Dispatch from the TOC Residency, our Closing Dinner on March 29th, & a Book Giveaway!
An update from our March Residency and some gift copies of Lottie Hazell's PIGLET!
TOC Residency: Week One
Readers of Content,
As you probably saw in our last note, we’re now in the middle of our second season of the TOC Regenerative Residency at Glynwood. Last week I headed up to Cold Spring to welcome Diane Cook and Andriniki Mattis, for the start of their 3-week residencies on Glynwood’s stunning farm.
Last Friday was, much like today, a gorgeous spring day. I drove up to Glynwood early to stock the fridge, double check the spices, unpack the dry goods, and even made time to go on a little hike with my Dad (followed by sandwiches from the amazing Marbled Meat Shop, an essential stop if you’re ever in the area.) The streams on the property and in the surrounding Fahnestock Park were rushing more animatedly than I’m used to seeing there, and the lakes neared their brim from what I imagine must be the snowmelt from above finding its way downhill.
Diane and Andriniki arrived in the late afternoon, and we took a walk up to the farm store and around the property, including through the Perkins House where we’ll host our residency dinner in two weeks, on Friday March 29th (we still have tickets! come join us!!) We even took a stroll down to the boathouse, one of the most serene places on the property, as the sun was making its descent. Zoraida, Glynwood’s VP of Strategic Partnerships and an artist and writer in her own right, took us out to a lovely welcome dinner down on Main Street, before I headed back to the city and left Diane and Andriniki to settle in for their first night of many.
Over the next two weeks I’ll be bringing groceries up to Glynwood a couple more times, and we’ll be planning the menu for our dinner on the 29th. There’s so much interesting material to draw from in Diane’s book The New Wilderness and Andriniki’s collection of poems Quiet Fires. Some likely menu sneak peeks include acorn flour pancakes, perhaps some wild deer in one form or another, edible flowers, plantain, and jerk chicken.
I’ve said it before: Glynwood is truly one of the most magical places I have ever been, and it feels like such luck to be able to host events there and share it with our community. I really hope you’ll join us. And as a reminder, this dinner is also our primary fundraiser for the residency, which we’re excited to grow in the years to come. Plus, you can even spend the night! Can promise comfy beds and good water pressure, in addition to the stunning interiors.
Here are some photos from last year’s dinner to give you a sense of the splendor of the night. Though it is our main fundraiser, we do also have a few sliding scale seats available, so let us know if those would be of interest to you. Please join us!
A Giveaway!
A few months ago, longtime TOC supporter and our good friend Meaghan Leahy gave me a copy of Piglet by Lottie Hazell, probably as part of a heaving tote bags of books I’m lucky enough to receive from her now and again as she attempts to seed the TOC lineups with her favorite authors (often to great success!) It took me a minute to get to it, but I finally picked it up and even though I should have known I’d love it based on the oil-paint Big Mac cover I was pleasantly surprised! In sort of surreal timing, just a couple days after I finished it, someone from Lottie’s team at Holt reached out to ask if we’d like to give away a few copies of the book to the TOC audience!
I don’t know Lottie personally, but she is a “contemporary-literature scholar, and board-game designer living in Warwickshire. She holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Loughborough University and her research considers food-writing in twenty-first-century fiction.” Literature, board games, and expertise in food-writing in fiction? I think we have to meet!
Piglet centers on a book editor in London (nicknamed Piglet) who goes through an upheaval in her relationship along with other pressures in her life (family, work) as her wedding approaches, and dives into the appetites that emerge and recede along the way. It’s insightful, funny, and has, unsurprisingly, excellent deployment and descriptions of food throughout the book. I have a feeling most of you will like it.
Anyway, all that is to say I’m really excited to give away a few copies of Piglet to the TOC community! We’re making it easy: if you’re interested, just fill out this form with the necessary contact/mailing info, and we’ll do a random drawing at the beginning of April. 3 winners will get a copy of Piglet mailed to them directly from Holt.
Hope you’re all enjoying this first burst of Spring. See you at Glynwood, Little Egg, or a TOC reading soon,
Evan
