Three-day workshop on clear writing offered in Tamworth

TAMWORTH — The Yeoman’s Fund for the Arts is sponsoring a series of gatherings and workshops this August in honor of one of their founding members, Shirley Elder Lyons.

Becky Sinkler will lead three days of workshops at the Samuel Wentworth Library in Center Sandwich, on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, Aug. 20, 22, and 24, from 3 to 6 p.m. She plans two days of instruction and conversation, with the last day devoted to editing of the participants' works, giving about 20 minutes to each one.

Sinkler had dropped out of college in the 1950s, married, and had children. Then she went back to school at the University of Pennsylvania and worked for a small daily newspaper before getting a job at the Philadelphia Inquirer, as a secretary in the Sunday magazine section. After a stint as copy editor of the Sunday magazine, then editor of the Inquirer Book Review, she was recruited by the New York Times, where she eventually became editor of the Sunday Book Review. After 10 years in that role, she retired and came to Sandwich.

“Structure of a story, article, book or even letter is foremost," she said. "You can impose it before you write, or after you have written. Clear writing is impossible without clear thinking, and clear thinking is not possible for some of us without clear writing. Motto: How do I know what I think till I see what I write?”

The series is dedicated to Lyons, a journalist who believed in and lived by clear writing. When she received the New Hampshire Bar Association’s Print Media Award for the second consecutive year in 1993, she told the Globe, “My philosophy is we have a responsibility to educate people and to tell people in simple terms about complex legal issues.”

She had already spent four decades in a career that took her from California to covering Congress, before “retiring” to the Granite State. While covering Capitol Hill, she wrote for the Post, the Washington Daily News, and the Washington Star. With Paul Clancy, she wrote "Tip: A Biography of Thomas P. O’Neill Jr., Speaker of the House."

Attribution: laconiadailysun.com

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