From the Farmhouse Table: October 2022

Keep Writing

Back when I was a baby reporter at the Associated Press, I used to come home to my rented rowhouse in the Petworth area of Washington, D.C., and work on my poetry and a collection of short stories that I would send out to literary journals.

When one was rejected from, say, the Cimarron Review, returned in the self-addressed envelope I had included with my submission, I would print out a new cover letter, stamp a new envelope and submit the same copy to the next journal on the list.

I kept a chart of my submissions -- and a corkboard with the rejection letters.

Rejection hurt. I’m sure I had some notion of one day waving those letters triumphantly in the faces of those who rejected me. I kept writing.

When my rowhouse caught on fire, burning my outbox and journals, melting my floppy disc and file folders, and frying my computer, that corkboard didn’t make it either.

But that special relationship writers have with rejection? Oh, that survived.

I’ve known about Hedgebrook since I was a crime reporter for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. I comforted friends who applied and didn’t get the invitation for which they hoped. I encouraged them to try again. I cheered on those who did, whether they got in or not. As for myself, I never applied. I would, I told myself, when I wouldn’t be rejected.

Since becoming Hedgebrook’s executive director 18 months ago, I have been struck by two data points: the first is 2,300, the rough number of alumnae who have shared a meal prepared in the Farmhouse kitchen and then returned to their cottage, bellies full and minds swimming, to read or write in front of the fire.

The second is a significantly larger number, and represents all those women who dared to apply but weren’t selected for a Hedgebrook residency.

Something like 1,300 people have applied for the 72 available residencies in 2023. If my math is correct, that means about 5 percent of those who apply got accepted. And if we apply that ratio to Hedgebrook’s 34 years, that would mean our 2,300 alum were among about 41,500 applicants.

Glass half empty, those numbers tell a story about rejection. Glass half full, those numbers remind me that Hedgebrook has been, and remains, a dream for women who write. It is competitive, not because we want it to be, but because it is the dream of so many, because so many writers need the time and hospitality that only Hedgebrook gives.

In 2014, Ellen Sussman, the New York Times bestselling author of four novels, wrote a blog post about Hedgebrook as “the Holy Grail of residencies” that remains one of the most visited pages on our website. Before she was invited to Hedgebrook, after a decade of trying, she was skeptical of the notion that writers get accepted and come to Hedgebrook at exactly the right time in their lives. I shared that skepticism, though every writer I meet on the land pretty much says the same thing: “Now was the time I needed to come.”

I wish Hedgebrook had the capacity to give every writer who needs time and space and nurturing just that. And I am grateful that an alumna, Amber Flame, directs our programs team with the sensitivity and awareness that only comes from a writer who applied to Hedgebrook, and was rejected, before being invited to residency here. She kept writing. And she’s led us to make meaningful changes that improve applicants’ odds by doubling our annual capacity and engaging genre-specific evaluators so each voice has its best audience.

Flame is one of the women writing the canons of tomorrow right now. The voices of Black and Indigenous writers, writers who identify as People of Color and immigrants and LGBTQ+, writers who are taking on patriarchy and colonialism and racism and sexism, writers who are tackling technology and science and fascism and history, across genres, across the world, these are Hedgebrook writers. Some of them have come here, some haven’t come here, yet.

But I take seriously our responsibility to make room for them. For you.

A writer who recently made it to the second round of our adjudication process sent an emotional email to Flame and her team. The applicant was sad that she hadn’t gotten in but was grateful to hear that her work resonated with readers. She ended her message this way: “I am definitely still on the right track.”

Damn straight, you are. Keep writing. And keep connected with Hedgebrook’s broad community of women authoring change.

-Kimberly A.C. Wilson | Executive Director, Hedgebrook