From the Farmhouse Table: November 2025
What More Can I Do?
Dear Friends of Hedgebrook,
This year has tested us in ways we could not have imagined. Political turmoil, sudden funding cuts, and broad economic uncertainty across the country have left Hedgebrook facing a projected $250,000 shortfall as we close our fiscal year.
Thankfully, we continue to celebrate another extraordinary year of women writers grounding us and feeding our imaginations—one story, one poem, and one graphic memoir at a time. Hedgebrook’s residency consistently nurtures creative voices that dare to ask: what does it mean to write truthfully, to challenge convention, and to dream healthy and spacious futures into being?
In today’s politically turbulent climate, with eroding status and rights for women, and increased censorship and attacks on marginalized voices, the work of Hedgebrook authors is ever more urgent.
We are all asking ourselves these days, what more can I do?
Please support the truth-tellers of Hedgebrook
with a contribution today.
This year’s residents have underscored the vital role of women writers in times of uncertainty to clarify, sound the alarm, and provide first aid so we can continue to evolve and grow as a species. The breadth and depth of their work demonstrates the power of the written word—for healing hearts, for solidarity, and for reimagining what is possible.
Our residents carry the world’s most urgent questions about what it means to be human into Hedgebrook’s sanctuary. If you peeked through the cottage windows this year, you would have seen the brilliance of our writers' works in progress:
Sonali’s speculative fiction unveils a secret, women-only matrilineal island set in ancient India, and one young woman’s fight to save it from the predations of an evil king. The novel is a mythological exploration of feminism, bodily autonomy, and collectivism. She describes it as “Wonder Woman meets the Mahabharata.”
Jade’s poetry resists historical amnesia, excavating family histories of migration and survival from Chinese Exclusion archives, creating powerful acts of remembrance that bind personal and collective griefs.
Rachael’s crime series imagines alternate histories and tenacious protagonists who challenge conventions and stereotypes, bringing nuanced, honest representation to women with invisible and neurological disabilities.
Sarah’s poetic practice draws deeply from the spiritually charged rhythms of Arabic and Muslim devotive forms. She investigates art, surveillance, and iconoclasm through the lens of a Pakistani and visibly Muslim woman. Her work interweaves many voices, invoking both the divine and what she refers to as the bewilderingly present Other.
Hedgebrook is part of an essential ecosystem for women’s creative power, where writers come together to bear witness, champion one another, and breathe life into fresh cultural, political and social narratives. Your support ensures that their voices are nurtured, their stories are written, and their groundbreaking work touches readers around the world.
We invite you to support storytellers and readers with an early year-end
gift to Hedgebrook.