From the Farmhouse Table: March 2026
Gratitude - A Message from Kimberly
I have had the privilege and honor to serve as Hedgebrook’s executive director for the past five years. My entire professional career has centered around writing, storytelling and truth telling, and that career was built around the joyful experience of reading.
In Hedgebrook, the acts of reading and writing come together, beautifully.
It has been such from the first day the writing residency opened, in August of 1988. Over the ensuing decades, more than 2,000 writers have lived and worked in Hedgebrook’s cottages, and have penned thousands of poems, memoirs, plays, screenplays, and works of fiction and non-fiction. Between book purchases, library borrowing, digital downloads, audiobooks, streaming, big screens, and live stage performances, it is no exaggeration to say that millions of people around the world have experienced work that was generated in Hedgebrook’s cottages and thereafter.
When I arrived in March 2021, the residency was still closed due to Covid-19, with much of the staff furloughed. Some worried about whether Hedgebrook would reopen. The organization had faced other challenges in its past, as many nonprofits do. Would we survive this one? We were lucky; many organizations did not weather the challenges. Hedgebrook’s resiliency continued due to loyal supporters who said women’s voices matter, each time they attended an online class, made a monthly donation or responded to fundraising pleas.
One thing I heard from Board members, staff, and from family members of Hedgebrook’s founders, Nancy Nordhoff and Sheryl Feldman, was how often people assumed that Nancy bankrolled the operation. During its earliest years, as Hedgebrook Foundation, she did quite a bit, while also making the coffee, delivering meals to the writers, and toiling in its gardens. When Hedgebrook transitioned to its current status as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit literary arts organization in the early 2000s, we were lucky to have the continuing support of Nancy, her wife Lynn, and many members of the extended Nordhoff, Skinner and Behnke families. A nascent fundraising program, started in 2006, evolved in earnest over the next 20 years. We are a solid nonprofit today.
Nothing gives me greater hope and comfort than knowing that Nancy and Sheryl knew the state of their organization in 2026. This place of solitude, creation and care now accomplishes so much that it has long dreamt of: a diverse funding stream based on deep relationships with foundations and individuals, multiple-year grants and pledges, and authentic donor stewardship that begins and ends with Radical Hospitality, as always.
My iPhone just shared with me a slideshow, 5 Years Ago, of two dozen photos taken five days after I first arrived on the land. There are the requisite images of the cottages’ colorful Hobbit-like front doors, an artistically arrayed woodpile, and a length of bright green moss stretched like carpet down a pathway that crosses a boggy wetland. Also, my early attempts to capture eagles flying overhead, and slightly unfocused peeks through spring foliage at the next farthest away cottage.
My little dog, Hildy, now 13 years old, sniffs and explores in most of the pictures. She has slowed a bit, so have I, and we both have significantly more white hair.
What else happened over these five years was, to the best of my ability, servant leadership. A steep learning curve, some big mistakes, too many tears, new skills, heartfelt appreciation. No perfection, not even close. But I am proud of helping to create a culture where Radical Hospitality also applies to the team making Hedgebrook happen for writers. Hedgebrook deserved nothing less.
I thank my colleagues and our board of directors. When it worked, it was because of all of you. And I thank you, too, dear readers, for cheering us on. You inspire us every day.
Grazie mille.
I am grateful that Hedgebrook’s interim executive director, Claudia Castro Luna, shares a sense of wonder about how the sausage gets made on the farm. A storied alumna—with not one but two books coming out later this year!—Claudia is working part-time through Equivox on March 22, as I transfer relationships, processes, and what I’ve learned about this wonderful place and institution, to her.
Hedgebrook keeps going. That is what Nancy intended and she was usually so very right. Please join me in celebrating her legacy and in welcoming Claudia to the team.
Keep writing and reading,
— Kimberly