Let's save writer organizations

Does your city have one?

My dad's cat Amy on top of his fridge, deliberately staged with a Cheez-it box. Did you know? Amy is a friend of readers and writers both.

I'm going to talk about local writer organizations. These include The Loft, in Minneapolis, StoryStudio Chicago, and Writespace, in Houston.

While living in Seattle, I frequently walked on fast-fading fall afternoons to Hugo House, a literary arts org in an old house in the Capitol Hill neighborhood.

In the old rooms, sometimes with standing room only, we’d gather with others who turned words. Mostly it was great. Later, some events became crowded. In response, Hugo House expanded to a new location and offered more classes and meeting rooms.

From afar, it was exciting to hear Hugo House had built a larger space with better windows: a grand writer’s stomping ground.

But more recently, I’ve heard they are experiencing financial problems. I’ll return to this shortly.

This past Saturday I went to an open mic reading series at Houston’s Writespace. It was nice hearing the readers as well as a singer-songwriter who brought up his guitar for a clever “get out the vote” song. These things reminded me that Houston has always had meeting spaces for protest music and poetry, but generally they are bars and pubs.

Living in an area now where cultural gatherings seem to happen mostly at churches (Unitarian, Quaker, Modern Mennonite, others) or libraries or community centers (the latter two are closed on Sundays), I was relieved to find at Writespace an easy forum for hearing from others. It was also a chance to drink a fresh lemonade with ginger syrup and strawberries, made by a local poet who has common friends with me at a local bookstore.

Today I learned that Writespace, like Hugo House, has had serious financial problems since the pandemic. I wonder whether all these writer orgs can find emergency grants from cities, states, and art-grant-making orgs.

Meanwhile, want to help keep writer spaces open? Need encouragement for your own writing? You could join one of Writespace’s *virtual Write Practice Support Communities. If you are local, consider popping in to an in-person gathering. But if you are away, lots are online as well. Other workshops and a place to donate are at this site, including “Memoir and Your Family” and “How to Write a Zine.”

Thank you for supporting local arts orgs here or in your own city.