Hedgebrook, a writing retreat for women located on the south end of Whidbey Island, held its annual open house on a recent Saturday. The event pleases everybody: alumnae who revisit the place that’s nurtured and encouraged them, islanders who tour a few of the 48 acres and glimpse the handcrafted cottages where writers work their magic on the page and staff who host a celebration of all things Hedgebrookian.
Hedgebrook springs from the mind and heart of Nancy Nordhoff, local philanthropist and Langley resident. Once the land suggested itself to her as a haven for women writers, she began creating the kind of paradise she thought would inspire them. Some of the elements of her mind/heart quest included: gently-cultivated nature that shielded one dwelling from another for privacy; a distant horizon that included a contemplative view (of Useless Bay); healthy, tasty, locally-sourced food; simple, beautiful, functional dwellings; the camaraderie of other writers over one shared meal every day.
Nordhoff’s ambitions coalesced around, and eventually emerged as, the notion of “radical hospitality.” Accordingly, Hedgebrook’s huge garden provides vegetables and fruit from which produce is canned in the golden light of summer and served to writers in the blue light of winter. Routines have been streamlined to minimize interruptions to the work of writers. The crew has figured out ways to care for the acreage by eliminating certain utopian features that turned out to be problematic or worked against the grain of the land.
Although Hedgebrook is rural and offers peace and privacy free from distractions, it knows it lives in the modern age of technology-driven lives and, consequently, has had to choose the best of both worlds, both for the writers in residence and for itself. Contemplation is necessary to creativity, yes. But computers make writing the next draft easier and faster; the internet delivers research to the doorstep. At the open house, this creative tension was artfully expressed by a video about Hedgebrook looping on the latest edition of an Apple computer nestled into a wood cookstove (cold, for the moment) manufactured around 1922. Technology meets hospitality…meets humor.
More than 1,500 writers have dwelt at Hedgebrook over the last 26 years for residencies lasting from two to six weeks. During this time, the focus of Nordhoff, the board and staff has increasingly shifted to what is truly essential: the mission to support women writers so they, in turn, can tell the stories and communicate the ideas that shape our culture through novels, poems, plays, songs, screenplays, graphic novels and memoirs.
The notion of Hedgebrook has expanded from a place to a state of mind through salons, master classes, festivals, lectures and other events held periodically—on Whidbey Island, in Seattle and further afield. Through these offerings, the public is invited to participate in the intellectual and emotional life of Hedgebrook.
Hedgebrook has local roots but international influence. Alumnae have received prestigious fellowships, prizes and awards. Prominent female authors and thinkers speak glowingly of the importance of a residency to their own work and to the concept of Hedgebrook as a “nest” and “a haven of deep grace.”
But lest things become too heady, the Hedgebrook cookbook—zucchini bisque, ginger pumpkin bread, smoked salmon cheesecake—brings it all down to earth, back to the land that was so very central to Nancy Nordhoff at the beginning.
The open house at Hedgebrook was a celebration of the spirit and promise of the place and its people. And so, of course, I wish you were here.
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BY KATIE WOODZICK
Whidbey Life Magazine Contributor
May 13, 2015
Suzanne Vega was originally invited to Hedgebrook to be in residence as part of the Singer/Songwriter retreat. But she had another idea and a request: to come to Hedgebrook as a playwright.
Vega was working on a play—“Two Lectures: An Evening with Carson McCullers”—and she wanted to bring it to the Hedgebrook Women Playwrights Festival.
Suzanne Vega / photo courtesy of Suzanne Vega
The play, with music, is in two acts: Carson McCullers is hired to speak at the “Best Young Writers of 1942” program at the YMCA and talks about writing, love, civil rights and whatever else comes into her mind. She revisits the same venue in 1967 for a second lecture a month before the end of her life.
Vega is perhaps best known for her songs “Luka” and “Tom’s Diner.” The community she has found at Hedgebrook is a departure from the often-solitary practice of songwriting.
“The first week of being at Hedgebrook has been inspiring, exhilarating and also entertaining,” she said, “as we get to admire each other’s work know more about our fellow playwrights.”
Vega joins playwrights Leanna Brodie, Dipika Guha, Karen Hartman, Julie Marie Myatt and Lauren Yee for the 18th annual festival. Since 1998, the Hedgebrook Festival has supported the work of an impressive array of women playwrights and served an important role in the development of new plays by women.
After the opening weekend readings, the playwrights and dramaturgs kick back and enjoy a fire. / photo by Julie O’Brien)
The festival begins with a “pre-retreat” weekend, in which the get to know one another and hear each other’s plays read aloud. This is followed by a two-week retreat at Hedgebrook, where each playwright has her own private cottage, a dramaturg on-call and the opportunity to work in Hedgebrook’s unique combination of solitude and community.
Festival dramaturg Christine Sumption raved about the talents of this year’s crop of playwrights:
“We have a glorious group of playwrights joining us for the festival this year and they’re as different as they can be. Leanna Brodie is a whip-smart Canadian woman writing about wind power and community politics. Karen Hartman is exploring responsibility and blame in a deeply moving play about AIDS, hemophilia and the safety of the blood supply.
“Julie Marie Myatt is raising questions about how society treats those who’ve been in prison, slyly looking through the lens of rescued animals,” Sumption continued. “Dipika Guha is conjuring a family of women who suffer from immaculate conception. Lauren Yee is writing ‘King of the Yees,’ a hilarious and touching play about family and heritage. And Suzanne Vega is writing a solo show with music about Carson McCullers. It’s a banquet of vividly imagined material.”
Vega enjoys lunch cooked by Hedgebrook chefs during the festival’s opening weekend. / photo by Julie O’Brien)
The festival culminates in two public presentations of the new work, on Whidbey Island and in Seattle. The Whidbey performance will be held at 4 p.m. on Sunday, May 17 at Whidbey Island Center for the Arts. The Seattle performance will be held at 7 p.m. on Monday, May 18 at ACT Theatre.
Festival participants find themselves in awe of the radical hospitality of Hedgebrook. Many of them find the quiet and calm setting of Whidbey Island in sharp contrast to their usual frenetic environment. “Here I am a pampered hermit,” Dipika Guha said. “There is such peace and such license in a solitude supported with so much generosity, kindness and grace. I find myself going back to my oldest instincts…
“There is a reason, I think, we call clams happy,” she added. “Being here, supported by ideal conditions, hatching writing inside my shell, knowing that others are doing the same, I am happy.” Guha is the first-ever recipient of the Shakespeare’s Sister Fellowship, awarded in partnership with A Room of Her Own Foundation and the Lark Play Development Center.
Playwright Lauren Yee reflected on how much care Hedgebrook takes in building a supportive environment for writers. “Everything at Hedgebrook is purposeful,” she said. “From the cozy window seats in our cabins to the wall of snack jars in the kitchen. How could you not fall in love and do good work at a place where someone has thought about every moment of your experience?”
Alumnae of the festival have gone on to be nominated for, and even win, the Pulitzer Prize in Drama. The festival offers these playwrights the unique opportunity to devote uninterrupted time to their craft while simultaneously building professional relationships.
“In the competitive world of theatre, women playwrights rarely get this kind of opportunity and it’s a joy to see the friendships and networks that grow out of this communion, not to mention the extraordinary plays,” Sumption said. “If you’ve seen plays by Lynn Nottage, Theresa Rebeck, Danai Gurira, Julia Cho or Quiara Alegria Hudes, you’ve seen some of the fruits of the festival.”
Image at top, and full-size below: The 18th annual Hedgebrook playwrights—back row, left to right: Leanna Brodie, Dipika Guha and Lauren Yee; front row: Karen Hartman, Julie Marie Myatt and Suzanne Vega / photo by Julie O’Brien
Katie Woodzick is an actor and director who can be seen on local stages and who is the host of the Theatrical Mustang Podcast, which features interviews with unbridled talent in the Pacific Northwest. Learn more at katiewoodzick.squarespace.com. She is proud to be acting in a play penned by another Hedgebrook Women Playwrights Festival alumna, Sarah Ruhl: “In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play)” which runs at OutCast Productions through May 23.
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BY KATIE WOODZICK Whidbey Life Magazine contributor
July 9, 2014
They come from all over the world, authoring change. Over the past 26 years, 1,500 women writers from 40 countries have traveled to Whidbey Island to experience Hedgebrook’s radical hospitality.
Founded by Nancy Nordhoff, the retreat offers fully-funded residencies of two to six weeks to women writers at all levels working in a variety of genres. While in residence, each writer lives in a hand-crafted cottage of her own.
Nancy Nordhoff (photo by MJ Alexander)
It’s Thursday afternoon, and our newest resident, B, is arriving. She is originally from Zimbabwe and has flown into Seattle from Ann Arbor. As she gets out of the car, she is beaming. She is wearing a “One Billion Rising” t-shirt—a nod to her mentor, Eve Ensler. Her four daughters insisted she wear it.
“They wouldn’t let me leave the house without it,” she explains.
I follow Julie O’Brien, our Program Associate, as she orients B. We start at the Farmhouse and Julie gives a brief tour of the kitchen and the library that holds hundreds of books written by our alumnae.
Anne, one of our guest chefs, offers advice: “A lot of writers think they need to get to work right away. But I encourage you to listen to your body’s rhythms. If you need to sleep, sleep. Go for a walk in the woods. That is just as important to the creative process.”
We walk through the garden, sampling snap peas and raspberries. B tells us that growing up, she refused to do the chores traditionally assigned to girls.
“It was the duty of the boys to herd the goats and so that is where you found me.”
We all laugh, walking through the woods to bring B to the place she’ll be staying for her residency. Meadow House was originally the caretaker’s residence. It has been renovated to be an additional space to house writers. Gloria Steinem has stayed here, as has Alice Sebold, Carolyn Forché and Dorothy Allison. We encourage B to read the journal entries of past residents.
Julie points to the space between two trees where Mount Rainier becomes visible when the sky isn’t overcast. B jumps up and down, rejoicing in her good fortune, celebrating her new home for the next two weeks. This is easily the best part of the job: seeing the writer’s reaction to her new sanctuary.
Nancy Nordhoff has witnessed many tears of joy when showing writers to their cottages in the early days of the retreat. “There was always that moment,” she says. “They would say ‘You mean I can stay here?’ or ‘This is for me?’”
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One never knows what local color may make its way into literature around the world!
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A non-profit, Hedgebrook holds the following as our mission statement: Hedgebrook supports visionary women writers whose stories and ideas shape our culture now and for generations to come.
Hedgebrook is helmed by Executive Director and alumna, Amy Wheeler. She first experienced Hedgebrook as a resident in 2002, while working on one of her plays.
She has this to say about the power of the residencies that Hedgebrook provides: “Women are used to nurturing others and supporting their visions, often at the expense of our own. When you turn the tables and give a woman writer space and time to work, and the opportunity to focus on her vision, you send a powerful message: what you have to say matters. The evidence of Hedgebrook’s impact is seen in the ripple effect generated by our 1,500 alumnae, whose work is now reaching millions of people around the world.”
The writers that come to Hedgebrook go through a rigorous application process. Last year, 1,500 writers applied for 40 residencies.
(Clockwise from left) Authors Denise Barr, Rebekah Anne Bloyd, Carolyn Forche, Monique Truong and Dael Orlandersmith with Program Director Vito Zingarelli in the center (photo courtesy of Hedgebrook)
The selection process is organized by Program Director, Vito Zingarelli. “Adjudication is done without knowledge of the writer’s identity.…The final selection committee is comprised of writers, educators, agents, literary managers and editors who read the applications and rank each writer according to the following criteria: quality of writing, originality of voice and strength of proposal, with an eye toward diversity in all areas.”
The work of the writers who come to Hedgebrook becomes infused with the culture of South Whidbey.
Zingarelli illustrates: “There is a play that just opened off-Broadway—‘When We Were Young and Unafraid’ by Sarah Treem—that began such a journey four years ago in the Hedgebrook Women Playwrights Festival. The working title at that time was ‘Useless Bay.’ It’s set on Whidbey Island and the kernels of that piece were directly derived from our community and the surroundings. One never knows what local color may make its way into literature around the world!”
While it’s always bittersweet when residents leave the retreat, it is offset by the promise of the new words that they’ll be putting into the world to shape our culture.
In the words of Gloria Steinem: “Hedgebrook isn’t a retreat…it’s an advance.”
If you or someone you know would like to apply for the Writers in Residence program, please visit www.hedgebrook.org.
Join us at the Hedgebrook Open House from 1 to 4 p.m. on Saturday, September 13!
Image at top: Cottage blue door (photo by Tom Marks)
Katie Woodzick works at Hedgebrook as an External Relations Manager. She is also an actor and director who can be seen on local stages. Her newest production, “Why Torture is Wrong and the People Who Love Them,” runs at OutCast Productions July 11-26.
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BY DIANNA MACLEOD Whidbey Life Magazine contributor
June 4, 2014
I sat beneath the vaulted ceiling of the Whidbey Institute’s Thomas Berry Hall, staring at the schedule for Hedgebrook’s third annual “Vortext” event, a group of women convening to discuss the art and craft of writing. The schedule was ambitious, each of the three days containing keynotes speeches, panel discussions, workshops, open mics and receptions—all held in a context of “radical hospitality” designed to offer writers the kind of nurturance that supports creativity.
Around me, the 42 participants were finding seats for the first keynote of the first morning. While some writers met each other for the first time and others reunited after a year’s separation, I busily nursed a private worry: how to summarize Vortext for Whidbey Life Magazine readers. As a reporter, I was daunted. As a creative writer, I was doubly daunted.
I confided my anxiety to Hedgebrook founder Nancy Nordhoff.
“How can I possibly do justice to Vortext? Distill the wisdom and advice of so many accomplished authors? Convey the sense of camaraderie? Find and describe the most important themes? All in less than a thousand words?”
“Simple,” Nordhoff said in her plain-spoken, river-deep way.
“Simple?” I replied.
“Fun. Power. Community. Those are the themes.” She shrugged, as if it really was simple.
Nordhoff has a talent for making the impossible seem possible and, using a few well-chosen words, she undaunted me.
Fun. Power. Community. What did the six keynote speakers have to say about those themes? And how did the setting and staff reinforce them? Over the next three days, I would find out.
Writers Elizabeth George and Jane Hamilton talking with the audience at Vortext 2014 (photo by Bre LeBeuf)
In Search of Fun
As well as writing riveting books (“A Map of the World,” “The Book of Ruth”), Jane Hamilton happens to possess a riotous sense of humor. Using raucous voices and rollicking gestures, she described a search for her Scottish roots that began at the age of 21 when she apprenticed herself to a matronly Scottish weaver with supremely rigorous standards. Hamilton—lonely and isolated in a Highland croft—spent the first weeks scraping lichen off rocks to color the authentic dyes used by the taciturn weaver. While describing her own loneliness and sense of displacement, Hamilton turned Whidbey Institute’s stage into a version of Scotland, adeptly recreating the wind-swept nature of the place, the wind-swept nature of the people and what she discovered about her own wind-swept self. In front of her audience, Hamilton became what every writer aims to be—a storyteller evoking a time, a place and a purpose—while being highly entertaining, original and authentic.
Karen Joy Fowler (“We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves,” “The Jane Austen Book Club”) made a decision to be a writer on her 30th birthday, knowing that making her work public would expose her to criticism. She credits much of what she knows about writing to her long-standing membership in a writing group: “I learned how to read, I learned how to critique, and eventually I was able to apply those things to my own writing.” True to her middle name, she spoke about the importance of joy in the writing process. “When you become a writer, there are many things that can make you not like it. If you’re not taking joy in it, figure out what you need to do to restore joy and do it.” Fowler’s deadpan delivery of comic lines, one after another, caused her audience to erupt in continuous laughter. “Of all the ways I have seen writers fail, not writing is at the top.”
In Search of Power
When petite powerhouse Elizabeth George (the Inspector Lynley series) took the stage, she began by describing her upbringing “during a time when the Nazi holocaust was not too far behind us and nuclear peril not too far ahead.” Author of 18 popular crime novels, George is expert at writing about the darker aspects of human nature, finding her subject matter deep in the shadowy realms of the human psyche.
Writers Elizabeth George and Jane Hamilton (photo by Bre LeBeuf)
Subjected to a sin-obsessed religion and separated from an exuberant extended family, George began writing as a way to cope with it all as well as to escape the “expectations of sweetness” typical for a young girl. It was in writing she discovered a “lightness of spirit”—and subsequently parlayed her personal shadows into an art form that continues to fascinate her many fans. “We do not escape our past so much as learn to understand it—and burst from it renewed.”
Ruth Ozeki (“A Tale for the Time Being,” “My Year of Meats”) counsels writers to be patient while they struggle to bring forth their work. “Practicing patience is one of the most revolutionary things you can do.” However, she also identifies impatience as the force that “gets books written.” According to Ozeki, “the tension of opposites is profoundly generative.” Ozeki described her love/hate relationship to her recent award-winning book: “The more I wrote, the more confused I became. The more I struggled, the worse it got.” She put the manuscript aside several times, but always picked it up again. The story-she-couldn’t-write almost drove her to give up writing novels altogether. A residency at Hedgebrook provided her with what she needed to achieve clarity and finish the book.
In Search of Community
Gail Tsukiyama (“Women of the Silk,” “The Language of Threads”) posed the question of what it means to be successful as a writer. “For most writers, success equals solvency.” For those who labor in solitude for years at a time, traditional notions of success are often disempowering. Tsukiyama measures success for herself by the yardstick of certain moments: holding her first published book in her hands, giving a reading of her second book and spotting her high school teachers in the second row.
Audience for the first keynote speeches at Vortext 2014 (photo by Bre LeBeuf)
To Tsukiyama, success is “freedom from expectations.” She finds “grit” to be the greatest predictor of success. To illustrate the integrity and wisdom in stepping outside the fray, she shared a parable about a Japanese painter: he declines to climb the mountain; only by standing at its base can he truly see it.
Carole DeSanti (“The Unruly Passions of Eugenie R.”) is a champion of women’s fiction in the world of publishing. Unpublished writers are always looking for tips on how to navigate the publishing industry, and this audience leaned in close to gather DeSanti’s wisdom. “Questions about the publishing industry are unanswerable. It’s not a business where rules work very well, and they might or might not apply to you or your project.”
DeSanti’s observation that “our very questions are based in our own inner dramas, personal mythologies and ideas about having authority conferred upon us” had many nodding in agreement. DeSanti traced the history of an industry that does not seem especially woman friendly. “Our current definition of copyright has never been a perfect fit for women.” She encouraged the unpublished authors in the audience to “think in terms of friendships and affiliations more than platforms and marketing plans.” Her final words brought the audience to their feet: “Remember that the publishing world is Oz; it is not home. “This is home.”
Three days of Vortexting—during which writers increased their sense of power, enlarged their sense of community and shared their sense of humor—was, indeed, far too deep and rich to summarize in one thousand, or one hundred thousand, words.
I counted myself one lucky girl reporter to have encountered Nancy Nordhoff when I did.
Day One lunch prepared by the Hedgebrook chefs (photo by Bre LeBeuf)
To learn more about Vortext and Hedgebrook visit Hedgebrook.org.
To find recipes for the meals served at Vortext, order the Hedgebrook cookbook.
For a complete list of works by each author, please visit their respective websites.
Photo at top: Writers Elizabeth George and Jane Hamilton at Vortext 2014 (photo by Bre LeBeuf)
Dianna MacLeod holds a degree in journalism from the University of Michigan. An alumna of Hedgebrook, she moved to the island in October of 2011 to complete a novel—and never left.
CLICK HERE to read more entertaining and informative WLM stories and blogs.
WLM stories and blogs are copyrighted and all rights are reserved. Linking is permitted. To request permission to use or reprint content from this site, email info@whidbeylifemagazine.org.
Hedgebrook announces the 17th annual Hedgebrook Women Playwrights Festival, a celebration of women writing for the theater. This May, playwrights Mia Chung, Alexa Junge, Evangeline Ordaz and Tracey Scott Wilson will join dramaturgs Anita Montgomery, Tanya Palmer and Christine Sumption for a two-week residency at the famed Whidbey Island writers’ retreat, capped off with public presentations of excerpts from the playwrights’ latest works.
The public events of the 2014 Hedgebrook Women Playwrights Festival take place at 4 p.m. on Sunday, May 18 at Whidbey Island Center for the Arts in Langley and at 7:30 p.m. on Monday, May 19 at ACT Theatre in Seattle. These events include readings of excerpts from each writer’s latest play and an opportunity to talk with the playwrights, their dramaturgs and Hedgebrook’s Executive Director, Amy Wheeler. Admission is free for the ACT Theatre and donations are welcome. There is a $5 charge for the event at WICA which can be waived by request.
Playwrights taking part in the 2014 Hedgebrook Women Playwrights Festival represent a wide variety of theatrical styles and dramatic voices. Mia Chung is working on “Skin in the Game,” a play that examines America’s core belief in fairness and the art and science of measuring success. Alexa Junge is writing a stage adaptation of Sarah Waters’ Victorian-inspired crime novel, “Fingersmith.” Evangeline Ordaz is working on “This Land,” which tells the story of one piece of land over 150 years. Tracey Scott Wilson is writing “Ugly,” a play about abortion and the decline of American feminism.
Participation in the Hedgebrook Women Playwrights Festival is by invitation in collaboration with partner theaters from around the country. In recognition of the fact that fewer than 20% of the plays produced each year on U.S. stages are written by women, Hedgebrook is partnering with theaters who show their commitment to women playwrights through commissions, development and production opportunities. In this way, Hedgebrook forges opportunities for women playwrights to deepen their relationships with theaters and is becoming a major pipeline for plays by women to move from creation to development and production. Current partners include Denver Theatre Center, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Seattle’s ACT Theatre, Chicago’s Goodman Theatre and Center Theatre Group in Los Angeles.
Since the festival’s inauguration in 1998, the Hedgebrook Women Playwrights Festival has supported the work of an impressive array of women playwrights, including Quiara Alegría Hudes (“Water by the Spoonful”), Lynn Nottage (“Ruined”), Tanya Saracho (“The Tenth Muse”) and many others, and has served an important role in the development of new plays by women
In Seattle, contact ACT Theatre at 206‐292‐7676 to reserve tickets or visit the website at www.acttheatre.org. On Whidbey use this Hedgebrook link to order tickets.
For more information about Hedgebrook and the Hedgebrook Women Playwrights Festival, visit our website at www.hedgebrook.org or contact Louise McKay, press@hedgebrook.org or call 206‐325‐6773
Playwrights’ Bios
MIA CHUNG (“Skin in the Game”) is a member of New Dramatists and the Ma-Yi Writers Lab. Her play “You for Me for You” had a world premiere at Woolly Mammoth in Washington, D.C. in Fall 2012 and a Boston premiere at Company One in Winter 2013. She has received awards and fellowships from Southern Rep, RISCA, TCG, and others, and her work has been developed by the Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Civilians’ R&D Group, Doorway Arts Ensemble, Icicle Creek Theatre Festival, Inkwell, Kennedy Center, Magic Theatre, Mu Performing Arts, Page Salon, Playwrights Realm, and Stella Adler Studio. She has degrees from Yale, the University of Dublin, Trinity College and Brown.
ALEXA JUNGE (“Fingersmith”) is a playwright, lyricist, television writer, producer and screenwriter. Four-time Emmy and WGA Award nominee, Junge grew up in Los Angeles and attended Barnard College where she wrote “The Columbia Varsity Show” and then continued her education at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. She wrote for Friends from 1994 to 1999 and has also written for Once and Again,The West Wing, Sex and the City, the HBO series Big Love and the BBC comedy Clone. With longtime collaborator, composer Jeanine Tesori, Alexa wrote lyrics for Disney’s Rapunzel Unbraided and Mulan 2 and she wrote the screenplay and lyrics for Disney’s Lilo & Stitch 2. A contributor to National Public Radio’s This American Life, Alexa performed live for their “What I Learned From Television” tour. She also served as Executive Producer and Showrunner for Showtime’s series The United States of Tara. Alexa just completed a two-year stint with NBC, where she was the Executive Producer and Showrunner for Best Friends Forever, among others.
EVANGELINE ORDAZ (“This Land”) is a playwright, television writer/producer, spoken word artist and human rights attorney. Her play “Visitors’ Guide to Arivaca” was featured at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts’ New Play Summit and was the subject of a December 2006 cover story in American Theater Magazine. Borderlands commissioned the play, which also saw production by the Company of Angels Theater in Los Angeles and Teatro Vision in San Jose. Company of Angels also produced “Bordering on Love, “which Ordaz wrote while a member of the Center Theater Group’s invitational playwrights’ workshop. Ordaz has also written for the California Youth Theater and the Cornerstone Theater where she shared an Ovation nomination for Best Play.
The Center Theater Group (Mark Taper Forum/Kirk Douglas Theater/Ahmanson) recently commissioned Evangeline to write a play about Los Angeles. She was a producer and writer of the groundbreaking and popular series East Los High and a staff writer on the ABC/Warner Bros television show Eyes. Ordaz has done legal work in the areas of indigent criminal appeals, immigration, domestic violence, human rights, slum litigation and corporate espionage. She also worked as an attorney for the Humanitarian Law Project, documenting human rights abuses by paramilitary groups in the aftermath Zapatista rebel uprising in Chiapas, Mexico.
TRACEY SCOTT WILSON (“Ugly”) currently writes for The Americans on FX. Recent productions include “Buzzer” at the Goodman Theater, Pillsbury House Theater and The Guthrie, “The Good Negro” and “The Story” at The Public Theater/NYSF as well as the Goodman Theater. Additional productions are “Order My Steps” for Cornerstone Theater’s Black Faith/AIDS project in Los Angeles and “Exhibit #9,” which was produced in New York City by New Perspectives Theatre and Theatre Outrageous; “Leader of the People” produced at New Georges Theatre; two ten-minute plays produced at the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis and a ten-minute play produced at Actors Theatre of Louisville.
Wilson has had readings at the New York Theatre Workshop, Second Stage Theatre, the Public Theatre, Williamstown Theater Festival and Soho Theatre Writers Centre in London. She won the 2014 Joyce Award, two Van Lier Fellowships from the New York Theatre Workshop, a residency at Sundance Ucross and Sundance Theatre Laboratory and is the winner of the 2001 Helen Merrill Emerging Playwright Award, the 2003 AT&T Onstage Award, the 2004 Whiting Award, the 2004 Kesserling Prize, the 2007 Weissberger Playwriting Award and the 2007 Time Warner Storytelling Fellowship. In 2009, she was the writer-in-residence at the O’Neil National Playwriting Conference. She has taught and guest lectured at several schools including, Brown University, Yale University, Rutgers University and NYU. “The Story” and “The Good Negro” have been published by Dramatist Play Services. Ms. Wilson holds a Master’s degree in English Literature from Temple University.
Hedgebrook is a literary nonprofit that supports the work of visionary women writers whose stories and ideas shape our culture now and for generations to come. Founded in 1988, Hedgebrook hosts a global community of writers—close to 1,400 in 25 years—at our Whidbey Island retreat. Our programs empower women writers through high-caliber workshops and connect their work with thousands of boo lovers and audiences each year through readings, screenings, events, salons, publications and festivals.
For more information about Hedgebrook’s programs including our Master Classes and upcoming events. check out www.hedgebrook.org. Hedgebrook is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.
The notion of Hedgebrook has expanded from a place to a state of mind through salons, master classes, festivals, lectures and other events held periodically—on Whidbey Island, in Seattle and further afield. Through these offerings, the public is invited to participate in the intellectual and emotional life of Hedgebrook.
