About fifteen years ago, I walked nervously into an Irish pub in Bellingham to attend my first meeting of the Red Wheelbarrow Writers, “a loose affiliation of working writers who produce independently, and who join together to support, encourage, and sustain one another.”

Back then, I didn’t dare call myself a writer out loud. I had written down some family stories with a vague idea of sharing them with my adult children. I had attended a memoir writing class, and through that had met some other aspiring writers, one of whom encouraged me to attend the Red Wheelbarrow Writers’ monthly happy hour where attendees could read from their works in progress, and exchange news and views. I did not read on that occasion or at the following meetings. But I did meet writers, both novice like me, and experienced, published authors like one of the group’s founders, Laura Kalpakian. Many of these people remain my close friends today.

Thanks in part to these meetings I gained confidence in my writing. I realized my talent was for fiction—those family stories were much more interesting if I switched up the facts a little. I began a novel set in World War II Europe. (This novel, after many revisions, was published in 2024 as Daughters of Riga.)

Write-outs, Poetry and Nanowrimo

Red Wheelbarrow Writers has extended beyond those monthly happy hours. We sometimes meet for write-outs, a day spent writing together in unique settings. We participate in the annual April National Poetry Month with a dedicated Facebook page. In November, National Novel Writing Month, we collectively write a novel, with chaotic and often hilarious results. Over the last few years, I have enjoyed contributing the first and last chapters to this fun writing exercise that takes poets and memoirists out of their comfort zone—and sometimes into the Twilight Zone!

A World Unsuspected

And we publish anthologies.

Starting in 2016 with Memory into Memoir, Red Wheelbarrow has collected, edited and published prose and poems in anthology form. At first this was an opportunity to give members a chance to see their work in print, but with each anthology we have raised the bar.

So Much Depends Upon…, published in 2018, was our first juried selection. During the difficult conditions of the pandemic, when our meetings were on Zoom, we put together a stunning collection of poetry, This Uncommon Solitude. In 2023’s Spring and All, we celebrated the hundredth anniversary of William Carlos Williams’ ground breaking poem from which we take our name, and called for works that reflected an uplifting spirit.

Publishing an anthology requires a huge commitment of time and energy from volunteers to craft the call for submissions, to read and assess the dozens of entries, and to work with the selected writers to edit their work before it is handed over to our publisher, the wonderful Lisa Dailey with Sidekick Press. A World Unsuspected, our latest anthology which honors the power of place to surprise, transform and inspire, is now in Lisa’s hands for cover design, copy-editing and internal formatting. Publication is slated for Spring 2025. I am proud to have Utopia, a short piece of historical fiction, included in this volume along with some excellent poetry and prose. I hope you’ll get a copy when it’s available.

So Much Depends Upon…Community

Although writing is a solitary activity, having a community of supportive friends to cheer you on and commiserate over set-backs has proved essential to me on my writing journey. I couldn’t have done it without Red Wheelbarrow Writers and the connections I made through the group. I hope whatever your individual focus is that you have a sustaining circle of people to support you. Go to the website to be added to our newsletter list.

Here is the poem that inspires our name:

So much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.

William Carlos Williams, XXII from Spring and All (1923)