Today we’d like to introduce you to Randy Richardson.
Randy, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
The Chicago Writers Association just recently celebrated its 10-year anniversary. We’ve come a long way from where we started.
Diana Laskaris, an attorney, and writer who had transplanted from New York to Chicago, was looking for a way to connect with others like her in the city. In 2003, she founded CWA as a Yahoo! group, an online forum whose members interact mostly by email. Hard to believe but, at the time, this was cutting-edge technology – social media before Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
I feel a little like Forrest Gump. I stumbled upon the Chicago Writers Association in 2005. After the release of my first novel, “Lost in the Ivy,” I felt much like my protagonist: lost and confused. This little online community gave me a direction.
In 2006, a year after I joined, a small group of us decided we wanted to make the organization more than a Yahoo! group and organized it as a nonprofit. Two years later, we obtained federal tax-exempt status. We were off and running.
Looking back, it is hard to believe that we pulled it off. Truth be told, I had no sights on leading this new charge. But the founder of the Yahoo! group, Diana Laskaris, told me that this vision of the organization was mine and not hers.
Sometimes, this world leads you in directions that you could never have imagined. Honestly, I didn’t know I had a vision but now, over a decade later, I still serve as president of CWA, a group that began with a steering committee of 16 has grown to more than 700 dues-paying members and over 3,000 Facebook group members. It has been a great journey, one that I could never have expected when I started it and one that I am truly fortunate to have taken.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
It has at times been a bumpy ride. There was a time when I briefly stepped away from the presidency for personal reasons. During this break, the organization hit a real low point. But sometimes, I feel that you need those low points to see what you really have and to realize that it’s worth fighting for. That’s definitely true with us. As an organization, I think we needed that jolt. When I stepped back into the role of president, our board came back with a new energy and dedication that had been missing for some time. So, I think we needed that low point to get to the high point where we stand today.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Chicago Writers Association story. Tell us more about the business.
The Chicago Writers Association is a federally-registered 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization. Our website (chicagowrite.org) tells you how CWA’s founding members defined our vision as promoting the 4 C’s of writing: creativity, commerce, craft and community. To that end, our website explains, CWA strives to foster a visible, supportive writing community; provide genuine, constructive feedback and access to resources; assist writers at all levels achieve their writing goals; build a bridge to unite all facets of Chicago’s diverse literary culture; and promote Chicago as a place of literary distinction.
Ambitious? No question. Did I realistically think we could achieve such lofty goals? I’d be lying if I didn’t have doubts. But writers are dreamers and they dream big.
Obviously, I didn’t do this all on my own. Along the way I have been fortunate to have so many people behind me who have shared my vision and worked tirelessly to make all of this happen. Currently, we have a board made up of twelve people – all of them writers and all of them volunteers – who are 100 percent committed to our organizational mission.
To me, the one C that stands out above all the others is community. That’s what this organization has, first and foremost, always been about.
We’ve fostered the growth of other writing-related endeavors through partnerships with the Rockford-based In Print, the Teen Writers and Artists Project, and the Novel-in-Progress Bookcamp. The Chicago Literary Hall of Fame (“CLHOF”) is a project born out of CWA. Former CWA Board Member Donald G. Evans launched the initiative with CWA’s support before breaking away and starting his own nonprofit.
We’ve opened the doors of opportunity to writers at all levels, genres and styles through our Book of the Year Awards, our First Chapter Contest, our Speakers Bureau, our book review service, Windy City Reviews, and our online magazine, The Write City, which this year expanded to include an annual print journal. We’ve provided educational opportunities through our quarterly workshops that are held in partnership with the English and Creative Writing Department of Columbia College Chicago. And just this year, we launched Let’s Just Write, An Uncommon Writers Conference.
We’ve helped to build a bridge to unite organizations serving Chicago’s diverse literary community through networking events with the Illinois Woman’s Press Association and Chicago Women in Publishing. We’ve kept building our own community through our active social media outlets on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram – and, yes, of course, that Yahoo! group, where it all started.
Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
The quality or characteristic that is most important to my success? Probably that I don’t take credit for my success. I credit those around me. Some call this humble. But it is absolutely true. I didn’t build this organization on my own. No one individual could. We are only as strong as the people we have around us. And I have been very fortunate to have some truly tremendous talent surrounding me. So, it’s not about ‘me’ it’s about ‘we’. But to that end, I do feel that I have a sense for the types of people I can work with and how to bring together diverse sets of skills and talents towards a common cause.
Pricing:
- Membership in the Chicago Writers Association is $25 annually.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.chicagowrites.org
- Phone: (312) 282-5087
- Email: info@chicagowrites.org
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chicagowrites/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/chicagowrites/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/chicagowrites
Image Credit:
Chicago Writers Association, Chicago Literary Hall of Fame, Floyd Sullivan
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