By Anne W. Semmes
It was in May of 1955 that Greenwich Pen Women (GPW) came into being, a spinoff of the older CT Pioneer Branch of the National League of American Pen Women, also based in Greenwich, with its focus on artists, headed by artist Carol Dixon. But the late Evelyn Peterson was a letters member and saw the need for a branch with a focus on authors. But artists and musicians are included in GPW, so relates former GPW president Deborah Weir in an oral history at Greenwich Library’s Oral History Project.
“The qualifications,” noted Weir, “are creative women who create art in many forms: photography, collage, musicians who create their own music, so they have to be composers not performers, and writers. So, it’s a woman who starts with a blank sheet of paper, holds a pen in her hand and creates something out of nothing on this blank sheet.”
Weir tells of an early member and neighbor, Marie Smith Schwartz, a former Washington Post columnist who covered the White House for 16 years and was the official biographer of Lady Bird Johnson. “Marie never had to go through the process of finding a publisher the way the rest of us have to.”
Weir, who served as GPW president from 2014 to 2018, has to her credit both a published book on her business career, “Timing the Market,” and a self-published memoir, “My Brother’s Secret Life.” She notes that self-published books were not allowed for membership criteria when she joined GPW. “However,” she adds, “after one was accepted in the membership, self-publishing was allowed.”
Just how Weir was helped in her book writing by her fellow GPW members she shares. “Our monthly critique groups for each discipline help us refine our work. I submitted each chapter of my memoir to the other writers…My final chapter recounted an event that I thought epitomized the subject of the book. During the critique, someone pointed out that I didn’t sound involved in the event. “Were you there? And, if not, why not?” An author’s emotional involvement energizes a memoir, so I chose another subject for the final chapter.”
Weir recounts how the idea of writing that memoir had come to her via a famous author invited to address memoirs to members. The author “turned us loose in small groups to start a story. We then presented our works to the group amid much hilarity. The speaker summarized with a brief outline for a memoir and sent us home to write, paint, or compose.”
Riverside resident and realtor Catherine Stahl is an artist member and has a similar story. She recalls bringing an abstract work of art to a critique group. “Have you thought of turning the painting in another direction?” she was asked. Another suggestion was, “add a few colors.” That resulting artwork, Stahl tells, won her a prize in an art show.
The present GPW president Lee Paine stepped up from an impressive career in non-profit management of both art and music organizations in 2020 to take the place of Sarah Darer Littman, the award-winning author of Young Adult fiction, who has moved north. With 72 members Paine says Greenwich Pen Women is one of the two biggest branches of the National League of American Pen Women.
“What I think is most important about the Greenwich Pen Women,” she shares, “is that our non-profit serves as a unique way for professional women in Letters, Music, and Art – the three categories of membership – to meet, support each other, and exchange ideas/expertise, while simultaneously reaching out to the community in a variety of ways.”
“Each discipline has its own agenda,” she spells out. “Letters and Art hold frequent critiques, while Music, which was profoundly impacted by Covid, is adapting by planning an interdisciplinary event in April that will be open to the public, as are many of our programs.”
Pen Women has lately been busy co-sponsoring Book Discussion Groups with the Perrot Library and Open Mic Nights with both the Perrot and the Greenwich Library. “We are also,” Paine adds, “producing some of our programs collaboratively, during Covid, with the Bruce Museum and the Greenwich Historical Society.”
Upcoming in April is a GPW event that surely would have intrigued poet William Wordsworth: “Creating Art in the Daffodils at Music in the Woods.” Attendees are invited to bring their own chair, lunch, and art, writing, music pad/supplies, and to create their own works of art, while listening to the live harp music of Lisa Tannebaum on the grounds of Tannebaum’s Stamford estate, “while sitting amidst thousands of blooming daffodils.”
Paine describes the event that is sponsored by the Music Discipline group as offering “the best of what I think the Greenwich Pen Women does well – providing opportunities for creative people to learn from and be inspired by each other in circumstances that encourage a creative response.”
The public is invited to “Creating Art in the Daffodils at Music in the Woods” on April 7, 8 and 9, from 11:30 to 3 p.m. on each day. Cancelled automatically in the case of rain. Those interested in learning more about Greenwich Pen Women and how to join can visit its website at www.greenwichpenwomen.org.
