Please Support Friends of Writers’ Fall Campaign

                                                                                                       

A Letter from FOW board president Abby Wender (poetry ’08)

Fall 2020

Ellen Bryant Voigt’s lyric masterpiece, Kyrie, published in 1995, recounts events in a small town during the 1918-20 influenza pandemic. Ellen remarks that the paradox at the heart of the book, which also speaks to us at this moment, is that “the very things we need most—nearness, proximity, and community—spread the disease.” This fall our goal is to raise the final $25,000 to fully endow the Ellen Bryant Voigt Scholarship Fund. We are so close! With your help we will be able to grant the first award in early 2021 to a student completing a first manuscript. We ask that you join us in contributing whatever you can to meet our financial goal. 

Like many organizations this year, we have been presented with new challenges by the coronavirus. One example of our community’s creative response took hold in April, when Friends of Writers announced it would offer eight emergency Covid-19 grants of $500. Due to a spontaneous outpouring of additional support, we were able to fund all twenty-seven applicants.  In another example, volunteers converted the alumni conference from on-ground to virtual in just two short months (it was to be held in 2020 at Mount Holyoke, and hopefully will be there in 2021). Although we could not gather in person, more than a hundred participants met, attended readings, panels, caucuses, workshops—and hung out together on a virtual “porch.” These are just two illustrations showing us how the thing we need most—a vibrant community—thrives and expands, even in hard times. We know of no better way to acknowledge Ellen’s remarkable legacy than to fulfill the scholarship fund created in her name. We thank all of you who may have already given to our Fall Appeal, and I am writing to ask that if you have not yet given, you make a donation today. 

Sadly, the crisis we are facing won’t abate quickly, and the needs of our fellow writers—both students and alums–will grow this year. Friends of Writers remains committed to helping writers meet their potential through graduate study and also through providing support and resources via its website, multiple reading series, a contest, and the yearly conference. We support diversity and inclusivity through our scholarships and internships. We intend to make it possible for every writer to pursue graduate study in spite of financial disparity.  All of our scholarship grants are need-based. 

Most contributors to Friends of Writers are writers, too. I hope you’ll join—with a donation of any amount—the individuals with whom you share this path, so that together we can reach the goal of fully endowing the EBV scholarship. You can donate online at friendsofwriters.org, or mail in your donation using the enclosed card and envelope. Every donation is meaningful. 

In nearness and community, and with best wishes for your well-being,

Abigail Wender

President, Friends of Writers

PS: Looking for inspired thinking from brilliant writers? Download an audio lecture from our store: https://store.friendsofwriters.org/

Sweet are the songs of bitterness and blame,
against the stranger spitting on the street,
the neighbor’s shared contaminated meal,
the rusted nail, the doctor come too late.
 
Sweet are the songs of envy and despair,
which count the healthy strangers that we meet
and mark the neighbor’s illness mild and brief,
the birds that go on nesting, the brilliant air.
 
Sweet are the songs of wry exacted praise,
scraped from the grave, shaped in the torn throat
and sung at the helpful stranger on the train,
and at the neighbor’s misery brought near,
and at the waters parted at our feet,
and to the god who thought to keep us here.
 
 
                                 —Ellen Bryant Voigt, from Kyrie