Hey all,

Here’s a Workshop Notebook post from Ellen and a request as well.

If you’d like to respond, especially to the part about keeping the workshop going for tomorrow, please comment here or email me and I’ll pass it on.

Thanks, Barbara

* * * * *

“Telling people’s stories was a way of finding out about my own.  It was one of the few ways I could feel some transcendent force of life some people call God.  I hope I get to do it again.”

Those were some of Mike’s words, written and tucked away, uncovered only after he passed from this world.  For me, the Mike Levine Writers’ Workshop is a way that Mike does get to do it again.  This is a sacred time, this long spring weekend in the Catskill Mountains.  By some great miracle, we’ve been able to airlift a group of journalists, hungry for the story.  It’s a weekend when time slows down; the daily pressure-cooker gets a well-deserved respite.  And for this period, our writers want nothing but to work their craft – to learn from their coaches, to listen to their sources, and to tell something important to their readers. They find a way to get here for three days, and all of us feel richer for their efforts by the workshop’s end.  And the experience seems to stay with us, because we all want to do it again - tomorrow, next week, and next year.

Ellen Levine, May 2010 Workshop