ART

The creation of fine literature is the core of our mission.  Regardless of whether women have many books and articles in print or have not yet mastered the mechanics of written language, they are met as serious artists who are capable of producing memoirs of beauty and power. We work with the belief that there is no such thing as a person who cannot write, and that all must have equal access to the tools. Thus, the Herstory approach, as distinguished from many community-based approaches, is very much a taught one. From the moment a woman enters a Herstory workshop, she will be working to find her own particular rhythms and forms. Since 1996, Erika Duncan and the women who have worked with her have evolved a distinctive vocabulary that allows writers with all levels of experience to work side by side on truly level ground.  Those with backgrounds that are primarily oral cross-fertilize those with more academic backgrounds as they study the power of effective storytelling together.    

Audiences at Herstory’s events have been stunned by the fine literary quality of works by women who haven’t written prior to their Herstory involvement. Many long-blocked writers have found the structure for book-length memoirs in our workshops. Not all Herstory members write with publication as a goal. However, the recent success of Herstory authors – in books and anthologies published under the Herstory imprint – is evidence of the literary quality that the Herstory method is able to produce.

Herstory’s melding of literary work with grassroots empowerment grows out of the life-work of its founder and artistic director, Erika Duncan, novelist, essayist, and educator. She is a past contributing editor of Book Forum, and a past monthly front page feature writer for The New York Times Long Island Weekly.  In addition to her own fiction and nonfiction—always based on what allows voices to emerge and what stops them—she has dedicated her life to bringing out the voices of others: in her pilot project exploring innovative approaches to the teaching of writing at New York University; with her model designs for the Rural Education Program in Orland Maine; with quadriplegics at Goldwater Hospital and with teachers in some of Brooklyn’s more troubled schools. She has been devoted to the creation of literary networks to give audience support and serious critical attention to the works of writers who are would not otherwise be heard since co-founding the Woman’s Salon in New York City in 1975. Her nurturing of writers working at every level continues with Herstory.