Mission
Through nurturing and encouraging Black women writers, Wintergreen Women Writers Collective will publish, document, preserve, and celebrate their creative work.
Vision
The history and legacy of Black women writers are honored and preserved. 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.
A Note from the Founder:
“I know a place”
Exhilaration: we were meeting in a time that had already been charged by the literary successes of such writers as Toni Morrison, Ntozake Shange, Alice Walker, June Jordan, and Audre Lorde in the 1970s and 1980s, as detailed by Courtney Thorsson in The Sisterhood: How a Network of Black Women Writers Changed American Culture (2023). We, the founding members—Nikki Giovanni, Daryl Cumber Dance, Paule Marshall, Trudier Harris, Opal Moore, Sandra Govan, Carmen Gillespie, and Joanne Gabbin—were excited to be together, excited that our retreat house, nestled in the mountains of the Blue Ridge, would give us the space to reflect and rejuvenate.
Nikki expresses it this way:"...riding the night winds, our hearts skip across the clouds, coming to rest on a distant star called possibility, we arrive at Wintergreen. Good for us.”
I remember that we shared delicious meals and engaging conversations around the dinner table. And the stories flowed as though they had been dammed up too long. More than twenty years later, we shared some of these stories in Shaping Memories: Reflections of African American Women Writers (2009). As we left our first retreat 38 years ago, we could not imagine that the sisterhood that we formed would sustain us and draw many other Black women writers to the Wintergreen experience. In truth, many of the challenges that we faced then are prevalent now. However, we hope that the creativity, academic innovation, and institution building that the Wintergreen Women Writers Collective represents will serve as a model for other writing groups who desire a place to listen, write, discover, and belong.
Warmest regards,
Joanne V. Gabbin
Executive Director
As I think back to September 1987 when I invited a group of women writers to the Wintergreen Resort to welcome Nikki Giovanni to Virginia, I remember my distinct feelings of expectation and exhilaration. Expectation: we, Black women writers in the academy, would come together in a kind of literary sisterhood to discuss the joys and challenges of teaching in places that were not always welcoming. We would share a sacred space to talk about our writing and get precious feedback which would encourage us to continue writing. We would form a bond that protected us from the racist, sexist, and parochial notions prevalent in academia.
