Marly

So, this dude comes up from the city to take an eco-writing workshop at a little college in way-northern Vermont, where I happen to teach watershed analysis, wildlife habitat, advanced chain saw, and self-defense for women. He's not my type--actually, no man has been my type for a while now, but I bumped into him on campus, and he turned out to be teachable, and kind of attractive in a noir, 1950's American clueless hetero male jackass John Wayne kind of way. Had creases on his pants I really wanted to mess up. Drove a Buick! Also, he made me laugh--a lot--and that can go a long way to breaking down barriers. We spent the night together: we went dancing; I showed him my favorite swimming hole--I played a bit with his fear of being alone up here in the forest in the middle of the night. I thought, put him through some paces; maybe he won't mind joining the fight against industrial wind. We're already an eclectic lot: me with my tattoos and dreadlocks, a few of my lumbersexual students, some of the old farm wives still sportin' granny dress couture, skinny science guys with pocket protectors, fighting great big turbines on our ridgelines…  So, it was an interesting night, to hear him tell about it . . .

Peter Gould of Brattleboro, VT

PETER GOULD is a founder of youth Shakespeare camps around Northern Vermont, and a professor of meditation-for-conflict-transformation at Brandeis University. Peter was a member of the original back-to-the-land movement in Vermont in the 1970's, a way of life he has chronicled in fictional form in the novels Burnt Toast (Alfred A. Knopf, 1971) and Write Naked (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 2008). Peter has worked to perfect his ear for dialogue in more than 4000 live physical theater performances (Gould & Stearns, etc) all over the world, and in directing young people in more than 70 theater productions. His experimental novella, MARLY, was conceived and begun at the Wildbranch Writers Workshop at Sterling College, Vermont, in 2011 and published by Green Writers Press in 2015.