Dear Friends of MWC,
I hope this finds you safe and well as we prepare to turn the page on 2024. We’ve been fortunate to have a terrific year at MWC, and we are spending this time thinking about what we, as an organization have to be grateful for: our many members (like you!), the incredible organizations with whom we partnered and who support our work, our new publications: another wonderful year all around.
This year we were able to host more events, hire more interns and staff for our Young Emerging Writers Program, and publish more books, despite receiving less grant funding than we usually do. This is all thanks to the support of our community. You know that MWC supports artists by directly providing opportunities and funding to writers–so far this year, we have paid over 60 writers and artists for their work, including many who were published for the first time in the Shattered Constraints: An Anthology of Radical Hospitality. And every dollar spent on local art stays in the community longer than a dollar spent elsewhere. Money spent on the arts creates art.
We are writing, like so many other nonprofits are, to ask for your support this Giving Tuesday (December 3, which kicks off our year-end giving campaign) by renewing or starting a membership so that we can continue to provide high-quality, low-cost literary programming to our community as we have for going on 45 years.
In 2025, we will continue our traditional programming: both the Collins Writers’ Conference and the Young Emerging Writers Internship will celebrate their 20th anniversaries in 2025, and we’re planning some special events to celebrate. Writers’ Studio (our twice-monthly critique group) will continue as it has for over 50 years, The SPECTRA Reading Series returns in the spring with four events, and we have a number of terrific workshops coming up. We will be publishing an anthology on the theme of “Being Human in the Age of AI” in partnership with Galvin Fine Arts, in addition to two Foster-Stahl chapbooks and The Atlas. We also want to bring more writers to the Quad Cities, host more workshops, and continue to grow our partnerships with other organizations throughout the community. And we cannot do that without you.
We need you to help us write more light into the world. Thanks for your support, and we look forward to writing with you in the new year…
Wishing you well, now and always,
Ryan Collins, Executive Director
