Flashbacks: Echoes of Past Issues
mission more truly and fully. Right now we have staff members in Wilmington, Winston-Salem, and Asheville. We have one trustee who lives in Cherokee in the heart of the Smokies and one who lives on the banks of the Neuse in New Bern, both of whom can participate fully in board meetings, held since the pandemic on Zoom. For the first time in a long time, if not ever, Triangle residents are not a majority on our board. We have volunteer Regional Reps holding monthly events for writers in communities all across the state, and volunteers in our Prison Writers Outreach corresponding with writers incarcerated in state facilities. More than in any other stretch of the last forty years, we can connect and serve – we can network – all of North Carolina as “the Writingest State,” as one big literary community. “But to what end?” That question stopped me short, when our consultant David Scruggs asked it of me in 2019. The Network board and I were working with David on what he called “strategic discernment,” seeking to clarify our mission, how we pursued it, and how it might need to evolve.
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He was asking about our mission statement, which described well what the Network does but didn’t address its why. Since 1985 we had more or less taken that for granted, taken for granted that creative writing was and is a worthy pursuit, taken for granted that the vast majority of North Carolinians – including those who didn’t write or even read much – accepted it as a good thing, as well. David was the first to point out to us that we couldn’t take that for granted anymore. Working with David, and then in 2024 with nonprofit consultant Lilly Skok Bunch, we examined our why and incorporated it not only into our mission statement, but our mission itself: “The North Carolina Writers’ Network creates and nurtures community for those who care about writing, because good writing is vital to our wider community.” Our mission statement goes on to say, “We believe that writing can connect people across time, distance, and difference; that writing with integrity is necessary for civic discourse and a healthy society; and that the deeply satisfying experiences of writing and reading should be available to everyone,” all of which is true, but it’s not nearly all.
“We believe that writing can connect people across time, distance, and difference; that writing with integrity is necessary for civic discourse and a healthy society; and that the deeply satisfying experiences of writing and reading should be available to everyone.” OPPOSITE Network Director Ed Southern at the
ABOVE CENTER Keynote speaker Charles Frazier talking
2025 Spring conference, Greensboro, NC
about writing at the 2019 Fall conference, Asheville, NC
ABOVE LEFT Keynote speaker Randall Kenan at the
ABOVE RIGHT Keynote speaker Jason Mott talking about
2018 Fall conference, Wrightsville Beach, NC
the experience of receiving the National Book Award at the Fall conference, Wrightsville Beach, NC, Nov. 2022