| THE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE
I am delighted to serve as chairman of the board for the Alabama Writers’ Forum and on behalf of the executive board members I want to thank you, our readers, supporters, and friends, for your continued support. Alabama writers are a diverse and bountiful community. Their individual works and collective reputations are well known inside and outside our state.
Alabama writers are professional and amateur, rural and urban, young and old. Some are model citizens, some are errant marauders. The Alabama Writers’ Forum works with them all. For example, the Forum’s work with juvenile offenders within the Department of Youth Services began ten years ago. The Writing Our Stories: An Anti-Violence Creative Writing Program is a nine-month, intense workshop that provides young folk an opportunity to express in words what before they may have acted out in physical or personal violence. Writing offers hope and a chance for a new beginning. In the words of Forum Executive Director Jeanie Thompson, “Our goal is to give these young people a new language…to envision themselves as someone different than the person who entered the DYS facility.”
The Forum also promotes writing through our hosting of the High School Literary Arts Awards, a state-wide competition offering monetary awards to students enrolled in the ninth through twelfth grades.
As an educator and librarian, I am keenly aware of the transformative power of writing and reading. Indeed, writing is part and parcel with reading. For Colored Girls… author and playwright Ntozake Shange says she found her voice through reading. The Forum joins Alabama’s schools, libraries, and bookstores in their efforts to increase literacy among our populace.
Alabama writers enrich our lives and our state by continuing to challenge our convictions and conventions. The Alabama Writers’ Forum will continue to be a conduit for writers and writing, but to ensure our longevity we must raise the ante by asking you to help us grow the Forum. We need you to invite your colleagues, friends, and neighbors who are not members of the Forum to join. Like most non-profits, the Forum relies on your generosity and your goodwill.
We are just one piece of the overall arts community in Alabama. Our state abounds with talent and the Alabama Writers’ Forum is one venue to showcase that talent. The members of the executive board appreciate your commitment to the arts in Alabama and to the Forum. I hope to see you at a reading around town.
|  Derryn E. Moten |
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