Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation
Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation
Background
The Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation (VONA) recognizes that literature is a history of society and culture that is not altered over time or reinterpreted. We are able to enter lives beyond us through the records of literary works that have been preserved and made available from other times, settings or peoples. At the same time VONA recognizes the limits of institutional access to programs that help writers form and develop resulting in narrow perspectives, limited voices, and skewed visions.
Mission
VONA’s mission to nurture developing writers through the traditions, perspectives, and aesthetics of writers of color provides an environment that complements our varied cultures, supports the voices and traditions that arise from non-mainstream histories and societies, and provides serious commitment to the voices of underrepresented writers. With a faculty of renowned writers of color, we provide writing workshops that support our mission... These intimate workshops allow emerging adult writers an opportunity to workshop their writings, learn about the publishing industry and explore other aspects of literary life. The writers lead the participants from across the nation and from other parts of the world through readings, critiques, sharing and exercises to enhance the development of the participants.
Programs
As the only Multi-genre workshop for writers of color in the nation, the VONA/Voices Writing Workshops provide developing writers a place where they can explore their craft in an atmosphere of support and understanding, where they can exchange with great writers ideas and inspirations, where they can gain empowerment to move from VONA to a writer’s life with authority and confidence. We want to make VONA available to more voices, pull people in from the margins, in from places where writing workshops aren't an everyday occurrence and give them the experience for a lifetime.
Other opportunities for writers-of-color include local staging of works and development of particular styles of contemporary writing. VONA provides the opportunity to expand beyond these trends to literary pursuit that has import for issues of justice and equality and also define a literary standard that illustrates the breadth of our cannon.
Prospective
The Bay Area is among the most diverse areas in the country and so we have a responsibility to include the least powerful to help define the literary history of the area. In addition, we are seen, by other parts of the U.S., as a national model for inclusion and social action. At VONA this is a serious responsibility. It drives us to provide not only opportunities for local writers of color, but one which has stature, that proves is own excellence, in design, in purpose and in the writers that we bring.
