Today is my 35th Birthday, and I Have Some Very, Very — like very — Big News.
For my birthday, I’m asking for your help to get us to the next milestone.
Did y’all read this feature in Poets & Writers when I joked about wanting to start a commune where writers can create, gather, and have access to meaningful, equitable creative space, labor, and safe housing?
Well, uh, it’s happening.
Turns out, if you say you want something enough, you just might get it.
I’ve been working out how to tell folks, how to package the message, how to articulate who we are and what we want to do, and how to ask folks to help. We’ve had countless conversations, meetings, and planning sessions among staff, community, and THOI alumni – and I feel ready (scared, but ready as I’ll ever be, I guess) to share the news.
In early 2026, we are buying property to build a writer’s co-op in the pacific northwest to facilitate and nurture The Heart of It Writing Retreat and a growing community of writers and artists.
We have the seed funding to buy the property.
We need an additional $200,000, which we plan to acquire through donors, low-cost programming, and personal funds.
That’s where you come in.
For my birthday, I’m asking for your help get us to the next milestone.
If you know you want to help and join us on this journey, here’s how. If you want to know more, keep reading.
Through dreaming big, collaboration, a trusted history, committed visioning, grit, and a hell of a lot of work, we have the seed funding to buy a rural, multi-acre property as soon as Spring of 2026 – when I finish graduate school at the University of Michigan and can be on site full time to give the space, care, and commitment it needs.
On the horizon is beautiful acreage, inspiring gathering space, hand-built cabins, safe housing for artists and writers, meaningful work, relational land stewardship, and a permanent home to write, commune, create, and learn together.
We’ll facilitate and support:
writing and artist retreats (with The Heart of It as the flagship program)
land stewardship (farmers markets, educational permaculture gardening, food to eat and flowers to gaze at!)
educational trades programming to learn how to build cabins and other structures, grow food, facilitate large groups, and write books
multi-week writing residencies
emergent collaborative, co-op, creative-based programming
As a working class person with no generational wealth, as someone who has spent most of my life in housing insecurity, being unhoused, and living in government housing as a child – this journey, to find us (and me) a creative home, has been emotional, to say the least.
To be completely honest with you, I didn’t think it was possible for me. I didn’t think I came from the right kind of family, had the right kind of education, or had the right resources for something like this.
My vision, since the beginning, has been to steward land and curate inspiring, beautiful, life-sustaining space for working class writers of marginalized genders and our allies – and to do that together. The seed of this, truly, comes from my experience of having very little access to that kind of space throughout my life. It is this part of me that I carry into the creative spaces, experiences, and resources I have access to now. It is this part of me that drives my passion to create more for the rest of us.
My commitment to this project and this community comes from the most deep-rooted parts of who I am.
I began The Heart of It in 2016 as a low-cost, grassroots poetry-centered retreat to gather, write, share, and connect. I started it with the support of my mentors, and nine years later, we have a core staff of three and a teaching and organizing staff of nine for summer 2025. We have developed a dynamic and responsive curriculum, we train and support emerging and experienced teaching artists, we have facilitated and supported over 150 writers, and we now sustain multi-week programming for dozens of new and returning writers every summer.
What started as a weekend of workshops for poets is now a vibrant network of writers, organizers, and teaching artists who gather to think, learn, and strategize. It has grown into a space where we dream, write, and do our part to imagine and work toward a safer, more life-sustaining world for all of us.
We are committed to liberating and creating more resources to gather, commune, resist, and flourish in new and emerging ways for many years to come.
As I’ve stewarded this work, it has become clear that in order to sustain we must own and care for the means of production – making our work more secure, viable, and life sustaining. Currently, we pay close to $20,000 to rent space for 18 days for 50+ writers each August, we pay about $7,000 just for our staff to travel to the site, and we are unable to increase funding and revenue because we have such finite access to adequate gathering space.
We have the seed funding to buy the land, and we have begun the task of securing the next $200,000 through donors, low-cost programming, and personal funds.
Right now, our most common monthly contribution is $10 a month. Truly: every single dollar helps us build this project brick by brick.
For my birthday this year, dear reader and comrade, I am asking you to become a donor to help make our work sustainable, flourishing, and responsive as we continue the fight for inspiring, energizing, and connective space.
We need donors to help us:
Purchase land to create and steward a community-driven writers sanctuary (we have the seed funding, but we need funds in the bank to begin to pay it back once we break ground).
Build infrastructure once we find our permanent home. Cabins! Writing studios! Meeting spaces! Nooks to sit, write, think, and gather!
Maintain and grow capacity as we search for a permanent, sustainable home.
Continue to offer low and no-cost programming to writers, artists, and community organizers, with more programming launching in Fall 2025.
Once you become a monthly donor, you’ll be added to our donor community where you’ll get updates, early access, and be the first to know what’s happening in the project.
Here’s how you can help:
You can donate one time through venmo (just leave a note when you send the $$)
You can join The Heart of It mailing list to stay in the loop
You can share, comment on, and/or like this post.
Our community is working class, gender diverse, systems impacted, and deeply rooted in creative and organizing work.
98% of the writers we serve are women, trans people, and nonbinary people.
Nearly all of our community is working class with little to no generational wealth, with most being renters and folks living paycheck to paycheck.
Most writers in our community do not have advanced degrees in the arts, and we strive to increase access to artistic and educational spaces with low barriers of entry.
Our start up team is made up of a committed, very skilled crew who have made an 18-month commitment to the start-up process.
Here’s a glimpse at our team (Over 50% of our team is Native/Indigenous, most of the team is systems impacted, and 100% of the team were raised working class or impoverished).
I am so deeply proud to work alongside them.
Alongside the start-up team, we have many alumni and extended community who have joined our growing list of skill-share team members and many that have committed seed funding and start up labor.
The only thing we need is the funds to make this thing happen.
I hope you’ll consider supporting our work, and maybe one day (if you haven’t already) you’ll join us at The Heart of It in our new home — or maybe you’ll have a project you want to dream up with us.
If you would like to make a larger contribution or offer something unique. emergent, or nontraditional — please reach out to me.
Thanks for reading this and hearing me out on my birthday. By this time next year, I’ll be writing to you from our new home.
Maybe I’ll see you there.
CONGRATULATIONS & HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
Happy birthday!!!! 🎂🎊🎉