Writers, established and prospective alike, will be celebrated this third weekend of the local culture fest Shout Out Saugerties.
Festival-goers can sign up for a writing workshop called “Documenting Reality” with documentary television writers Jamie Bernanke and Theresa Giordano on Saturday for a ten-dollar registration fee. Join the two writers at 12:30 pm at the Reformed Church. They will help participants mold their true stories and experiences into tales for the small screen.
Shortly after, two dozen ticket purchasers ($40) will join culinary writer Richard Frisbie on a walking tour of some of Saugerties’ best eateries. The tour will start at the Saugerties Farmer’s Market at 1:30 p.m. and work its way, regardless of weather conditions, through the historic district. Those who tag along on the Food + Art Walkabout are promised a sampling of some of the best bites in town, along with tips, tricks and entertainment from local restaurateurs.
Tickets for both events are available for purchase via http://www.shoutoutsaugerties.com.
The first ten people at the Reformed Church at 3:45 can join local filmmaker Katie Cokinos in her own lesson in writing for the screen, entitled “Craft and Vision: Writing for Film.” Kokinos, writer and director of numerous short films and a feature-length project set in Saugerties called “I Dream Too Much,” encourages participants to leave the screenwriting platitudes at the door.
At Inquiring Minds Bookstore, the writing workshop leaders and additional local talent will gather to read their own works at 7 p.m.
If writer Will Nixon’s reading at Inquiring Minds grabs your attention, you might join him this Sunday for a nature and poetry walk. With their ten-dollar ticket, ten interested poets can amble down towards the lighthouse Thoreau-style with Nixon, “notebook and pen in hand, to see what nature has to teach.” Inspired by the scenery around them as well as by Nixon himself, participants will be in poetical company.
If you prefer a paintbrush to a pen, painter and printmaker Angela Gaffney-Smith will lead a watercolor walk on Sunday, starting in Malden Park at 12:30 p.m. Gaffney-Smith says she seeks to help interested creators to simplify line and shape into bold forms using brushes larger than a half-inch. This event also costs $10.
Close out your Sunday with one of two large-format performances during this weekend of Shout Out Saugerties’ busy lineup. Beginning at 5:30 p.m. at the Cross Contemporary Art Gallery at 99 Partition Street, a collection of poets, including Cornelius Eady, Mikhail Horowitz, Victoria Sullivan and Bruce Weber, will read aloud from their works. More poets and details will be available as the event develops throughout the week. Keep an eye on the Shout Out Saugerties website or Facebook page for up-to-the-minute news.
Cokinos and her co-writer/director Guy Reed will bring their film, Gestures, to a 7:30 p.m. screening at the Saugerties Public Library. It has a run time of two hours.
“The path of life wanders through many landscapes and marks the routes once traveled,” write the artists. Encounters with inhabitants of different cultures shape the understanding of diversity, they say. They want people to understand “that which is not only familiar to us.”
Join the family! 
