Hello, Members,
This month marks my 10th Anniversary as the Executive Director of the Writers’ League of Texas – which is pretty unbelievable to me. Seriously, has it really been ten years? Yes. Yes, it has.
When I look back at where we started and where we are today, I am pretty proud of everything we’ve accomplished together in the last decade.
We’ve grown our membership (YOU!) – from just over 800 members to more than 1400 in ten years – and we’ve traveled across the state, to cities big and small, putting on free programs for writers and bringing folks together to hone their craft and build community.
We’ve found new ways to support our members, including monthly Open Office Hours. (Fun fact: Open Office Hours was the first new benefit I created when I joined the WLT. Since 2013, we’ve offered 1000+ hours of one-on-one staff time to our members. 1000 hours!)
We’ve launched lots of new programs, including Ask Us Anything, WLT On the Craft of Writing, WLT On the Writing Life, WLT Off the Beaten Craft, Saturday Craft Seminars, and the Agents Symposium.
We’ve built our Agents & Editors Conference into one of the very best conferences in the nation. In 2024, we’ll celebrate the 30th Anniversary of that event.
We’ve expanded our class offerings, from 22 in 2013 to close to 50 online classes in 2023. And we’ve added Intensives, Advanced Craft Workshops, and Anatomy of a Scene Workshops.
We launched a Fellowship Program and created scholarship opportunities for our paid programs.
And, the thing I’m probably most proud of, we’ve met the challenges of the last few years head on – adapting our programs and services and expanding our reach to meet the moment.
Ten years. Wow.
So, why am I writing to you today?
I’m reaching out to you – as I look back at the last ten years and look ahead to what’s to come – to ask you to celebrate this milestone with me with a small gift.
As much as I love flowers and really really love cake, I’m asking for a different type of anniversary gift, if you’re able and inclined. To help me celebrate the big 1-0, consider making a $10 donation to the WLT sometime in the month of September. And if you wanted to make it $100 ($10 for every year!), that would be pretty amazing, too.
Because all I really want for this anniversary is to see this organization that I love – that I have loved since that very first day in September 2013 (September 3rd, to be precise) – to continue to thrive. I want our members to continue to enjoy benefits and find support and take advantage of opportunities to connect for another ten years and another ten after that.
Your donation this month could go a long way towards that.
Of course, I know that all of the great progress I’ve touched on above didn’t come about just because of me. This has been a real group effort and I have been lucky enough to work with some pretty outstanding staff members over the last ten years – people who give their all, day after day, to the work they do on behalf of our writing community. This gift is for them, too.
I can’t tell you what an honor it’s been to be a part of what we’ve built here at the Writers’ League of Texas. Thank you for letting me spend these last ten years with you. Here’s to lots more good stuff to come.
xo, Becka
