The Emerging Writers Fellowship Program is seeking applicants for 2020! We are accepting applications from those who write poetry. This program will support women and gender nonbinary writers of color based in Western Massachusetts at the early stages of their career. It was Read More
My interest in writing emerged when I first relocated to Western Massachusetts in 2007. Joining a writing a performance group as a way to learn more about the area and make friends, I discovered a hidden passion for scripting story through poetry. From there, I began writing plays, maintaining a blog and even writing articles Read More
Abel Meeropol Social Justice Writing Award 2017 Patricia Smith was awarded the first Abel Meeropol Social Justice Writing Award on Nov. 12, 2017, in a ceremony at Gateway City Arts. A video of her acceptance speech along with opening remarks from Ellen Meeropol and Robert Meeropol and musical performances by Pamela Means was created with Read More
I’ve always been involved in the arts in some way but never would I have ever thought I’d become a writer. I picked up my first musical instrument at 8 years old, started off as a music education major in undergrad but left with a degree in theatre. I’ve been on stage as an actor, Read More
On my first day of service at the Haven House, a transitional housing program for homeless women and children, the social worker put her hand on my shoulder and said, “They’re tough girls, but I think you can handle yourself. Don’t let them scare you away. They might actually like this.” And by “this,” she Read More
Originally published in Fired Up! Green Fire Writers When the picketing started at Glen Echo Amusement Park, I was 14 and my mother wouldn’t let me go. “It’s too dangerous,” she said. “Besides, you have a job.” My family had moved to the suburban Maryland neighborhood called Bannockburn two years earlier. I had my first Read More
At the recent Straw Dog Writers’ Guild roundtable on writing for social justice, we were asked to consider our biggest fear in writing work that challenges the status quo. Make the fear a character, Elli Meeropol suggested, and have a conversation with it. Primed by reading and hearing aloud the words of Patricia Smith’s Read More
Patricia Smith awarded the Abel Meeropol Social Justice Writing Award by SDWG Board President Ellen Meeropol & Robert Meeropol Patricia Smith Robert Meeropol SDWG Board President Ellen Meeropol and Advisory Board member Bill Newman Photos by Doug Anderson It is rare and wonderful when several important elements of a life come together and make joy. Read More
I’d like to tell you the story of this award and why Straw Dog Writers Guild created it. Like most stories, it’s not easy to know where to begin. Maybe in 1935, when a young Jewish high school teacher in the Bronx saw a photograph of a lynching. It haunted him and he wrote a Read More
Listening to Other Voices Guest Blogger: Ellen Meeropol We read for so many reasons – to be entertained, to armchair-travel, to be goosed into other ways of thinking, to learn, to experience lives very different from our own. To expand our world. We choose our books in many ways too. We browse bookstore and library Read More
