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.) 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 tea, wine, and snacks!
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). Several stories and poems address the illness of a sister and the grief after the death of a sister.
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?
And 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 1 ½ - 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” — 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
“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
