We are reaching out this year to share some highlights from this year with The Watershed Journal Literary Group. Thanks to our dedicated volunteers, our talented staff, and, in large part, to our Members and Sponsors, TWJ presence and service within our region of the Pennsylvania Wilds was stronger than ever.
This year alone, we have hosted ten local author events, added 56 TWJ Members, welcomed over 500 people to Watershed Books, and logged over 1,000 volunteer hours. As proud as we are of these numbers for our grassroots literary movement, we are even more proud to share some examples of the experiences for our writers and readers that cannot be quantified or measured. This year, a young woman from Pittsburgh published her first book, a story steeped in her experience growing up in an old coal town in western Pennsylvania. Another author in our region published her third children’s book with the help of the TWJ community. One woman, a writer and photographer who had kept to herself for years in fear of sharing her work, found the courage to submit to our literary magazine and was featured on the front cover of our recent Fall Edition.
Through our book clubs, publishing efforts, workshops, literary events, and our bookstore, we are reaching someone new almost every day who is searching for connection through shared storytelling. DuBois author and retired radio personality, Joe Taylor shared his experience, having joined the writer’s group in 2019 and published three books with the help of the TWJ community, “It is no exaggeration to say that The Watershed Journal changed my life. And can’t thank them enough for being so supportive of me. This ‘writing’ thing has given me, as the final curtain begins to drop, a whole new act.”
This is what our mission is all about, empowering and elevating regional authorship in the western Pennsylvania Wilds. As the holiday season sets in and our membership drive winds down, we have many reasons to be optimistic about this coming year. If you have not already, we hope that you will consider a Membership this year to help The Watershed Journal community continue to grow.
Thank you for what you have done for TWJ and for considering us as we move forward into 2023.
