Herstory Writers Network

Mission: Bringing unheard voices into the public arena, transforming lived experiences into written memoir powerful enough to change hearts, minds, and policy. Organizational Background: Twenty-three years ago, novelist and essayist Erika Duncan gathered a small group of women who had suffered personal or political trauma. Although none had ever written for an audience, she guided them in writing their life stories in a way that would stir identification, empathy and compassion in even the hardest-hearted stranger. The resulting writing was more powerful than could have been expected Building on this experience, Ms. Duncan codified and refined the process to develop a pedagogy that can be used to teach this empathy-generating writing to anyone, regardless of level of education. What We Do: Herstory reaches out to members of vulnerable and isolated populations in the jails, the schools and the community, offering access to facilitated workshops in which they write side by side across differences in race, class and culture. By sharing their stories, workshop participants develop a sense of connectedness and of individual and community empowerment and healing. Through this process they come to understand that they are not alone and not at fault, that it is the systems that have failed them and that their words have the power to change those systems. Herstory Today: Today, between 11 and 17 Herstory workshops, in English and Spanish, take place on Long Island at any given time. Some are ongoing for months or years; some are time-limited. Most of the narratives produced in these workshops shed a personal and compelling light on systems that have failed the writer, injustices faced or observed, families torn apart, the consequences of poverty and hopelessness. The use of the methodology is slowly spreading beyond Long Island, most recently through engagement with the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation in Arkansas.