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“It came as a surprise to many of us,” says Carla Jankowski, a retired English teacher who has been running the workshop at the Bezazian library in Uptown for the past four years. “They had a big fund-raising event in the spring. In the past they had a lot of support. They told us there were issues with money and it couldn’t sustain itself anymore and the situation was too dire to do anything. I don’t know how it got to that point. There was nothing untoward. It sounded like the big funders weren’t continuing to donate. The big corporations were reevaluating their funding criteria, and unfortunately, adults are on the low end of the totem pole.”
Jankowski’s group, which usually assembles on Wednesday evenings, didn’t meet last week because of Thanksgiving, but this past week they gathered at the library as usual for a workshop on bookbinding. Between eight and 14 people usually show up, which Jankowski thinks is a nice size for workshopping writing. Jankowski wants to keep meeting for as long as she can.
(I’ve tried to contact members of the board of directors. The chair, Ann Stanford, a professor at DePaul, is currently out of the country. Several others resigned before NWA decided to shut down. I will update this post if I hear back from anyone.)
“It was a unique program,” says Jankowski. “It’s writing from ordinary people. You didn’t have to be a ‘budding writer.’ They are writers.”
