From the Farmhouse Table: April 2022
It has been a year (well, a little over a year!) since Kimberly A.C. Wilson joined Hedgebrook as Executive Director. Her anniversary coincides with our annual Equivox fundraiser and while the event takes a lot of time and effort, we did not want this occasion to be overshadowed. We are grateful for her leadership and look forward to what is ahead. One of our Seattle University interns, Sofi Gonstead, recently took the opportunity to sit down with Kimberly and ask a few questions. Enjoy!
Kimberly and her sweet pup, Hildy.
My name is Sofi Gonstead, a senior journalism student at Seattle University and a communications intern for Hedgebrook. Today, I got to speak with Kimberly Wilson. Hedgebrook's Executive Director.
Q: As a journalism student, reading about your background was pretty exciting. What was your first job? In communications or otherwise.
A: I was 11 or 12 and I was an intern on Capitol Hill. My uncle was a congressman, so I was just a gopher, basically. I also waited tables and loved being a waitress. Journalism was a career I just kind of stumbled into. I didn't study journalism in college, I didn't write for the paper in high school, but I always wrote–that was always the thing. English was always my favorite class. I couldn't imagine a life that wasn't based on writing. So, after graduate school I sent out (back in the day) 300 resumes to every organization that seemed interesting to me. I got exactly 2 responses. One was at the World Bank, which fascinated me. The other was the Associated Press. I grew up for some of my childhood in France, so the idea of traveling and using my language was very exciting. So I was very careful about my interview and my response to the World Bank. For the Associated Press, I showed up in flip flops and I was like "yeah, whatever." I wasn't even remotely interested. However, they got back to me and were like "Hey, we need a flunky to cover the White House." So, I took the job. It was the first time I'd done any reporting at all, and I learned how to write for journalism. I got bitten by it. I fell in love with it on the job. It was a wonderful opportunity to get to see how news in particular can shape everything that happens in a day. I got to live out the reality that people are the same–there's no reason to hold people in power in awe. In time, as I got more serious about the craft of being a journalist, I understood that being a journalist carries a lot of power. You're in a privileged place to be able to lift up the voices of people and so you should take that really seriously.
Q: With the internet, journalism isn't the same as it used to be. How do you feel about that?
A: I think of the media as the food pyramid. Your diet of news should primarily consist of reliable, accountable, news sources. For some people that might be their neighbor, but for most of us that is a publication like the New York Times, or the Seattle Times, ones that make a serious effort every day to get it right, and when they get it wrong, they sayit–and aim to do better. It's not a perfect industry. Journalists are not special people, we are hopefully just people who are trying really hard to get right what is confusing, and to make clear what is opaque.
Q: Your Hedgebrook bio says you can be caught "visibly mending things." What does that mean?
A: During covid, I was looking for things to do when I was stuck in the house with the dog. One of the things was realizing I wasn't going anywhere! So, I could actually start doing the things that had been on the list to get done for decades. I had this IKEA comforter I'd had since college and it just had a growing hole that needed to be fixed. So, I literally just bought a couple books on how to sew, bought some thread, and started stitching and fixing things that needed mending. It felt like the right thing to do in a time when everything needed mending. It was empowering, and I still do it! It also lets me be a little bit less consumer-y.
Q: How's your Italian coming along?
A: *laughs* It's funny you ask. I took some classes before covid, and during covid I haven't made enormous progress. However, now that I'm settled here on the Island, I was thinking of finding an Italian class either here or online.
Q: Change of subject--congrats on your almost 1 year anniversary at Hedgebrook! When did you first hear about Hedgebrook, and did you ever think that you would be where you are with the organization?
A: Thank you! Good question. I heard about Hedgebrook when I was a reporter in Seattle. I knew it existed, and it seemed like a fairytale idea. In focusing on my journalism, I wasn't doing much writing (at least not anything I wanted to share) so it just was in the back of my head as: this exists, and the world is a better place because it exists. During the summer of 2020 I was in Portland and really, you know, struggling. It wasn't an easy time. I came across the job description and was like "that sounds amazing!" Months later, I was like, this just makes sense. So, in the moment, I wrote a cover letter, updated my resume, and sent it off. A couple of days later I got a call back. I could see myself doing the work and it felt like the right fit for me. This was a place that I could both learn from and do good by, and I'm so grateful that the board saw in somebody (who hadn't been an Executive Director) the skills necessary to take on this role. This is a dream. As a writer, a journalist, a feminist, as someone who believes that there are voices who are not listened to and that we should do all we can to make sure that those voices are out in the world–because they are the ones that actually change things. To be able to be part of an organization that was founded around that idea 34 years ago, and has been consistently moving that forward and making space for people to bring their narratives, work on them, and then share them with the world? Yeah, I feel incredibly fortunate to be part of this organization.
Q: Is there anything that you were unable to do in your first year, given covid or in general, that you have plans to do in the future?
A: There are things we're going to do this year that I'm grateful we're going to do–and they're just the beginning. This summer, we're going to have our first ever writers conference for Hedgebrook. I really think it fits in a space that has been previously unoccupied but that people would expect us to occupy. The writers that come to us are both early in their writing practice or veteran, published writers. We find that a lot of the writers who come can talk about next steps with each other, and they stay in touch forever. For a lot of their questions, we wanted to have a place where we could invite both alums and also people who are not yet Hedgebrook writers to sort of listen and learn around these topics that our writers are very knowledgeable about. This is going to be another year of getting us back to where we need to be. The writers conference is a chance to do something new. There are lots of ideas and plans, but I don't want to overshare them–because who knows where we're going to be in the future.
Q: What's the one thing that you're looking forward to most about being back in-person, full capacity?
A: I look forward to the lack of consciousness of being together. You know, not thinking "Oh, I want to hug this person, but...." Just being natural in company together is something I look forward to. And I hope that we continue to do things that we've learned to do that we haven't done so well before, like washing our hands and being conscientious of the people around us who may have compromised immune systems. There have been some things we've learned through covid that I hope we never let go of. Like being able to be more accessible. People who needed accessibility asked for it for years and years and suddenly we're like "Yeah of course!" I think those things should stay.
Q: If you could only recommend one book, to me and the person hearing this, what would it be?
A: We just had our board retreat last month and we did a session about the book that shaped you. It was a fantastic conversation. For me, it would be Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents. It's a two-book series. 2023 is the year that Parable of the Sower begins, so we're definitely going to be doing something about that. It's just such a powerful book and story and I'm looking forward to bringing together futurists, Black futurists in particular, who were Octavia Butler's compatriots. She has just always had my heart and I'm a fan of all of her works, but that's one I think is really significant.