Together, We Illuminate The Literary Landscape

“I’m excited about North Texas Giving Day” are not words I ever thought I’d write. Yet here we are, closing in on The Garret’s biggest fundraiser of the year, and honestly, it’s true.

Nonprofits moves in cycles, which is a thing I’ve been thinking especially about this fall, after a brutal summer (in more ways than one). As humans, we are physically a collection of cycles; cells form, accomplish their function, and die; air enters our bodies, passes through our lungs, and is then exhaled; our heartbeats are the miraculous pulse of the cyclic movement of blood. It is no wonder, then, that we imagine and experience time divided similarly.

In the year since last North Texas Giving Day, The Writer’s Garret has had some truly exciting successes. We won the 2023 Dallas City of Learning Superintendent Award for our work with summer camps in Pleasant Grove and West Dallas.  We completed our best fiscal year in almost 2 decades. We’ve reached record attendance numbers (even pre-pandemic) for several programs including, Inner Moonlight, the Common Language Project, and Rail Writers (and, it should be added, our audiences continue to grow more diverse and inclusive with every passing year). We launched (lol you could also maybe say “dragged blindly into existence by sheer stubbornness”) a major new literary festival, Dallas Is Lit! In a decade or so, when we’re writing about the history of The Garret, 2023 will be a year that gets singled out.

And so here we are, at this moment in the yearly cycle—North Texas Giving Day. My feelings going into this day have changed as I’ve developed as leader of The Garret, from mid-key terrified to merely stressed out to something like “here we go again” to this year, when I am truly excited.

I’m excited because this is a time to share with donors and the community all the good work we’re doing. I’m excited because we have 4 new board members who are going to make 2024 a whole other level of successful. I’m excited because sometimes it’s challenging to remember why we do this, in the middle of summer when the grant didn’t come through and there are discipline challenges at your youth camp and the inbox is overflowing; it’s challenging—until the wheel turns and this fundraising campaign forces me to take stock of all the good and even great things that are happening because The Garret does what it does.

And then, wrapped up in all of that, comes my favorite part of the cycle—the enormous wave (flood? deluge? ocean?) of gratitude.
For the generosity of donors, new and long-time, no matter the amount they donate. 
For our incredible staff members Grace and Sharon, who are more responsible for the continued operations of The Garret than I ever could be. 
For the Board of Trustees, who have been friends, guides, volunteers, and supporters as I’ve moved the organization forward, especially Michael Clay, our Board President and my former Co-Executive Director, without whom The Garret most likely would not have survived. 
For our Teaching Artist In Residence Lisa Huffaker, and for all our teaching artists, instructors, facilitators, hosts, panelists, and contributors: these are the people truly creating the literary culture of our city. 
For everyone who shows up to things we put on, for first time attendees and for returning regulars. 
Finally, for you, if you’re still reading, for caring enough to keep reading what I have written. I am only in this position, I only have this platform, I am only able to do this, and keep doing it, because of all of these people, and you. 

The mission of The Garret is to connect people through the power of language; and even then, sometimes language is not enough. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for supporting The Writer’s Garret.