berkshire reads
This magazine focuses on places to go and things to do, and we feel that curling up with a good book satisfies both those requirements. Just think of the places you can go as you venture forth into the pages of a good book. We are especially blessed in the Berkshires with a large community of very good writers. The five we present here represent different genres: a romance novel, a compilation of poems, a children’s book, short stories from a mature writer, and a YA (Young Adult) novel. We hope you will discover enticing literary adventures among them. We asked each author (actually, one is an illustrator) to answer six questions that, together, would give you a sense of what and why they write, and some behind-thescenes secrets of their creative process. Here, on these pages, we give you only short introductions and excerpts from their interviews. The full interviews can be read in our online Magazine at BerkshiresCalendarMagazine.com. There you will also find an earlier installment of this “Berkshire Reads” feature with six more writers.
be transported by a good book
First, let us introduce you to Leslie Noyes, a true right- and left-brain talent who lives at the north end of the Berkshires in Bennington, Vt. Not only is she a successful graphic designer (and the creative director of both The Berkshire Edge and this magazine), but she can write, too. Willing is her first novel. Why did Leslie write Willing? Because, she says, “popular fiction for and about women who are over forty is an underserved market. As we age we are tempered by life, which makes us more complicated than ingenues, the usual protagonists of women’s fiction and romance. Entertaining novels about “older” heroines who aren’t mired in tragedy of some form, and have happy endings, are hard to find. So I wrote the novel I wanted to read.” Although Liz Silver, the protagonist of Willing, is a wedding photographer, she has given up on love for herself. As the novel opens, Liz’s creative fire is burning out and she can’t figure out why. She tries to distract herself with short-term affairs. The men she sleeps with have enough “fatal flaws” not to tempt her into love. But when she does meet a man who interests her, the mystery of her creative slump and her issues with love intersect, forcing Liz to decide whether risking her heart is the only way to reclaim her joyful creative life—and maybe love, too.
*** We have a second Leslie—Leslie Klein—who is also an artist as well as a writer. A well-known sculptor who is founder and director of Clay Form Studios in West Stockbridge, Mass., this multi-talented Leslie offers Driving Through Paintings, a compilation of poems, written over many years, that she wanted to share. It is part memoir (“Within these pages/the pulse of my life resides.”) and part ode to the natural world (“I believe in magic/I see it everywhere”) and part road trip through life experiences and landscapes that have inspired her (“Driving Through Paintings/of ribbon roads/and jasper fields.”) She is surprised by how prolific she is: “ . . . the realization of just how many poems I have written, touching on all aspects of life, was a surprise. I also didn’t expect to feel such depth of emotion from my words.”
BerkshiresCalendar.com
37
