Wednesday Lemonade July 22, 2020 Welcome back to Wednesday Lemonade, a community newsletter focused on keeping VCCA Fellows, staff, and supporters connected. We’d like you to meet our recently elected VCCA board members! Today, we spotlight E. Dolores Johnson. We’ll introduce you to Hazel Duncan and Juan Manuel Granados in the coming weeks. We're proud to have this talented and accomplished group join in the work to strengthen VCCA. You're invited to another virtual event (our sixth!) in the VCCA Fireplace Series. Read about tomorrow's guest artists below, and make a plan to tune in live. Today's Fellow messages come from writers Heather Bryant, Roslyn Bernstein, and Margaret B. Ingraham, all of whom have new books out . We also pass along updates posted in Virtual VCCA from composer E. Shawn Qaissaunee and visual artist Anne Krinsky. And for today's resource, we point you to a calendar of online literary events curated by the Washington Post. Take care out there.

get to know a board member

E. Dolores Johnson We're pleased to welcome Dolores as a newly elected member of the VCCA Board of Directors. Dolores is a VCCA Fellow and published essayist focused on interracialism . Her new memoir, Say I'm Dead: A Family Memoir of Race, Secrets, and Love , was published last month. Dolores came to writing after a career in tech. She holds degrees from Howard University and Harvard Graduate School of Business. She has served on many boards and has extensive experience in diversity consulting and nonprofit board leadership. Born in Buffalo, New York, she currently lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

edoloresjohnson.com ‌ ‌ ‌

vcca fireplace series 06

Join the Live Stream Thursday, July 23 Washington Post columnist and VCCA Board member Steven Petrow will host tomorrow's VCCA Fireplace Series event featuring poet Barbara Crooker and composer Gregory Mertl. Barbara Crooker has been a VCCA Fellow 19 times since 1990. She'll be reading from her new poetry collection  Some Glad Morning (Pitt Poetry Series). Fun fact: the book's cover art is by VCCA Fellow Kristin Herzog. Gregory Mertl has been a VCCA Fellow 11 times since 2007. He will share and discuss “ Pictures Without an Exhibition ” for pianist Heather Lanners, which was to have its European premiere in April 2020. Tune in to the live stream at 7:30 p.m. ET, Thursday, July 23 . Bring your questions!

More About the Event

fellow messages

Fellows, please fill out this form to submit a message . This is a way to tell the VCCA community about how you're navigating these times as an artist and human and to spread the word about work affected by or created during the pandemic.

Heather Bryant June 1, 2020 "Last time I was at VCCA, I FaceTimed with my nephew. 'Where are you, auntie?' he wanted to know. I tried to explain to him what it meant to gather with writers and artists in a common space. Now, our common spaces are often virtual, but we still must gather to remind each other of what is essential in our lives. While working on My Trans Parent , I landed at VCCA France in the fall of 2018. We cooked meals together with food from the local market. It felt like we were a family. That community supported my solitude to write the book that is now going out into world. In this time, I try to bring that feeling of solitude into my work life, found at VCCA and carried with me into the rest of my writing life." Work Affected by COVID-19 Heather's new book My Trans Parent launched July 4.

heatherbryantauthor.com My Trans Parent

Roslyn Bernstein July 16, 2020 "Announcing my new collection: Engaging Art: Essays and Interviews from Around the Globe , which includes a story on Riverviews Arts Space in Lynchburg, written when I was a Fellow at VCCA. The publisher offers a 25% discount with code PROMO25 ." Work Affected by COVID-19 "Right now book talks and readings are on hold. Hoping that things will loosen up (live and virtual) so that I can talk about Engaging Art, my new book."

Margaret B. Ingraham July 22, 2020 " How am I coping with my work and in my life during the pandemic? The response changes from day to day. The uninterrupted time alone is a marvelous gift on some; other days, when I am more intensely aware of the circumstances that have created this solitude and isolation, are a challenge. Like all of us I have reacted during these last months with a 'spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling…' and jotted down many impressions and observations in my notebooks. But Wordsworth was right: for them to become poetry, they need to be 'recollected in tranquility.' Tranquility and coronavirus have not proved to be natural dance partners. Sometimes the sorrow I feel for those suffering pain and loss from this horrible disease stops me cold. So I will wait and see where those fragments lead. Meanwhile, I have stayed busy working to launch a new poetry collection virtually. I miss live audiences and in-person book signings, but I am extraordinarily grateful for YouTube, podcasts , Facebook; for the support and encouragement of friends, colleagues, and VCCA; and for the dedication of my publisher. The short answer to the question is that through all of this I am coping with gratitude."

margaretingraham.com Listen: Poet Kind Podcast

highlights from virtual vcca

These updates come from members posting in Virtual VCCA , our online community platform powered by Mighty Networks.

E. Shawn Qaissaunee "As 'in person' performances have been postponed due to Covid-19, many established festivals have had to be creative in order to keep traditions alive and continue to engage audiences. The Clifford Brown Jazz Festival in Wilmington, Delaware is no exception. This June CBJF (named for famed Wilmington trumpeter Clifford Brown) celebrated its 33rd year with an amazing 3 day live stream from a local recording studio. I was fortunate enough to perform a set for it with my wife vocalist Sharon Sable and a very talented band." Read More in Virtual VCCA

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Anne Krinsky "I wanted to share some work that resulted from my 2019 VCCA Exchange Residency at Oberpfälzer Künstlerhaus in Schwandorf, Germany, part of my project about vulnerable wetlands and climate change. During the residency, I photographed the River Naab during the hottest June on record. As river levels dropped, the water warmed, tree roots were exposed and duckweed proliferated into floating islands." Read More in Virtual VCCA

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resources

A Calendar of Online Literary Events If you're having trouble keeping track of all the amazing virtual book events taking place during the pandemic, this literary event calendar from the Washington Post is worth bookmarking. You'll see tomorrow's VCCA Fireplace Series event included on the schedule. To submit your own literary events to the calendar, follow the instructions on this page .

standing invitations

Look to this new page of the VCCA website for a comprehensive list of ways to stay virtually engaged with our creative community during VCCA's temporary closure.

Find VCCA Fellows on Bookshop Support  new work by VCCA Fellows   whose book launches, readings, signings, tours, and other events have been canceled or postponed due to the pandemic.  Submit this form to request your book be added . Recently added: Nine Bar Blues Defacing the Monument The Orphan's Daughter By Broad Potomac's Shore: Great Poems from the Early Days of Our Nation's Capital

🧡 Stay safe, and be well.

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