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You are here: Home / WNBA Award 2023 Interview

WNBA Award 2023 Interview

This interview with Eve Bridberg and Devon Lee was originally published in The Bookwoman.

The WNBA Award is presented by the members of the WNBA to a “living American woman who derives part or all of her income from books and allied arts and who has done meritorious work in the world of books beyond the duties or responsibilities of her profession or occupation.” The award has been presented continuously since 1940.

A full list of past recipients can be found HERE.

WNBA has been a leader & advocate for roles of women in the community of the book, for over a century. How do you see your work founding and guiding GrubStreet as continuing that tradition?

In the early days of GrubStreet, I started teaching the first classes with a writer named Julie Rold. We had both just graduated from an MFA program where the dominant culture was patriarchal. By teaching in a style that was less paternalistic, more supportive, and more open, we created a place where women thrived. It’s also true that women can find it harder to carve out the time to write, and programs like GrubStreet, which offer classes at night and on the weekends and provide affordable and flexible pathways to deepen one’s craft, work well for women writers. There have been too many successes to name, but I’m really proud of how many wonderful woman writers have published novels, nonfiction books, essays, and poems with strong female characters and perspectives on everything from how our culture continues to tolerate sexual harassment and rape to important yet under-appreciated historical figures like Lucy Stone to the complexity of mothering and more. 

The essential role of Board Chair has been mainly held by amazing women over the years. Our last Board Chair, Kathy Sherbrooke, an author and entrepreneur, served for over a decade. In March, writer and business woman, Sharissa Jones, stepped up as chair.  Four seats out of six on our senior leadership team are occupied by women. I like to think that having so many women in leadership roles at GrubStreet has created a work environment that balances work and family, and encourages collaboration. I think this kind of culture empowers early-career women and creates a space that supports people of all backgrounds, gender identifications and sexualities, as well as leaders of color.

GrubStreet is a leader among non -academic writing centers nationwide. What next steps do you see for the organization, in increasing outreach and collaboration?

The future is so exciting. We have a new space on Boston’s beautiful waterfront with a podcast studio, a literary stage, a cafe and expanded community space and classrooms. Porter Square Books, a beloved local bookstore, is operating a second location in our space. With street-level presence and a stage, we look forward to amplifying the incredible range of diverse writing talent not only from Boston but from all over the country and world. Our Artistic Director, Dariel Suarez, has curated a vision for the stage that includes Writers’ Weekends that highlight the work of diverse communities within the writing world and explore how writing intersects with identity, culture, and society. The first weekend coming up in June is dedicated to celebrating and centering Latinx voices. 

Our vision is to collaborate with writers, cultural groups, and nonprofits to highlight the importance of creative writing and narrative. We are animated by the power of storytelling, poetry, and all forms of narrative to change our world by highlighting important truths and perspectives, deepening understanding, bringing joy and finding new ways forward. This summer, for example, writers will take the stage to discuss how creative writing can make a difference on climate change and explore the impact on local communities. Last year, following the Supreme Court’s Dodd vs. Jackson decision, a group of our instructors and staff led by our Program Director, Erin Weiss, organized “Your Body, Your Story,” a series of free and low-cost workshops on nonfiction writing about pregnancy, abortion, miscarriage, and reproductive justice. We are working now to publish an anthology of student work to share these vital stories with the world.

What inspires you the most about GrubStreet as it has grown?

Eve Bridberg receives the WNBA award, from left to right, Serina Gousby, Diana Norma Szoklyai, Eve Bridberg, NC Weil, and Natalie Obando.

What inspires me the most is our multicultural and multigenerational community. The times we’re living in now make it hard to come together and deal with differences, nuance, and complexity. The voices online that gain traction tend to flatten people and issues. Good writing is an antidote to this. I’m proud of the way GrubStreet has grown into being a place where we can honestly grapple with differences, culture, identity, and complexity in our classrooms. We’re working every day to create a culture where writers from all backgrounds can bravely share their voices, experiences, and work, and where every member of our community commits to engaging across differences with curiosity and a desire to learn and grow together.

What is the history of GrubStreet and how was it formed? What has led to the organization’s growth and evolution in the last couple years? Are there any specific goals you may have in raising awareness of GrubStreet on a global scale?

Our history is a humble one. 

At the very beginning, in April of 1997,  as a recent graduate of BU’s MFA program, I put $400 on my credit card to print up flyers advertising two writing workshops. I hung them all over Brookline where I was living at the time. BU’s program hadn’t been a good fit for me. I never felt as if I could be vulnerable or take risks there. When I left I wanted to connect with other writers and continue to learn. Those first flyers attracted eight students. Within a few years, the earliest Grubstreet instructors and I were working with hundreds of writers a year and seeing books getting published and students getting into competitive MFA programs. We realized there was a big community in Boston of writers who were talented and committed but weren’t interested in or couldn’t afford traditional academic programs or who felt intimidated by them. About six years in, with the birth of my children, I decided to make our mission-based approach official by turning GrubStreet into a nonprofit. I visited the Hugo House in Seattle and The Loft in Minneapolis to learn from what they were doing. There were only a few independent nonprofit writing centers in the country at that time. They kindly opened their doors to me and shared what they knew freely. 

From the moment we became a nonprofit and moved from my living room into our first offices, we’ve been on a pretty steep growth trajectory! Christopher Castellani organized our first major fundraiser that he grew over time into our flagship Muse and the Marketplace Conference, attracting nationally known keynote speakers – like Walter Moseley, Ann Patchet, and Grace Paley – and the publishing industry to Boston. More growth came from our decision in 2010 to extend our curriculum to support writers through the changes in the publishing world brought on by the rise of self-publishing, ebooks, and social media. In 2013, we started working on diversity and inclusion, recognizing that we weren’t representative of our city or the country at large. In recent years, that work coupled with our new headquarters has driven our growth with the establishment of a robust scholarship fund, fellowships for emerging writers, fully funded writing programs throughout Boston’s neighborhoods, and the growth of our teen programs. We also grew over the pandemic with our online Zoom classes reaching students all over the globe. 

In the coming years, we look forward to continuing to create new dynamic programming in Boston and online that celebrates and amplifies a diversity of voices, genres, and approaches to creative writing and showcases its power, relevance and reach. We seek to grow participation in and the audience for creative writing, to bring the art form into the public square so that it’s as visible and appreciated as the performing and visual arts. 

Out of the 600+ programs that you offer to a range of writers, which would you recommend? 

This is an impossible question to answer! It depends on what the interest and needs of any given writer are. I can say that we offer something for everyone. We have low commitment classes for writers who just want to get their toes wet all the way to graduate level year-long intensives for writers who are ready to get book-length projects ready for publication. We offer classes in fiction, nonfiction, memoir, poetry, screenwriting, the writing life, publishing, and are always experimenting with new genres and hybrid genres. We have a great teen program for high school students in Boston. Prospective students should know that we offer scholarships for everything we do. For any writing topic not covered in a current, class, event, or at our Muse and the Marketplace conference, we have a robust consultation service as well. And right now, we’re also piloting a free mentorship program both online and at our center. We’re offering free one-on-one sessions with GrubStreet instructors, open to all writers, at any level. 

A few other upcoming programs I’m excited about include a new Craft Talk series on our Writers’ Stage that covers topics often left out of traditional workshops, such as craft sessions on “Writing through Darkness (and How to take Care of Yourself During it),” “Culture and Empathy to Authenticity: Writing Historical Fiction and Other Identities,” and more. We have also recently launched a new Workplace Writing Program, so organizations can bring the GrubStreet workshop experience to their office to help transform ordinary business communications into powerful stories and learn how to give productive feedback.

You have many success stories in regards to certain events or programs. What can new incoming writers expect out of their experience within a program? For those who have complete a program of their choice, what was their feedback and how did they feel?

In general, new students can expect a prepared and knowledgeable instructor, a diverse set of readings, a respectful, and supportive classroom culture. If the program involves workshopping, they can also expect to work hard, to make time for reading other writer’s work, to get honest and helpful feedback, and encouragement and cheerleading from their peers. We make sure to ask students to evaluate our classes. We ask the question: would you recommend us to a friend or take another workshop? 96% of the time, the answer is yes! Writers often tell us that they find their voices and their writing friends in our classes. They get inspired to take more workshops and they often discover that they are capable of accomplishing more with their writing than they ever imagined they could. 

Is there anything unique about Grub Street that sets you apart from other types of writing organizations/nonprofits? 

I started GrubStreet with a vision of creating a more inclusive and supportive learning environment for writers, and I think what’s unique about us has been our ability to continuously learn, innovate and grow. As an organization, we have built on that foundation by listening to our students and by creating space for talented staffers, board members, and instructors to deepen our work and push us to new heights.

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