Writers Night Out

Welcome to 2025! Join Straw Dog Writers Guild on Tuesday January 7, 6:00-8:00pm for Writers Night Out with featured writer Ed Orzechowski at Forbes Library. No registration required. If you want to participate in Open Mic and read, please sign up by 5:50pm. Ten names will be randomly selected. Each reader will have five minutes. The second half of the evening showcases our Featured Reader.
Masks are not currently required for indoor events. Please wear a mask if you would like to exercise caution.
Hosted by Jacqueline Sheehan, Rick Paar and Beth Filson.
Sponsored by Valley Home Improvement.

Ed Orzechowski’s current release, Becoming Darlene, follows the publication in 2016 of You’ll Like It Here, The Story of Donald Vitkus—Belchertown Patient #3394, which became an all-time best-seller for Levellers Press of Amherst, Massachusetts.

Straw Dog Writers co-founder Jacqueline Sheehan, PhD, says: Ed Orzechowski’s masterful rendering reveals the unspeakable conditions of institutional life for children in mid-twentieth-century America. He writes with searing honesty about the survival of a remarkable girl who creates her own inner resources to emerge with her dreams intact.

Author Joy Baglio, Founder and Director of the Pioneer Valley Writers’ Workshop, writes, Ed Orzechowski’s account of Darlene’s story is raw and unflinching in its honesty and forthrightness. He paints a detailed, gritty picture of a tragic childhood and the horrors of a system that abused so many. This is a difficult story, a sad story, yet not without hope. Becoming Darlene illuminates aspects of our own humanity, both the shadows and the strength to persevere.