CYNTHIA FRANCA & CHERYL PERREAULT: A Project for Hope
2020 has been a hard year for the arts. Performers are out of work. Festivals are canceled and authors are struggling to connect with readers in a world without live events. Still the drive to create does not stop and some people are using that drive for good. That is exactly what Cynthia Franca and Cheryl Perreault are doing with their new anthology.
Hope through Community is a collection of poems, stories, and photographs from people around the world. This collection offers a tapestry of authentic, interconnected voices offering unique and uplifting writing on the concept of hope in response to global pandemic. United these voices are representative of the many threads of community which, when woven together, inspire us to look outside of ourselves, holding each other up, and looking ahead for better times to come. All proceeds earned from book sales will be given to charities fighting hunger.
Cynthia Franca and Cheryl Perreault met in December 2013 at a Women’s Art Forum event that Cheryl organized. With common interests in creativity, poetry, and the arts the two quickly became friends. This friendship and passion for uplifting their community led to their first anthology project in 2015. It was a collection of poetry celebrating their hometown of Hopkinton, Massachusetts on its 300th anniversary.
Like all of us, Franca and Perreault felt stunned in March of 2020 when our country and communities began to lockdown. The news told of full ICUs, grieving families, and halted businesses. As the year progressed there would be more news of poverty, hunger, political divisions, racial inequality and violence. “This sudden new reality required a lot of bracing of ourselves and our families.”
Franca and Perreault responded by asking themselves “How do we face such a challenging time? How can we help to reinforce the feeling of resilience and encouragement?”
Franca responded by anonymously delivering over 100 inspirational notes to the people in her neighborhood. This had an immediate positive impact and inspired her to propose creating a book offering “words of hope” from community members. She called on her friend Perreault to help.
In April 2020, the project “Words of Hope” was born. They put a call out on social media and newspapers as well as local art centers, writers' circles and open mics. By the end of May, they had 120 responses from published poets to occasional and emerging writers. They got responses from writers as far away as Australia and South Africa. One writer from NASA , had even had a poem sent to space. Their submissions spanned the spectrum of thoughts, emotions and life experiences. Some wrote about hardship from loss or love. Some addressed the pandemic. Some thought to other hard times in life that taught them about having hope. Some thought about the present moment in quarantine.
The book was completed in just 7 months, a feat Perreault credits to Franca’s “impressive driven nature, sense of professionalism and her deep desire and commitment to have the book finished by the end of this challenging, historical year.”
“We, as editors, were emotionally touched and spiritually inspired as we read each submission. We learned from collecting and compiling the contributions that, when you ask people for their words of hope, the stories you get in return can look incredibly different, but all of them collectively can help guide us—can help to make us feel like we’re not alone”
Not only did this project give Franca and Perreault a chance to share hope with readers and writers, it helped them face their personal challenges during these difficult times. “The words from this anthology reminded us that life can be very frightening and very hard, but that there can be balance restored by good moments too. Good moments like more time with family, the pleasure of little things in daily life, noticing beauty, being out in nature, social justice and solidarity, and giving and receiving love.”
This may be a hard time for the arts, but these hard times make it more important than every to create. In the act of creation Franca and Perreault found “hope that these words and images collected during a hard time of world and civilization will offer some stories and songs and poems that might resonate, lift the spirit and help people to feel a little more connection, love, encouragement, and even joy.”
Pick up a copy of the book for yourself and be part of that chain of uplift. As Franca and Perreault say “The way we look at it, all the writers of the poems, stories and songs in this book are contributing to the cause. The people who purchase the books are contributing to the cause and you the reader are a part of this chain by holding this book in your hands, by reading these words and sending a wish or intention of well-being and hope out to the people facing hardship or grief by keeping those in need in your own awareness.”
Learn more or purchase you copy HERE.
Want to know a little more about these fantastic writer/editors?
Cynthia Franca is an author, local contributing artist/writer who has shared bi-lingual poetry, storytelling artist talks, and paintings at community arts events in Massachusetts. She is author of a poetry book called Poetic Treasure, published in Brazil (2003). In Brazil she had worked for 20 years with communication and marketing in a big company of pension fund. She is the coordinator, editor and poet of the Hopkinton 300th Anniversary Poetry Anthology Project, poetry juror and editor of Art on The Trails project, and co-director of the Creative Circles – Art for All!, a community art program, created in 2017. Cynthia holds a bachelor’s degree in social communication in Media and Advertising, an MBA in Marketing from Fundação Getúlio Vargas.
Cheryl Perreault has lived in Hopkinton with her husband and 2 daughters (now 26 and 29 living elsewhere) for 26 years. She has a background in psychology and education and has worked with children, school staff and families, and also taught a number of psychology college courses in the Boston area. When Perreault stopped her career in psychology to care for her daughters at home, she returned to her love of creative writing. Perreault believes her work in psychology, creative writing, and community arts has provided many opportunities to work with people of all ages as well as many walks of life. She has worked as a hospice volunteer for a number of years, interviewing and writing life review stories of people at the end of their life. This work which emphasizes the importance of sharing our stories while, here has influenced her subsequent involvement in facilitating programs for the arts and community including two cable tv programs at HCAM-TV including "Wake Up and Smell the Poetry" and "Meet Your Neighbor," The Mothra True Storytelling, Bittersweet True Storytelling, The Women's Art Forum, The Labyrinth Roundtable and Speaker Series, and a number of creative writing workshops and programs. Perreault has also worked in the area of sharing and writing poetry and stories with young people in schools, women in recovery, people dealing with Alzheimer's and mild cognitive impairments, retired nuns in nursing homes, and people receiving hospice services at the end of their life. More recently, she serves on the Hopkinton Freedom Team and also is a Partakers volunteer, offering academic mentoring and support to an inspiring college student participating in the College Behind Bars program who also happens to be a gifted poet. Perreault also shares her own poetry at poetry open mics and feature readings and as a spoken word artist accompanied by the guitar of Steve Rapson who recorded two CDs of their collaborations. She is also a co-editor of two anthologies of poetry and stories thanks to the creative envisioning and manifesting ability of her dear friend and collaborator Cynthia Franca! Without her ideas and invitations, Perreault believes she would never have been a part of a book-making endeavor - never mind two - and this is ironic given her lifelong great love of books!
