Photo: Jill Newton Moore
Our mission
Dare. Risk. Dream. Share. Ruminate. How do we understand our place in the world, our responsibility to it, and our responsibility to each other. Clockhouse is an eclectic conversation about the work-in-progress of life--a soul arousal, a testing ground, a new community, a call for change. Join in.
Finding community in our art
Since 1997, MFAW graduates have gathered to practice our art and renew our bonds as a writing community at CWC. One of the gifts of CWC is that it makes its own community, much like the one we all experienced as we went through the program. Some alumni have returned to CWC for many years, some come occasionally, and every year brings new faces and energy to our time together.
While hewing to our Founding Principles, CWC has also grown over the last twenty five years. What began as a small gathering of MFAW alumni, returning to Vermont to attend their friends' summer-time graduation, expanded to an annual summer Clockhouse Writer's Conference & Retreat (CWC&R) at Goddard's Plainfield, Vermont, campus, and an annual winter Lighthouse Writers' Conference & Retreat (LWC&R) at Goddard's Pt. Townsend, Washington, site.
In response to the global pandemic in 2020, the two conferences moved online for two years. In 2022, we returned to in-person conferences. But, taking what we learned from being virtual, offered virtual attendance for alumni who weren't able to travel.
We look forward to where the next twenty five years will take us.
While hewing to our Founding Principles, CWC has also grown over the last twenty five years. What began as a small gathering of MFAW alumni, returning to Vermont to attend their friends' summer-time graduation, expanded to an annual summer Clockhouse Writer's Conference & Retreat (CWC&R) at Goddard's Plainfield, Vermont, campus, and an annual winter Lighthouse Writers' Conference & Retreat (LWC&R) at Goddard's Pt. Townsend, Washington, site.
In response to the global pandemic in 2020, the two conferences moved online for two years. In 2022, we returned to in-person conferences. But, taking what we learned from being virtual, offered virtual attendance for alumni who weren't able to travel.
We look forward to where the next twenty five years will take us.
CWC Statement of Responsibility
We of the Clockhouse Writers Conference acknowledge that as a country, we are still arcing toward the fulfillment of liberty and justice for all, that the manifestation of this vision is yet incomplete.
We acknowledge our responsibilities as writers to educate ourselves, family, friends, and others. To speak out and write against racism, to give room and agency to those who know what needs to be done and humbly accept that we need to be honest and uncomfortable as we undertake courageous action together as a community. We will use our CWC community as a source of healing and hope.
Although we mostly write in solitude, we take up our pens and join our voices as a community to fervently affirm our commitment to racial justice. As writers, we hold as sacred our responsibility to the ongoing work of the creation of freedom for all. Words make worlds.
We acknowledge our responsibilities as writers to educate ourselves, family, friends, and others. To speak out and write against racism, to give room and agency to those who know what needs to be done and humbly accept that we need to be honest and uncomfortable as we undertake courageous action together as a community. We will use our CWC community as a source of healing and hope.
Although we mostly write in solitude, we take up our pens and join our voices as a community to fervently affirm our commitment to racial justice. As writers, we hold as sacred our responsibility to the ongoing work of the creation of freedom for all. Words make worlds.