Writers’ Group Enlivens Library

On Sunday afternoon at the Ulysses Philomathic Library a boy was “bitten” by a couch cushion while retrieving a baseball, a man got his fortune told with complete accuracy and another man had his foot amputated after an accident in a train yard.

Three members of the Ulysses Writers’ Group read from their short stories at the library’s first Sunday Afternoon Speaker Series of 2009. The group’s other three members will read on Sunday, January 25.

Mary Blake formed the writers group when she moved to the area about four and a half years ago. At one point the group had eight members but has since settled down to six writers.

“Our youngest would be in her early 40s, up into the 70s,” Blake said.

Blake has been part of a writers’ group in other cities and said she likes having a tight-knit group of people to share her writing with and to turn to for constructive criticism.

“We have such a close group and we trust each other, which is important,” she said.

The group meets once a week at the library or at a member’s house if the library is closed. Meeting weekly motivates people to write and keeping the group small means each member is heard at each session, Blake said.

“You don’t want [a writers' group] too big,” she said. “With 15 or 20 people you only have time to read once a month.”

Blake said prospective new members have approached the group in the past but the new people were “just not a fit.” She is happy to keep the Ulysses Writer’s Group as it is now but said that doesn’t mean other people can’t meet.

“If people are interested in doing a writers’ group, start one,” Blake said. “This town’s big enough and has enough talent that you could have a coupled or three [groups].”

Though there are only six members in the current group Blake said the members each have their own style and write in many different formats, from chapter books to poems. Gordon Bonnet, Anna Tully and Robert Lodinsky all read short stories at the library on Sunday, but each short story had a distinct style.

“Out of the group there are three or four of us that were teachers, but that doesn’t mean anything, we all write different,” she said. “[Bonnet's] writing is like Stephen King, very weird and it drives us crazy that we have to wait a week for the next chapter.”

During the speaker series each writer will read for about 20 minutes. They could choose to share a completed short story, a chapter of a novel in progress, a series of poems or whatever they happen to be working on at the moment. At the next reading Blake will veer in a non-traditional direction and read manuscripts for children’s picture books, as well as some poetry at the insistence of the other group members.

“I was just going to do kids’ stuff and then last week I brought some poetry [to the group] and they all thought it was great and were like, ‘You have to read it,’” Blake said,

Last Sunday, Bonnet’s two stories touched on out-of-the-ordinary, slightly paranormal happenings that you likely don’t see in real life, complete with “real-life” skeptical characters. Tully read a story from the perspective of an old man looking back and chronicling his life from 1917 mostly through the Great Depression. Londinsky’s works were scenes from life, one about a boy playing a sandlot baseball game, the other about a young man on a short road trip that introduces him to the world and changes his life.

“We’re all writing and reading different things so you won’t be bored,” Blake said.

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