How It Began

Write Up the Coast began before I knew I was beginning it.

I had recently moved from a life spent mostly in cities to a small community on the Northern California coast.

It was a very different landscape — not only the meeting of land, sea, sky and redwoods, but the experience of living in a place where community matters in a different way.

Then came the pandemic.

Doors closed. People stayed home. And in a place where distance was already part of the geography, we suddenly became even more separated from one another.

I went to Peggy Berryhill at our community radio station, KGUA, with an idea.

What if we gave people something to write about?

A prompt. An invitation. Send us what you write, and we'll read it on the radio.

It became KGUA Writers.

The stories started coming.

Some were funny. Some were deeply personal. Some came from people who had always written; others from people who would never have called themselves writers.

We put their voices and stories on the radio.

And somewhere along the way, I began to realize that something else was happening.

The writing was bringing people together.

KGUA Writers continued long after those first months of isolation. The idea moved beyond the radio and into the community — into schools, community organizations, gathering places and rooms where people could sit together again.

Different people. Different settings. Different reasons for being there.

Yet something remarkably similar kept happening.

Give people an invitation and a little space, and they begin to share something of themselves. Someone listens. Someone recognizes something of their own life in another person's story.

Writing was one way in.

Connection was what happened once we were there.

That made me wonder what else might bring people into the room.

A book could do it.

A conversation could do it.

A question could do it.

A microphone could do it.

A story could do it.

Different ways in. Different reasons to gather.

Somewhere in all of that, Write Up the Coast emerged.

The name came from where it happened — this remarkable stretch of Northern California coast — but the idea became larger than the place where it started.

Create the invitation.

Make some room.

See who walks in.