Your Lucky Day

Tickets for Soapstone’s biennial raffle are now on sale! It’s time to pick up that good luck penny and support women writers. The raffle includes seven fantastic, themed prize packages. Here’s a sneak peek at what you could win.

• A week of your own at Soapstone.
• Tickets to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Portland Opera, Artists Repertory Theatre, Portland Center Stage, Mt. Hood Railroad, and the Portland Spirit.
• A cheesemaking class at Kookoolan Farms, cooking classes from Lost Arts Kitchen, and gift certificates to Linnton Feed & Seed and Concentrates.
• A gift certificate to Zenana Spa, an acupuncture session at Yoga Pearl, and a 10-class card from Yoga Shala of Portland.
• A week-long writer’s retreat in the Columbia Gorge.
• Season tickets to the Portland Arts & Lecture Series.
• A home remodeling consultation from Square Deal Remodeling, a $200 gift certificate to The Joinery, and a $100 gift certificate to The ReBuilding Center.
• Gift certificates to popular Portland restaurants, including Higgins and Mother’s Bistro.

Visit our website for full descriptions of the raffle packages. Raffle tickets are $10 each or three for $25. Tickets will be on sale from June 15 through September 5. The raffle drawing will take place at Broadway Books at 7pm on Wednesday, September 9. You needn’t be present to win. You can order tickets by downloading the form from our website. All proceeds go to support Soapstone’s writing residency program.

A special thanks to all the individuals and businesses who donated goods and services to create these wonderful raffle packages!

Ann Dudley
Anna Johnson
Annie Blooms Books
Artists Repertory Theatre
Beth Kaye
Campbell Salgado Studio
Chrissy Gardiner
Collage
Concentrates
Ellen Notbohm
Friends of Trees
Gigi Rosenberg
Higgins Restaurant
Ibex Studios
James Jeffrey-West
Judith Arcana
Judith Barrington
Julie Swenson
Kevia Jeffrey-West
Kookoolan Farms
Kristy Athens
Leslie & Atman Hutchinson
Linnton Feed & Seed
Lise Brackbill
Literary Arts
Lost Arts Kitchen
Martha Goetsch
MetroPaint
Mimi Maduro
Mother’s Bistro
Mt. Hood Railroad
Nan Narboe
Noel Hanlon & Peter Koehler
NW Film Center
Old Wives’ Tales Restaurant
Oregon Shakespeare Festival
Paloma Clothing
Pastini Pastaria
Patricia Norris
Portland Center Stage
Portland Classical Chinese Garden
Portland Japanese Garden
Portland Opera
Portland Spirit
Profile Theatre
Reed College Theatre
Rejuvenation
Russ Corrigan
Sharon Wood Wortman
Square Deal Remodeling
Stephen Slusarski
Sue Einowski
The Joinery
The Monkey & The Rat
The ReBuilding Center
Third Rail Repertory Theatre
Thomas McElroy
Tina Lilly
Twisted
Uma Dawn Osha Tupper
Wallace Books
Yoga Shala of Portland
Zenana Spa & Wellness Center

We hope everyone out there will support Soapstone by purchasing tickets and telling all your friends to do the same. Good luck!

BRITTNEY CORRIGAN-MCELROY

No Stone Unturned

I am extremely honored to have been chosen as the next Director of Soapstone, an organization which has held a special place in my heart for many years.

My involvement with Soapstone began 13 years ago. I attended a work party while the building was still under construction, gathering branches and debris to heap onto the fledgling berm that was rising steadily along the perimeter of the land. What started as giving small amounts of my time to volunteer at a work party or help with a mailing led to being a writer-in-residence in 2007 and serving on the selection committee for 2008. Experiencing Soapstone as a resident and then reading dozens of applications from so many talented and deserving women made me realize just how impassioned I am about this organization.

I made my first donation to Soapstone when I was 25 years old, before the residency program had begun. Even then, I knew the importance of such an organization to women writers such as myself. Having time away from the demands and distractions of daily life to focus on writing is essential for many women writers. The opportunity to focus on a challenging, lengthy, or long-put-off writing project in such an inspiring, natural setting can be the flint that sparks the idea for that next poem, sustains the fire to write that 500-page novel, or ignites that dormant muse. And the women who have spent time writing at Soapstone bring its spirit back home with them, sharing their experiences and work with their communities and the larger literary world.

So I welcome the opportunity to serve an organization which has gifted me and many others so richly. I’m looking forward to working with all the women and men who have helped to make Soapstone such a unique and invaluable community over the past two decades. I want to especially recognize Ruth Gundle and her tireless, generous, and passionate dedication as Soapstone’s original Director. My gratitude, as well, to Judith Barrington, the current and past members of the Board, and to all of the devoted volunteers and supporters who make up Soapstone’s extraordinary community. I am humbled and ecstatic to step into this new relationship with Soapstone and our literary community – one as natural as the Water Studio open to Soapstone Creek, the Wind Studio perched among the trees, and the birds that bridge the two worlds – feet in the earth and wings open to the possibilities of the sky.

BRITTNEY CORRIGAN-MCELROY