From the Farmhouse Table: May 2023
When Writers Travel
One summer, 30 years ago, I thought I would be in Paris for six weeks.
Sitting outside a cafe and nursing a Stella Artois, I would glare at the facade of a building across the square. I barely noticed my hand pushing a fine Bic pen across the pages of a battered leather notebook.
My attention was on a Colonial-era painting of a Black man in white stockings, striped breeches and velvet waistcoat, standing beside a table where a white woman sits, a silver pitcher in hand. Secured over the painting were capital letters, in brass, spelling out Au Nègre Joyeux.
Was the man, wearing the frozen rictus of a smile, enslaved? Or would he slide in the second chair and drink from the second cup? Or, and this stumped me, was this something else I could not fathom? Everyday, I came to stare and argue with myself while I wrote.
When writers travel, we write.
Sometimes a new setting unlocks a room we cannot access at home, to tell stories we can’t imagine amidst the familiar. Sometimes, the writing comes from a different place, a desire to participate in the solitary scenes that surround us: That old man is smoking a thin cigarette. That child is pushing a paper boat across the top of a pond. This woman with a pretty pen in hand, who taps it on her lip during pauses between precise sentences written on sheets torn from a journal. Sometimes, we just have something to say and we write it in private. Or in our heads, while we walk down uneven stone steps, half our mind on safety, the other half solving problems of pace or plot or voice. A word after a word is power.
Kim Melton, Alumna & Retreat Participant
Last week, half a dozen writers landed in Italy for Write, Re-Vision, Revise, Hedgebrook’s weeklong Radical Craft Retreat in Tuscany. It was the first time since 2019 that the workshop took place in a medieval villa whose most famous resident half-smiles from the world’s most famous work of art. Surrounded by rolling hills with olive trees, Sangiovese vines and spots of tiny red poppies, the writers shrugged off New York, Los Angeles, the Pacific Northwest, and Australia to learn from each other under the careful tutelage of Ellen Sussman, author, editor, teacher and Hedgebrook alumna.
For some, it was their first international trip in years. For a few, it was a kickstart, to resume writing projects derailed by illness and grief, the pandemic and parenting, work and life. For each, it was an opportunity to be immersed in the practice of good writing within a small community of storytellers. Each day was a reminder that even the simplest ingredients can yield the most memorable endings.
“The Radical Craft Retreat at Ca’di Pesa is a special gift and opportunity for adventure, rest and inspiration,” said Hedgebrook alumna Kim Melton, who spent the week working on a memoir about her family. “This week in Tuscany added a new dimension to my writing journey, combining Hedgebrook’s intentional spirit of belonging and power of place with a fabulous workshop environment. Being able to do all this — explore, reflect, learn and write — helped me dig into my plot, my scenes, my characters, and to see them all in new ways.”
Want to get your travel and writing on? Join Hedgebrook back in Tuscany in October at our Fall Radical Craft Retreat with Natalie Baszile (details below).
-Kimberly A.C. Wilson, Executive Director, Hedgebrook