About Women Writing in Asheville
WWIA was started in 2008 to provide women writers with a place to share their writing and meet other writers in Asheville. Our members are of diverse ages, backgrounds, and genres. The common thread is that we all love to write!
We meet for kind but honest feedback of our writing. Everyone who's shared has commented on how helpful the critiques have been in making their pieces stronger.
Meetings are scheduled twice a month to accommodate as many schedules as possible.
About Jess
When Jess moved to Asheville from Cincinnati, Ohio she scoured the local papers searching for a writing workshop. The few she found either met when she was at work or weren't what she was looking for. After meeting some awesome women writers during NaNoWriMo the year before, the seed was planted in her brain to create a writing workshop to keep up with them. She decided to make the group women-only for two reasons: one, all the writer friends she'd made were women and two, because she knew she felt most comfortable sharing her writing with other women and guessed others might feel the same.
When Jess isn't running WWIA meetings, she's definitely not idle. During the day she works for her family's wholesale business. She's also pursuing two computer-related degrees at AB-Tech so she spends a lot of time doing homework. She designs websites - like this one! - and books with her company Your Best Page Forward. During June and November she organizes meetings in Asheville for Script Frenzy and NaNoWriMo, respectively. When Script Frenzy and NaNoWriMo are over, she organizes a year-round group to keep writers who met during the events in touch and to give each other support to finish their scripts and novels. Jess also designs, creates, and sells jewelry and origami through her Etsy shop Aztec Pink Creations.
During the blissful time she gets to write, she writes mostly science-fiction or fantasy short stories and novels. She dabbles in literary fiction now and again. She got bit by the screenplay-writing bug during Script Frenzy and plans to finish one one of these days!
Jess considers herself one of the luckiest women in the world because of all the wonderful people she's met through WWIA.