Celebrating the Spoken Word: An Evening of Writers and Performance in Sag Harbor

The Church in Sag Harbor continues its popular Writer’s Spoken Word this Saturday at 6 pm, WORD: ON TRANSFORMATION. Clearly, the community resonated with the inaugural program in February, “Love is a Verb,” which offered vibrant, wide-ranging readings to a standing-room-only audience. 

Tickets are available online ($10), at the door ($15), or Café Table Seat for 4 ($25 per seat).

Curator and Programming Manager Talena Mascali, a writer and contributor herself, created the spoken word events in line with the rich tradition in Sag Harbor as a writer’s oasis. “Connecting with the community is at the heart of our work at The Church,” Talena says. “The WORD series is meant to honor Sag Harbor as a Maker Village by welcoming artists, writers, and creatives to celebrate the power and range of the written and spoken word.”

Founded with genuine community roots, Talena has worked alongside local poet and NYU Professor Kathy Engel-Snow to curate the event. It’s inspiring to see the diversity of voices and perspectives represented, highlighting The Church’s aim to inspire the writers throughout our community to share their passion.

Readings will be held in The Church’s Studio/Ground Floor, with café table seats, regular seating, and light refreshments. The evening will explore the written word in varied forms: poetry, prose, fiction, essays, spoken word, etc. Featured writers, storytellers, and performers include The Reverend Holly Haile Davis • Candace Hill • Pacifique Irankunda • Kristen Santori • and Ella Engel-Snow.

If you haven’t been before, The Church is a bonafide Sag Harbor institution. The atmosphere, like The Church in general, is equal parts approachable and high-minded. It’s what makes me love coming to The Church so much—a blend of children laughing and playing mixed in with some of the most thoughtful and well-considered exhibits in the Hamptons. Matauqus Tarrant, a Native Artist and Educator of Shinnecock, Hopi, and Ho-Chunck, will open the program with a flute performance.

Talking to Talena, I realize that writing is essentially a public experience. To write is to speak with a limitless number of voices, yet – writing enables words to be shared. To read aloud, and to listen, creates a public space where we are invited into the interior of another. Without the listener or reader, the words and ideas remain inert. 

To speak and to share, to listen and to learn — writing transforms ideas into action, transforming the writer and the reader. To hear and to speak words, like a magician’s spell, can have unexpected effects. Now in its second iteration, the event has transformed to be called ‘WORD.’ “Since our inaugural event in February, we have stayed open to change in how we curate the event, and we’re still fine-tuning as we move forward,” adds Talena.

Reflecting on the program’s theme, Irankunda provided a quote from Good Prose, where authors Richard Todd and Tracy Kidder discuss Irankunda’s essays and write, “For the writer, the ultimate reward of memoir may be to produce a work in which the facts are preserved, but the experience transformed.”

WORD is a great place for lovers of writing, lovers of words, or anyone who aspires to be. I guess I’m biased because I am a writer…but I hope I have used my words to convince you to go! If not, let’s let Talena have the last….WORD.

“We’re inviting writers to engage with the enormous, trepidatious theme of transformation. What I find most interesting is that transformation is ongoing, sometimes imperceptible, sometimes dramatic, and often recognized when change is visible. For me, the underbelly, the heart of the storm, the long road with no end in sight, is where transformation lives. It’s in leaving the comfort of your current self, often with no choice, forced to discover who you can become.”