Hedgebrook

Organization Name: Hedgebrook
Website: www.hedgebrook.org
Budget Size: $1M – $2.5M
Region: Northwest
County: Island
Artistic Focus Area: Literary Arts/Multidisciplinary
Community Accelerator Grant Awards: $11,900 in 2023, $12,500 in 2024, $12,500 in 2025
Primary Impact Category: Employment
Mission Statement: Hedgebrook’s mission is to amplify the voices of visionary women and women-identified writers, especially those from communities historically excluded from mainstream support including BIPOC, LGBTQ+, low income, and people with disabilities, through our core Writers Residencies, workshops and public programs that connect writers with readers and audiences around the world.

When asked what’s currently going on at Hedgebrook, Executive Director Kimberly A.C. Wilson pauses to really consider the question. “Well, we just put the garden to bed,” she says, “so now the only color on the land is the glossy yellow-orange fruit of the persimmon tree. It’s actually my favorite time on the land. When the writers are here, they get more chances to go inward. Fewer distractions, like the beach or the birds flying overhead. It’s just you here with your thoughts, and other people here with their thoughts, and that’s really grounding.”

Hedgebrook, a 48-acre writing residency on Whidbey Island, was established by Nancy Nordhoff and Sheryl Feldman in 1988 – the same year, Kimberly notes, that Congress passed the Women’s Business Ownership Act, which allowed women to own and operate businesses without a male cosigner for the first time. “It was in that environment,” she says, “that this radical idea that women writers needed and deserved space and time and respite to write really came to life. It was radical then; it’s radical now. In some ways I would say it’s even more radical now, given the erasure and erosion of some of the rights and powers of woman-identified folks.” In the years since, Hedgebrook has matured into a global community of more than 2,000 poets, novelists, playwrights, screenwriters, songwriters, memoirists, and more who have come to stay in its six cottages, commune around the kitchen table in its farmhouse, and experience a level of physical, mental, and emotional safety that is rarely – if ever – made available to women, all free of charge. “Writers come, they connect with each other, they support each other,” says Kimberly. “They become each other’s readers and community, and they’re strengthened by that. They write more here than they’ve ever written anywhere. That’s extraordinary, but it’s normal here.”

Hedgebrook Behind the Scenes

Just because a place is idyllic doesn’t mean its upkeep is easy or straightforward. Through the years, Hedgebrook has not always had the resources or capacity to seek grants, and even when it has, the ones that have come in have mostly been modest, in the $1,000 to $5,000 range. This is not unusual for a literary arts organization – as the Literary Arts Fund recently shared, literary arts in the U.S. are chronically underfunded compared even to other artistic disciplines, receiving less than 2% of the arts grants made by philanthropic foundations year-over-year. While Hedgebrook is generously supported by individual gifts – the vast majority of which come from its alumni – steady, reliable grant funding has always been challenging to come by.

The presence of the Community Accelerator Grant in Hedgebrook’s funding landscape has, thus, been warmly received. “It’s been important to me on several levels,” says Kimberly. It feels meaningful to her that the funding is local, and that it comes from “two sources of really trusted support in ArtsFund and Allen Family Philanthropies.” As an unrestricted grant, it has allowed Hedgebrook to direct funding where it is needed most, making urgent repairs around the property and maintaining the generator that’s sometimes called upon to keep the power on during winter storms.

It has also crucially gone towards paying Hedgebrook’s staff of fifteen, a group Kimberly warmly identifies as all women “and Joey, who is wonderful.”  She has been with Hedgebrook for five years, and sees one of the primary objectives of her tenure to date as ensuring Hedgebrook centers women not only as writers, but also as employees. “We’ve been shifting the organization from one that created an experience that was magical for writers to one that takes the magic out of it, that says, ‘It’s not magic when women do stuff and you love it.’ It’s like Christmas. Everyone always says Christmas is magic, but Christmas is Mom cleaning the house, cooking the food, purchasing and wrapping the presents, and giving credit to some fat guy who supposedly comes down the chimney.” Kimberly believes that helping with retirement funds and paying employees generously has the power to make the residency experience even more meaningful for artists: “Hedgebrook is made up of caregivers, both on the staff and as writers. It’s been so important to me that we appreciate and celebrate the work of caregiving, that instead of calling it magic, we actually compensate people for the energy they put into making this place work. That we turn the radical hospitality that we’re known for inward. That writers see that we’re not putting on a show for them, but that we’re actually living it.”

Relationship-Rooted Philanthropy

Lately, Kimberly and her team have been putting Hedgebrook’s values into action by working to build strong, authentic philanthropic relationships. Over the last few years, they have launched two new residency programs. The first, Mother Tree, offers alumni the opportunity to return to Hedgebrook, but asks them to pay a subsidized fee comparable to similar writing residencies. The second, Women in Philanthropy, offers a retreat for women who run charitable foundations, providing a space where they can hone their voices and find new ways to use their writing for good. As Kimberly puts it, “We invite them to stay on the land, to pay for that experience, and be embraced in the way that we embrace all of the writers who come here.” As a result, Hedgebrook has built deeply mission-rooted relationships with foundations that have led to new funding opportunities and connections across the philanthropic landscape, an approach that Kimberly believes may well hold the keys to a financially sustainable future: “We’re going to keep doing our normal work, and we’re going to be applying for $1.5 million in grants this year, and we’re going to keep working on building our endowment. But it’s these relationships that really have the most opportunity for Hedgebrook, and our entire organization is working on those relationships.”

Hedgebrook’s co-founder Nancy Nordhoff passed away in early January 2026, during the completion of this case study. A longtime Seattle philanthropist, she had initially purchased land on Whidbey with the intention of building a home for herself, but as she walked the land, she felt it telling her that it wanted to be a home to more than one woman. Her decision led to the creation of a refuge that is wild and remote, accessible only by ferry, surrounded by towering trees and soaring eagles, and offering both solitude and community in abundance. It isn’t magic. Perhaps that makes it even more remarkable.

Note: After a five-year tenure with Hedgebrook, Kimberly stepped down from her Executive Director role in March 2026, passing leadership to celebrated poet, writer, and Hedgebrook alumna Claudia Castro Luna.