From the Farmhouse Table: November 2022
The birthday trio left to right: Kimberly A.C. Wilson, Nancy Nordhoff, and Vito Zingarelli
A Celebration of Our History and Future
Thirty-four years ago, a fifty-five-year-old philanthropist bought a 33-acre property on an island 38 miles from downtown Seattle and turned it into Hedgebrook, a writing retreat for women. Today, that philanthropist, Nancy Nordhoff, turns 90. Sharing her birthdate are Vito Zingarelli, the longtime program director who retired two years ago, and me, the former journalist who now runs the retreat.
What sounds like a math equation is one of those beautiful stories of serendipity that happen all the time at Hedgebrook.
Nancy and her co-founder Sheryl Feldman dreamt into being a Hedgebrook that would give emerging writers, fully half of them women of color, the space, time and community they needed to write. Nancy established Hedgebrook with an original founding gift, as well as the property, cottages and other buildings. For the first ten years, she ran and funded the retreat, showering writers with a hospitality she called radical because it was turned on people so often doling out hospitality to others. Sixteen years ago, Hedgebrook transitioned to become a 501(c)(3) nonprofit literary arts organization.
Still, until recently, Hedgebrook’s website used the words “fully funded” to describe the 72 residencies the nonprofit awards to adjudicated writers each year. What we meant was that the writers who come here don’t pay fees for their residencies. What that unfortunate turn of phrase suggested was that we didn’t need support to make that happen.
We do. Hedgebrook is not a fully funded residency, yet.
That’s the Hedgebrook we aspire to become, a literary organization whose residencies are sponsored by individuals, businesses and funders who know the world is a richer place when the diverse voices of women authoring change are nurtured and lifted.
The mission Nancy and Sheryl established in 1988 remains a durable one, to support visionary women writers whose stories and ideas shape our culture now and for generations to come. Women who write anyway. Making space for them is even more urgent today.
-Kimberly A.C. Wilson | Executive Director, Hedgebrook