Keep the fire of language and ideas alive

Small nonprofits like Hedgebrook spend a lot of time talking about the past and navigating the present. The future can seem particularly remote during times of tumult, when necessity calls for most of the focus to be on the 'now,' on the metaphorical fires that need fighting in such times: funding disappointments, economic turns, and shifting political and cultural headwinds.

But the year on the horizon, Hedgebrook's 38th, is compelling. I remember 38 as a period of reflection, growth and change. It was the exact moment when I started feeling like, and acting as, a grown ass woman. I grew a little bolder, a little clearer about who I was. A little late, perhaps, but right on time. I wish the same for Hedgebrook.

-Kimberly A.C. Wilson | Executive Director, Hedgebrook

Last night, I watched the 2018 film adaptation of Fahrenheit 451, that haunting story of one man’s refusal to accept the burning of books in an imaginary future — a future he feared might look like our own. The number 451 marks the temperature at which paper catches fire; the idea that words themselves could be extinguished has long felt like both warning and metaphor.

When the novel first appeared in the 1950s, J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI was chasing down writers, artists, and thinkers, branding them “un‑American.” Nancy Nordhoff, Hedgebrook’s founder, was twenty‑three. I was fourteen. We both carried searing images of Nazis tossing books onto pyres—volumes that contained humankind’s accumulated knowledge, our shared striving to understand and outgrow ourselves. Even as young women, we understood with something like biblical certainty: one does not burn books.

Today, the fires look different. The word “banned” has replaced “burned,” but the intent is the same—to silence, to control, to deflate imagination. How far behind banning books are other impediments to the contents of others’ minds? Do not distribute? Do not publish? Do not write? Do not even think or imagine?

Hedgebrook was built on inclusive values that nourish the voices of the unheard; voices which break through layers of accepted truths, split and turn them sideways, refresh and spice. Last year, 71% of our writers in residence identified as BIPOC, 43% as LGBTQIA+, 22% as Disabled, and 29% as low-income.

These writers are among those feeding the dramatic rise in published books by women of color – not only brilliant Black women, but Asian and South Asian, Hispanic, African, and South American. This is equally true of queer women writers. These creatives not only dissolve stereotypes, but report from unexpected angles and provide new ways to understand this swirling world we live in.

In these lights, Hedgebrook may truly be a sacred place, although less for its proverbial magic than because it protects its writers. It also cultivates and nurtures them. Hedgebrook’s thriving is a bulwark against the current assault on books, ideas and, notably, on thinking, creative women writers. Supporting it is an act of resistance to today’s powerful, sterilizing forces of repression.

I invite you to keep the fire of language and ideas alive—not to burn, but to illuminate—with a contribution to Hedgebrook today.

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