An Origin Story
This all started sometime around when Joy and Jeannetta went to an event about “The Sisterhood” and Jeannetta said to Joy, “We need that here!”
The idea had been brewing in Jeannetta’s head long before that, but Joy finally knew Jeannetta was serious and that’s when they decided to get in “formation” to make the dream a reality.
They scheduled a meeting in Paris (which, as it just so happens, was also the first time they ever met in person!) where they discussed the fact that it seemed there was nothing just for them and other people like them, i.e. early career fiction writers living in Europe who were women from the African diaspora. And they knew that, living in Europe, they were walking in some serious Black literary history.
After that first meeting in Paris, things took off!
They launched a website, started a GoFundMe, booked a venue, and opened applications for the first ever Black Women Writers in Europe Workshop.
In the end, they invited six talented writers from London, Brussels, and Copenhagen to the south of France in early fall 2023.
Their workshop style was writer-centered. No writer was expected to stay quiet during the discussion of her work. Every writer wrote an “artist’s statement” on the first night, focusing on the kind of help they wanted from the workshop and presented the statement at the top of the discussion of their piece.
They meditated, they talked literature, they called on the ancestors, they ate, they cried, they tried to go to a wildlife reserve and got lost… but mostly they had fun, bonding bonding bonding with fellow Black Women writers in Europe.
Best of all, BWWE is still thriving.
The 2023 participants, along with Jeannetta and Joy, now meet weekly for writing sessions and every quarter have a writing life check-in where they share writing resources and encourage each other to keep writing.
They are querying novels, submitting work for publication, winning awards, starting MFAs, and reading all the time, living the truth of their dedication to the craft of writing.