Update and Invitation to our Open House
Re-opened and Growing!
Want to see our space?
You’re invited! We’ll be hosting an open house on Friday, November 18th, from 6:00pm until 8:00pm. Stop by for a tour of our new location at 343 E. High Street, Lexington, KY 40507, at the corner of High and Grand streets in the old Common Grounds Coffee House. We’ll serve light refreshments and have several of our member writers in the space. You’ll also have the opportunity to meander through our rooms and purchase raffle tickets for baskets filled with books written by our members.
This is an informal open house - you can come and go anytime between six and eight - but we will make a few remarks at 7:00pm and will draw winners for our raffle at 8:00pm (winners do not need to be present at the time of the drawing).
We hope you’ll stop by. We’d love to thank you for your support in person! Please also note that we’ve scheduled this open house to coincide with the LexArts HOP so you can stop by and see the space as you visit the art galleries in town. A win-win for creative arts!
New Mural
One special reason to visit during our open house is to see our new mural by local artist Wylie Caudill: a phoenix surrounded by beauty, generosity, fire, and bounty to inspire all our member writers.
Now that the mural is complete, our creative space is complete. Its impact on our writing community is both practical and symbolic.
State of the Nonprofit
We’ve survived and are stronger than ever thanks to our member writers and supporters like you. You’re wonderful! A quick recap of our journey:
We launched our nonprofit in March 2020, four days before COVID-19 cases started causing statewide shutdowns. We had 13 members when we had to pause operations for the better part of a year.
The LWR reopened in May 2021. We’d grown to 57 members when on March 31, 2022, a fire spread from the next door building. We lost all our “stuff” but had a strong and engaged community of writers to serve.
Six weeks after the fire, we reopened in our current location—a former coffee shop many of us had spent hours and days writing in. And in the five months since we’ve been on High Street, we’ve expanded the number of writers we’re serving from 57 to 84.
Our board is thrilled, humbled, and honored with the privilege to serve writers. Our important and worthy mission is to help writers produce more work and build their readerships and we’re stoked about the future.
Our First Employee: Community Manager
While our all-volunteer board has managed each challenge we’ve faced with a focused dedication while also handling the day-to-day running of our coworking space, we’ve grown to the size that we need additional help. At our last board meeting, we voted to hire our first part-time employee—a huge decision and step for us! The Community Manager will start in January 2023. Their role will be to provide consistent management of the coworking space and further cultivate our writer community.
Yay!
How You Can Support Us
We’ve been through many challenges and have accomplished much, but we could not’ve done it without your support. THANK YOU.
And…knock on wood…we’re happy to be in regular nonprofit operation mode. This is our normal state where we’ll need to raise funds through donations and grants (thanks to KY Arts Council, KY Humanities, and South Arts for previous grant funding) to cover about 50% of our costs, with the other 50% provided through our subsidized membership fees. Thank you for supporting our mission and we hope you’ll consider helping our organization in the future.
Holiday supply drive: The Lexington Writer's Room supports its 84 member writers by providing a well-supplied coworking and gathering space that fuels their creativity and enables writing and revision processes.
We go through A LOT of office supplies, drinks, and snacks. And a ream of printer paper—yes, printer paper—is a beautiful thing to us.
You can help us restock our supply room and get set up for a successful 2023 by purchasing one of our Amazon wish list items or making a donation. Please also select us as your Amazon Smile recipient (there’s no cost to you; we get Amazon donations).
Thank you! See our Amazon Wish List here and learn more ways to support the Lexington Writer's Room on our website here.