Cover of a zine produced in a free online workshop hosted by Kimball Library in Randolph

The Homebound Diaries project began as an experiment to see how writing might reduce the isolation of the pandemic.

Beginning in September 2020, Kimball Library of Randolph hosted a free biweekly Zoom workshop led by Sara Tucker, a Vermont author and Randolph resident, in which members of the community were assisted in documenting their experience of life during the pandemic. Workshop participants and other White River Valley residents, and their friends and families, were then invited to contribute their poems, stories, essays, photographs, and drawings to a "zine" for the community. Korongo Books, Tucker's imprint, made the zine available as a free ebook through its website and printed it in paperback for sale by the Friends of Kimball Library.

What surprised workshop leaders was how positive the writing and images turned out to be. Instead of venting their angst over life in a pandemic, the zine's contributors offered up messages of hope to their friends, family, and neighbors. The zine can be downloaded for free from Lulu.com, Smashwords.com, and Korongobooks.com.

Although the library has offered free writing workshops to the public before, this was the first one to be held online. It attracted about 8–10 participants on average per session, on par with other Kimball writing workshops, but it had a greater outreach effect because of the publication and distribution of the participants' work. The White River Valley Herald, Front Porch Forum, and the Korongo Books website assisted in disseminating the writing and artwork produced in the Homebound Diaries workshop series.

Sara Tucker

September–December 2020

Sara Tucker