“I am a woman giving birth to myself.”
—from a 1973 a poster by artist Marcia Salo Rizzi
This community was born in 2013, when Jennifer Wolfe, a former journalist turned corporate consultant, grew tired of putting all her creative energy into corporate presentations. Following the desires of her heart, she found a new career as a writer and facilitator, returning to her writing roots. Then she discovered Women Writing for (a) Change® in Cincinnati—our “mother” school, founded in 1991 by Mary Pierce Brosmer.
Jennifer decided to create her own affiliate school in Jacksonville, and after licensing and certification, began holding circles in 2014 in her living room, at correctional centers, at the library, in hospitals, at women’s centers, in college classrooms, and in many other intimate spaces and places in Jacksonville.
After five years and a move to a historic cottage in Riverside, she attended a presentation by Hope McMath at The Cummer Museum, where she learned that only 2-4 percent of the art in our national museums was by women, and even fewer women of color. Jennifer decided to feature Jacksonville’s women artists on the walls of her home—particularly women of color—and began inviting the public to attend events featuring women artists, writers, musicians, scholars, authors, and other community leaders .
The combined results of these creative efforts turned into an annual anthology of women’s words and art, first published in 2019, titled, (a) river rising: Anthology of Women’s Voices. The anthology is produced by an intergenerational array of high school and college students to industry professionals and college professors, creating an eclectic mix of voices to match the eclectic voices within the book. We understand that—we believe that—leadership must be representational.
To expand programing, increase accessibility, and have a wider reach into the community, Jennifer added a non-profit foundation in 2018. This expansion includes free community circles, art exhibitions around town, book festivals and abookstore crawl, our high school and college internships, and signature programs such as the Zora Neale Hurston Fellowship for artists, the Emerging Voices Fellowship for writers, and our leadership development program, Conscious Feminine Leadership Training.
We believe that by writing together and listening deeply to one another, we can strengthen our community. In doing so, we help to strengthen the greater community, one circle, one story, and one connection at a time.
