarava Literary Events Calendar
  Click on this link to find out about writers' conferences, contests, appearances by authors, and other Delmarva literary events. We will publicize any literary events hosted by non-profit organizations or any literary events that are free and open to the public. If you have an event you’d like posted or if you know of an organization or individual to whom RBWG might reach out, please email this info to bruce_krug@live.com