2010: A BANNER YEAR FOR PARIS PRESS’S 15TH ANNIVERSARY

As we move into the season of giving thanks and celebrating the year, we here at Paris Press are so grateful for your generosity, the support of our volunteers, Board and Advisory Board members, readers, writers, and public and private foundations. The following accomplishments are yours as well as ours. You helped bring Sisters to life!

MEDIA ATTENTION AND BACK TO PRESS

• Sisters: An Anthology received rave reviews in Ms., People Magazine, RealSimple.com, Library Journal, Curve, The Chicago Tribune Reader’s Blog, The Greenfield Recorder, The Daily Hampshire Gazette, and the Amherst Bulletin. It was highlighted on TheSisterProject.com, a blog by Margaret Roach, Marion Roach Smith, and Paige Orloff. 

• NPR-affiliate WFCR interviewed actress, playwright, and Sisters contributors Ana Maria Jomolca, Tsipi Keller, and co-editor Jan Freeman about Sisters on “Morning Edition.” Sisters authors Jeanne M. Leiby and Ana Maria Jomolca, Jan Freeman and her sister, anthropologist Carla Freeman, were interviewed about sisters on WAMC’s “Roundtable.” WGBH’s “The Callie CrossleyShow” featured Jan Freeman for International Women’s Day. Vail Public Television interviewed Jan Freeman about SISTERS Celebrations.
   
• Chilmark Library SISTERS Celebration participants Carol Gilligan, Rose Styron, and Jessica Harris were interviewed about sisters for Martha’s Vineyard PlumTV and MVTV. NBC Affiliate, Channel 22’s MassAppeal featured Jan Freeman speaking about SISTERS Celebrations, and previewed clips from the new SISTERS film project. (For links to interviews, visit www.parispress.org.)
   
• Open Me Carefully went back to press for its 3rd printing following Joshua Wolf Shenk’s essay in Slate about the creative partnership between Emily Dickinson and Susan Huntington Dickinson.

SISTERS EDUCATIONAL OUTREACH IN THE COMMUNITY

• Teacher and writer Helen Gallagher hosted two interactive Celebrations in Chicago and Winnetka, IL. Painter Elizabeth Stone hosted a SISTERS Celebration in Northampton, MA with poet and teacher Patricia Lee Lewis and actor and producer Jeannine Haas reading from the Anthology.
   
• Ana Maria Jomolca and Tsipi Keller read their work from Sisters to a packed house at Books and Books in Coral Gables, FL. McNally Jackson Books in NYC hosted a packed SISTERS Celebration, featuring contributors Catherine Chung, Ana Maria Jomolca, and Myra Shapiro. The Co-Op Bookstore at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, hosted a Celebration with contributor Catherine Chung, co-editor Emily Wojcik, poet and director of the Litchfield County Writers’ Project Davyne Verstandig, and Lisa Starr, poet laureate of Rhode Island.
   
• Women’s History Month SISTERS Celebrations: Media consultant and master gardener Margaret Roach and her sister, author Marion Roach Smith, joined Nancy Fitzpatrick, arts advocate and owner of the Red Lion Inn, for a Celebration at the Berkshire Botanical Garden. International Women’s Day Celebrations: Porter Square Books in Cambridge, with Sisters contributor and award-winning novelist Julia Glass, contributor and poet Barbara Greenberg, and Libana percussionist Marytha Paffrath; NYC’s Madame X, with Ana Maria Jomolca, organized by the I Can Still Do That! Foundation; and an Upper West Side psychoanalytic reading, hosted by Robi Akeret, with Nancy Carroll and analysts, and contributors playwright Clare Coss and poet Myra Shapiro.
   
• Sisters contributor and novelist Catherine Chung, Margaret Roach, and Marion Roach Smith took part in a SISTERS Celebration at the Arts Center of the Capital Region, in Troy, NY.The Vail, CO, Public Library hosted a Celebration with contributor and novelist Tsipi Keller, librarian Lori Ann Barnes, and Susan Cody. Advisory Board member Barbara Alfange organized an overflowing Celebration at the Leverett Library, with community members Chris Nelson, Janine Roberts, and Nicki Robb reading their favorite pieces from the Anthology. The Chilmark Library, on Martha’s Vineyard, hosted a SISTERS Celebration with cookbook author and culinary historian Jessica Harris, psychologist, novelist, and Advisory Board member Carol Gilligan, and poet and human rights activist Rose Styron.
   
• Gloriosa & Company hosted an Ashfield’s Fall Festival SISTERS Celebration with community members. Teens Amelia and Analise Cain and Clare Donohue-Meyer joined Renee Rastorfer, Susan Todd, and Patricia Donohue to read poetry and prose from the Anthology. The Hampshire County Smith College Book Club hosted a Celebration and discussion of Sisters with co-editors Jan Freeman and Emily Wojcik. Amherst Senior Center hosted a SISTERS Celebration with MA Representative Ellen Story, Young at Heart Chorus-member Shirley Stevens, and actress and PVPA theater teacher Irene Thornton.

EDUCATIONAL OUTREACH IN THE CLASSROOM

• Mercy High School (San Francisco, CA) selected Zdena Berger’s Tell Me Another Morning for their 2010-2011 All-School Read. Zdena will travel to the girls’ high school in March 2011 to discuss her autobiographical novel with students.
   
• Paris Press welcomed Smith College student Sarah Green for a six-week Praxis internship.
   
• The MassPOP Poetry Retreat for High School Teachers, dedicated to helping teachers incorporate poetry into their classrooms, gave copies of The Life of Poetry to participating teachers. Mass Humanities made this generous donation possible. A Paris Press dream come true!
   
• The Press offered SISTERS Celebrations throughout the Pioneer Valley. Contributor Ana Maria Jomolca traveled from NYC to read “Twin Bed” and discuss it with students at the Pioneer Valley Performing Arts Charter School, Holyoke’s Girls’ Inc., and the CARE Center of Holyoke.

EDUCATIONAL OUTREACH IN CONFERENCES AND COMMUNITY FESTIVALS

• Paris Press attended the Associated Writers Program Conference in Denver, where Sisters contributors Catherine Chung, Martha Rhodes, and Robin Becker read from the Anthology. Jan Freeman participated in a panel discussion about Muriel Rukeyser in the 21st century. The Press reconnected with readers, writers, teachers, students, publishers, friends, and fans.
   
• Assistant editor Emily Wojcik and Advisory Board member Nikki Lloyd-Kimbrel represented the Press at the Juniper Literary Festival, at the University of Massachusetts.

• Advisory Board members Barbara Alfange, Laurie Slap-Shelton, and Nikki Lloyd-Kimbrel joined intern Sarah Green and Emily Wojcik at the Paris Press book table during Ashfield Fall Festival. Jan Freeman and Advisory Board member Lisa Newman launched the SISTERS film project, interviewing children, teens, and adults about sisters throughout the Ashfield Fall Festival.

How to Host a SISTERS Celebration!

Click here to watch Jan Freeman discuss SISTERS CELEBRATIONS on "MASS APPEAL" on WWLP 22!
 
How to Host a SISTERS CELEBRATION:
It’s easy to hold your own SISTERS CELEBRATION. Whether you choose to host friends in your home, or organize a community reading at a public space, these ideas have helped Paris Press create memorable, meaningful events.

WHAT: A SISTERS CELEBRATION is a gathering of five people or more who read from Sisters: An Anthology.

WHY: It’s a great way for friends, relatives, and strangers to discover extraordinary stories and poems by well-known and emerging women writers, while exploring the unique, complicated, humorous, difficult, loving, heartbreaking world of sisters.

WHO: Invite friends, your book group, neighbors, colleagues, and  relatives (including your sister, if you are speaking to each other). For large gatherings, ask each person you invite to bring two or more people. Paris Press is happy to send you a sample press release that you can use.

AGE: Anyone fourteen or older can join in.

WHERE: SISTERS CELEBRATIONS can take place in a living room, around a kitchen table, in a library, a community center, a bookstore, a synagogue or church, in a café, or in an auditorium or theater.

HOW: Read a copy of SISTERS: AN ANTHOLOGY (available through your local bookstore, library, and from Paris Press.www.parispress.org) Select the readers/participants and the poems and stories you would like them to read. For CELEBRATIONS that will include people outside your intimate circle of pals, invite one or two women to read who are high-profile individuals in your community (any field is fine; especially people with sisters and daughters).

Generally, keep readings to 5-7 minutes per person (3- 5 pages), and limit the number of readers to five. Unless you decide to have a SISTERS MARATHON, in which case you should have several 10-minute breaks with refreshments!

Before assigning stories and poems, ask readers if there are favorite pieces they would like to read from SISTERS.For best results, mix emotional tones, poetry and prose. And always include one funny story or poem.

The Table of Contents offers one example of the order in which pieces can be read: The three sections progress from childhood to old age, and include many kinds of relationships between sisters (loving, competitive, supportive, cruel). 


THE READING: The host and the readers should introduce themselves before their piece, and establish their own sister-experience: (Do they have sisters? Are they the oldest? Youngest? Middle?) For this part, comments are often introductory; additional thoughts and discussion tend to work best in the second part of the event, the post-reading Q&A or discussion.

AFTER THE READING: Paris Press encourages audience members and readers to participate in a Q&A, and/or to discuss with the audience their reactions to the stories and poems, etc. Readers or the host might prepare an anecdote from their own lives to kick things off. This often leads to discussions with the audience: What did audience members relate to from the reading or the anthology overall? What is unfamiliar? How do people who don’t have sisters respond—does the reading make them wish they had them or grateful they don’t?

Remember, SISTERS CELEBRATIONS are not therapy session; they are opportunities to listen to and read great writing, and think about how the literature in the anthology connects to their own life and the lives of people they know.

EXTRAS: While the core part of the Celebration is reading a sampling of prose and poetry from the Anthology, other activities can be included to make this a memorable experience. Before and after the SISTERS reading, singing or listening to Sisters songs can be moving and fun (see list below). Ask one participant to sing or hand out song sheets (for a one-time use only!) and get your group bellowing. Piano or guitar can make this particularly lively.

To encourage some good sister-storytelling, ask everyone to tell their funniest sister memory. Describe one favorite sister outfit (silliest or most elegant). List movies about sisters, novels about sisters, infamous sisters who you’d like to know more about. Or less about! Describe the closest sisters you know. The most detached sisters you know. Which sisters swapped boyfriends, girlfriends, were most alike, most different, wore matching outfits, wanted to be twins, didn’t want to be twins., moved far away from each other, live in the same neighborhood, talk every day, never talk.

ENDING A CELEBRATION: Many SISTERS CELEBRATIONS last 1½ - 2 hours. If it feels time to wrap-up a gathering, suggest that a pre-appointed person in the group read Joan Baez’s excerpt from DAYBREAK on page xvii.
 
Paris Press LOVES to receive feedback about SISTERS CELEBRATIONS. Send your descriptions, high points, low points, and suggestions to info@parispress.org.

Enjoy Sisters: An Anthology – in solitude and with friends. Spread the word!   

A few sister songs…
“Sisters-Sisters” — Rosemary Clooney
“Two Sisters” (an Irish folk song)
“We Are Family” — Sister Sledge
“Sisters Are Doin' It For Themselves” — Eurythmics
“Side by Side” — McGuire Sisters
“Sister’s Coming Home” — Emmylou Harris
“Little Sister” — Elvis Presley
“Wind Beneath My Wings” — Bette Midler