Arteles Catalogue 2023-2020

Back to Basics program / JUNE 2023
Lisa Rebert
Netherlands
www.wordalchemists.com
About
Lisa is a self-described word alchemist whose day job
consists of copywriting, editing, and otherwise playing with
words in various freelance communications projects. Now
she is shifting her attention to producing her first collection
of short stories.
Lisa writes both fiction and creative nonfiction, and grounds
her work in a strong sense of intersectional feminism, the
power of cultural exchange, and a desire to free travel writing
from its colonial shackles.
She has long been interested in the power of storytelling and
the stories we tell ourselves (collectively and individually),
and how they ultimately frame the world we live in. For Lisa,
storytelling is less of an escape from the human experience
and more of a distillation that strengthens its proof.
Stories: Fiction + Non-Fiction
I watched the Lily of the Valley give way to Oxtail Daisies and
Scentless Chamomile. Plodded through waist-high fields of
Valerian while the Lupine struggled in the relentless heat. I
became like the Jackdaws – colonizing an existing room and
helping build a community that foraged together. Mining our
various talents; being generous with our gifts. I built sauna
fires with quiet intensity, which were fueled by solidarity as
much as by the natural laws of chemistry. I walked in the
forest, leaned against white birch, and found myself once
more. It’s not that I was lost, I just needed the stillness to
guide me.
Armed with my neon sticky notes, sitting in the yellow
reading chair in the attic or on the picnic blanket beneath
the trees – (coincidentally?) the soft blue-green fabric the
color of Jackdaw eggs flecked with dirt, imitating their brown
speckles – and accompanied by a stack of ever-rotating
books, I wrote. I began two non-fiction essays while also
cleaning up several short pieces of fiction. Most importantly
I rekindled that creative fire within me, in large part due to
several books from the Arteles library. A big thanks you to
those in my cohort and these books for all that they inspired
in me: The Courage to Create by Roland May, Women Who
Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, The Zen of
Creativity by John Daido Loori, and Devotions by Mary Oliver.