Our Mission
To bring unheard voices, both near and far, into the public arena; to transform lived experiences into written memoirs powerful enough to change hearts, minds, and policies.
Our Vision
Over time silences will be broken, and previously unsung stories will be heard as we reach out to more women and men– young and old, incarcerated and free– in an ever-widening circle of languages and cultures – across the United States and beyond.
For 25 years Herstory Writers Workshop has been dedicated to elevating the voices of people whose stories have been silenced and unsung, with the overarching goal of creating a vibrant body of grassroots literature that fosters healing and mobilizes change in communities and lives. We work in the schools, in the jails and in the larger community through an ever-expanding network of small writing circles, wherever there are stories that need to be heard.
We work with a very specific pedagogy, based on the creation of empathy in a reading or listening stranger. Whether our writing circles take place locally, in person, with high school students who have recently crossed the border (our fasted growing population), or virtually with first responders across the nation in this time of pandemic, the mission of writing so that a stranger can walk in the storyteller’s shoes is front and center.
The action of startling an uncaring reader into a position of compassion and change is what unites our ever-increasing network of writing workshops, from working with Syrian refugees in Lebanon who were married when they were still young girls, to LGBTQ refugees from Africa and the Middle East; from trans folx in Colorado to migrant farmworkers both on Long Island and from the United States South; from survivors of family or community violence, to people struggling with disabilities, racism, or gender inequality.
Whether we are working with college professors, legislators or people whose lives have not allowed for formal education, we dare each new participant to write in a way that will begin to build bridges of understanding and action across those barriers that keep us apart.
The notion of passing along the dare to care (the cornerstone of the Herstory approach) is simple. The ramifications are far reaching and profound, as we move out of silence into speech.
For, when we care deeply enough, we find words we didn’t know we had. Each of us has a “poetry of experience” hidden deep inside us, that can be called into being out of the stream of memories that bubble up to the surface from our hope and our anger and grief. When we dare to imagine that someone might hear us and actually care, bit by bit, we break out of the silence and isolation that is the fate of so many.
But what is caring, really? It is so much more than a feeling passed along to another, going nowhere. It is— and must always be— a very deep call to action. Otherwise, our belief in society’s capacity to protect us will die even before it is properly born.
Through two and a half decades of bringing people into small writing circles and giving them the empathy-based tools to break silences together, we join hands to create a literature that will dare our larger community to care enough to take action, as we seek to find paths away from the cycles of poverty, violence, hatred and injustice, inequity, abuse and despair into which so many were born.
To download a printable overview, click here.
Our Philosophy
The notion of passing along the dare to care (the cornerstone of the Herstory approach) is simple. The ramifications are far reaching and profound, as we move out of silence into speech.
When we care deeply enough, we find words we didn’t know we had. Each of us has a “poetry of experience” hidden deep inside us, that can be called into being out of the stream of memories that bubble up to the surface from our hope and our anger and grief. When we dare to imagine that someone might hear us and actually care, bit by bit, we break out of the silence and isolation that is the fate of so many.
But what is caring, really? It is so much more than a feeling passed along to another, going nowhere. It is— and must always be— a very deep call to action. Otherwise our belief in society’s capacity to protect us will die even before it is properly born.
Through two and a half decades of bringing people into small writing circles and giving them the empathy-based tools to break silences together, we join hands to create a literature that will dare our larger community to care enough to take action, as we seek to find paths away from the cycles of poverty, violence, addiction, abuse and despair into which so many were born.