From the Farmhouse Table: February 2025
A Place of Refuge
In the face of announced cuts to federal arts funding and the trickle down effects, one month after Hedgebrook’s annual budget was approved for 2025, we’re already re-forecasting. Our HR consultant is also looking at our employee handbook and website in the face of recent White House orders around diversity, equity and inclusion.
Many things will likely change. What isn’t changing is what Hedgebrook is, who it’s for, what we do and why we do it.
Hedgebrook is a sanctuary, a deeply intentional place where writers connect and are served so they can push their voices and stories out to the world with confidence. Those writers, like those Virginia Woolf envisioned with her Room of One’s Ownessay, are women. And by women we mean people who identify as women. Full stop.
There is a reason Woolf’s vision, and that of our founders, Nancy Nordhoff and Sheryl Feldman, is so relevant today. And that is because women face earning and publishing disparities not experienced by men. So many of our writers come from groups that experience additional disparities based on race, place of origin, immigration status and sexual identity. We exist to give these writers, at no cost to them, the space and time and radical hospitality our alumnae tell us they don’t receive elsewhere. A sanctuary is a place of refuge. Our writers both need and deserve nothing less.
This is a year that has already tested our mettle. A year that whispers to our defiant inner selves that now is the time we have been preparing for. The harm happening around us and to us and to our neighbors is real. So we are planning for success and joy and hope while we are also planning for surprises and barriers and loss.
It is a time of girding.
I coined a word last week while playing Spelling Bee: girdian (n). One who girds so someone else can regroup, find their voice, notch their arrow.
That’s what Hedgebrook does for our writers. Now and always.
Endurance,
Kimberly A.C. Wilson | Executive Director, Hedgebrook