Rick Simonson

Hedgebrook: 20 Years of 'Women Authoring Change'
August 4, 2008

Into the bookstore door via receiving this past week, an impressive-looking debut book of poems by Mari L'Esperance: The Darkened Temple, the University of Nebraska Press' Prairie Schooner Prize selection for this year (only disappointment is the print-on-demand aspect, evident in the cover, the print). But what's in the print ... The epigraph is by Tess Gallagher: "All these fears. Finally no choice." And the first lines of the first poem ("The Bush Warbler Laments to the Woodcutter"): " I offered you sanctuary with one condition. / Even this much you could not hold."

The collection goes on strongly from there. It will take some closer (and re-) reading to really sink in and absorb (as is the case, pleasurably so, with good poetry), but a nice thing it is to have in hand.

Also catching this eye in the finer print, the acknowledgements: "I wish to thank ... Dorland Mountain Arts Colony and Hedgebrook for their generous gift of time and space when it was most needed."

I don't know at what point of making her poems, or making poems into a book, that Mari L'Esperance came out this way - surely passing through Seattle, en route to Hedgebrook. It is something she did, she and now some hundreds of other writers.

Book after book, over the years now, has included similar acknowledging mention of Hedgebrook (www.hedgebrook.org) - a nonprofit women writers' retreat nestled into a beautiful part of the universe (sea. mountains, meadow, forest all there or right there), on Whidbey Island, thirty miles north of Seattle. Women apply - a vast array of backgrounds, levels of experience, genres, you name it - are fostered and encouraged. Selected, you get a cabin, a daily, delivered basket of food brought for breakfast and lunch, with dinner taken communally with the handful of other writers resident (in other cabins) at the same time.

For all sorts of reasons, it's not a place I have a lot of first-hand experience of, but since a rather visionary, persistent woman named Nancy Nordhoff, and a few supportive others, started this twenty years ago, its value and place in the scheme of things has seemed most apparent. Over the years, there have been changes and transitions in the organization, but the overall course has been stayed. Women writers get room and time to write.

Last night (Sunday the 3rd), on something of a whim, I ventured north from Seattle, caught the ferry from Mukilteo to Whidbey, and drove the meandering island way to Hedgebrook. I wasn't alone (and was invited) - there was a lovely evening's gathering devoted to celebrating Hedgebrook's twentieth anniversary. Most in attendance were from Seattle or points nearby, many writer alums, others supporters, funders, boardmembers, friends. Executive Director (and playwight) Amy Wheeler, Gitana Garofalo, and other staffmembers were there, keeping things moving with a light hand. Though the evening would eventually move on to an indoor, open mike reading, some good hours were devoted to people mingling and talking, meeting and/or catching up.

The present writers resident at Hedgebrook were all there - and there in a particular role, besides having time for their writing - that of an advisory board or committee, doing some big-picture work for Hedgebrook and its place in the world. Carolyn Forche, Monique Truong, Gloria Steinem, Suheir Hammad, Ruth Forman, Holly Morris, and Parnaz Foroutan are the ones there now, a rather luminous group, yes, and all part of this clear-skied night gathering.

All of those writers, save for Parnaz Foroutan, have work out in the world, some (over the years) quite significantly, but it is an admirable part of what Hedgebrook does, that it helps acknowledge and bring together the elder and established and the younger and aspiring (often the older and aspiring, too). In keeping with that spirit, it was telling (and not surprising) that more than one person said, Wait until you see what Parnaz has going, this amazing novel ...

I now know a little about it (set in Iran, early 20th century), that it isn't finished yet, and she is as yet without agent (no trying so far), or publisher. I also know that I won't be that surprised when the day comes and I read of a rights deal for a novel by her, see the novel's place in a catalog, then the advance copy, the finished book, and, in time,  the reading at Elliott Bay (which would be co-presented by Hedgebrook). Saying I won't be surprised still allows for the miracle of that book being written, and being written as it might, and all the other things that would happen (including the surprise and pleasure in reading it), but it's also said because this sequence has happened a number of times before. Hedgebrook very much has its germinating, fostering place in the sequence.

Posted by Rick Simonson on August 4, 2008 | Comments (4)