Read-and-Write-a-thon 2011 welcomed dozens of WriterCoach Connection friends and associates to the Willard Middle School library in Berkeley on May 21, for our biggest fundraiser of the year. Writer coaches, WCC site coordinators, and Community Alliance for Learning staff and board members read aloud from their favorite works in a non-stop chain of words and images that stretched from 8:00 a.m. until 6:00 p.m.
Readers chose from a wide range of their favorite sources for their twenty-minute shifts at the front of the room, from short fiction, essays, and poetry to their own original memoirs, poetry, and fiction. We heard the works of Colette, James Thurber, Sherman Alexie, Emily Dickinson,Tina Fe, Marcel Proust (read in both English and French by political reporter and commentator, and WCC coach, Larry Bensky), and even Abraham Lincoln, when CAFL board member Denis Clifford made his traditional Read-and-Write-a-thon presentation of the Gettysburg Address.
The event is on its way to generating its goal of $25,000 in support of WCC. Donations are still accepted online, or by check, payable to CAFL and mailed to PO Box 6098, Albany, CA 94706. Checks save WCC the 7% fee taken by the online vendor.
WCC coach Liz Willingham reads from The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, by James Thurber, at Read-and-Write-a-thon 2011. Donations are still accepted at the event's website. We're on our way, but we still haven't reached our goal of $25,000. Help us get there!
Bob Menzimer
