In 1987 when I invited a group of women to the Wintergreen Resort nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains to welcome Nikki Giovanni to Virginia, I could not have known that we would become the Wintergreen Women Writers’ Collective, a gathering of writers who gain strength and direction from communion with one another. -Joanne Gabbin
A haven. Where we cheer each other on. Not my mother’s friends, for sure, but riding the night winds, our hearts skip across the clouds, coming to the rest on a distant star called possibility; we arrive at Wintergreen. Good for us. -Nikki Giovanni
The Wintergreen Women Writers Collective is now a 501(c)3 organization that gathers Black women writers in a literary community that seeks to publish, document, preserve, and celebrate their creative work. More than seventy women from all over the country have taken part in one or more of the Wintergreen retreats or programs over the last 38 years, coming to a place where they can do the sacred work of literary and cultural production. Wintergreen Women are prefiguring a world where the history and legacy of Black women writers are honored and preserved -- a world where Black women writers have access to intergenerational spaces where, in community and mutuality, they can nurture one another and locate resources to support their creative practice. Members of the Collective share their knowledge and creativity as a way of encouraging and engaging one another and their extended literary and scholarly communities.