East End Writing Groups Are Coming Back in the Fall: Teachers and Students Alike Are Here To Tell You About Them

Whether it’s the influence of back-to-school season or the invitation to curl up with a steaming mug of something warm as the weather cools, there’s something about autumn that speaks to writers.

This fall, as in years past, several instructors will offer writing classes at various spots across the East End, including a few local libraries and community haunts.

Maryann Calendrille was a college English professor for 12 years before she and Kathryn Szoka took over Canio’s Books in Sag Harbor. To her, offering writing workshops was a “natural extension” of that work she so loved.

“Surrounded by shelves and shelves of books, we never had a shortage of examples to draw inspiration from,” she said.

Calendrille has taught writers workshops at Canio’s and at various libraries on the East End, as well as at Ashawagh Hall in Springs and Mashomack Preserve on Shelter Island. Now, through Canio’s Cultural Cafe, the nonprofit arm of Canio’s Books, Calendrille has a space dedicated to workshops upstairs at the Old Whalers’ (First Presbyterian) Church in Sag Harbor.

This fall, Calendrille is holding a six-session prose workshop entitled “Go Ahead, Make a Scene,” in which students will focus on writing short scenes.

“Think ‘lights-camera-action’ on the page,” she said. “It’s not a screenwriting course, but one for writers interested in activating their stories through character development, setting and plot.”

Calendrille’s main piece of advice for writers is simple: Trust the process and explore.

“Don’t try to figure it out in advance,” she said. “You might miss surprises. Allow the process to unfold and discover new insights along the way.”

The most fulfilling part of the process for Calendrille is seeing her students’ work grow over time.

“It’s like a film photograph slowly coming into view in the darkroom, or a blob of clay on the potter’s wheel pulled into shape,” she said. “When someone has an ‘ah-ha’ moment in their work, it’s a great joy. You see the process working and their face lights up.”

Calendrille agrees that it’s inspiring to live in a community that boasts such deep literary roots — John Steinbeck, Colson Whitehead and E.L. Doctorow being just a few of the renowned writers who have lived in Sag Harbor — but she cautions her students against comparing themselves to other writers.

“Rather than compare ourselves to others, my focus is on writing that expresses our truest, deepest sense of who we are as writers,” she said. “But it’s certainly great to be surrounded by so many fascinating writers here in our neighborhood.”

Andrew Visconti is another instructor who will teach a writing class this fall. Visconti was originally a journalist in New York City working as a foreign correspondent for La Republica, a publication run out of Visconti’s native Milan, Italy.

He made the move to memoir-writing and teaching several years ago through the East Hampton Library, and he now teaches writing independently.

His independent work has taken him to “unexpected places,” including the jail in Yaphank, where he gives regular memoir workshops to inmates, and through his work teaching a Ruta27 ESL class, where students for whom English is a second language write stories in English and share them aloud.

“When you are eager to communicate something personal, the most moving words come from the heart, not from the dictionary,” Visconti explained.

Visconti added that he, himself, has a memoir in progress, but said that publication for him and his students alike is never the first priority.

“As I always tell the participants in my writing groups, don’t focus on being published. Focus on getting out a story that you feel needs to be told,” he said. “Publication, if it will ever happen, is much later in the process.”

Eileen Obser began teaching writing classes in 1994 at the Mastic Library. She has continued to teach over the years at various different libraries across the island, counting 24 libraries in total. Now, she teaches out of her home.

“I’m sort of like the coach at this point,” Obser said. “My students want to be in charge. They come with excerpts of whatever it is they’ve been writing that week, and I’m open to all of it — whatever opens their minds and gets them to write. I think that’s how all writing teachers should be.”

To date, Obser has helped 30 people publish their books. Though publication is not always the goal, it can definitely be an end product of these classes.

Take Laurie Marsden for example. Marsden now lives in Brisbane, Australia, but she was briefly a student of Obser’s, and began writing her now published memoir, “Men and Me Too,” while participating in a writing group at the John Jermain Memorial Library in Sag Harbor in 2016.

Marsden, whose international career in the modeling industry is the subject of her memoir, had written various articles for the Los Angeles Times and Oprah Magazine in the 1990s, but had stepped away from both writing and modeling to pursue work as a therapist and to become a mother.

“I had another life after modeling and I enjoyed all of that, but I always had this sense that I wanted to get back to the craft of writing,” Marsden said.

Alongside a group of locals, she attended weekly classes that were originally taught by a travel writer who was between trips back and forth to rural Spain.

“I didn’t know what to expect, because I’d never done a writing class before, but the people were incredibly talented and generous,” Marsden said. “The East End has such a rich history of artists and writers — I think people that are attracted to the area tend to appreciate that, or are artistic themselves.”

At the height of the pandemic in 2020, Marsden had moved to Australia, but she took it upon herself to continue meeting with the John Jermain group that had formed over Zoom.

“The pandemic hit and I was still working on my book, but I missed the people who had actually become part of my writing process,” she said. “That group was the first to make me think about writing a book.”

Marsden doesn’t believe her book would exist without the support of her writing class.

“The group gave me support, feedback and inspiration to continue,” Marsden said. “Like any group that’s invested in each other, we had each other’s best interests at heart. It didn’t feel like there was any competition, and as an artist, that’s important, because you do get a lot of rejection. That group was one of the many beautiful things about the East End.”

The group also included Kathleen Shannon and Peter Acocella, two Sag Harbor residents who were working on novels in the class. Acocella’s novel, “Lafayette Park,” is currently in the works to be published.

“As a writer, I was more of a dabbler who improved greatly from many of the authors who gave their time and expertise running poetry and writing workshops,” Shannon said. “Some were for beginners, others for the more dedicated and working writers, but all were islands of creativity and comradery.”

Acocella was beginning a historical fiction novel about the heart of Joe McCarthy’s “reign of terror in Washington” when he found an ad for the library’s class.

“There was a great sense of camaraderie in the group,” he said. “I was surprised by the warm welcome I received — artists, especially the budding variety, are not always so generous, but these people were.

“Writing is a lonely endeavor, and I wanted to bounce ideas off other writers,” he continued. “What better place than here in our exceedingly literary village?”

Writers interested in learning more about the various writing classes offered this fall can contact Maryann Calendrille at caniosculturalcafe@gmail.com, Andrew Visconti at viscontiNYC@gmail.com and Eileen Obser at eobser@yahoo.com or visit her website, eileenobser.com. Also contact local libraries about programs they may be offering this fall. Laurie Marsden’s memoir, “Men and Me Too,” is available wherever books are sold.