by Kat Shuttlesworth, WB Intern
At The Writing Barn, picture book author Bethany Hegedus has converted her secluded, South Austin property into what I’ve heard lovingly referred to as “Austin’s very own Walden Pond”– a space built for for writers and by writers with the sole purpose of cultivating a creative community. When I initially made the decision to accept a position interning there, I expected to gain professional insight into the literary industry, but the experience has turned out to be that and much more.
As an English and Feminist Studies paired major, I’m constantly pondering the power of literature to enact real-world social change, and my experience at the Writing Barn has granted me grounded knowledge that couldn’t have been accessed purely through the intellectual work of my classes. Founder and creative director Bethany Hegedus is most known for her award-winning biographical picture books Grandfather Gandhi and Be the Change: a Grandfather Gandhi story, co-wrote by Arun Gandhi, grandson of the Mahatma. Her literary career has been shaped by her desire to carefully examine the issues that often separate us, and due to this, The Writing Barn’s foundations are not only literary, but also concerned with issues of social justice. As I was deciding where to intern, their commitment to conversations about diversity was one of the driving reasons that I felt they were a good fit for the type of work that I want to do with my life.
As I expected, it’s been a great fit, and working with Bethany and the rest of the staff at the Barn has provided me with the experiences I wanted to ground the conversations I have every day in my classes at Southwestern, and moving forward, I hope to be able to bring more nuance to those very discussions.
One of my first weeks there, the Barn hosted its first ever Rainbow Weekend Intensive engineered to support and meet the needs of LGBTQIA+ authors from all over the United States. Amy-Rose Capetta and Cori McCarthy, young-adult writers whose books have made strides in queer representation for teenage audiences, were invited to serve as faculty for the event, as well as literary agent Jim McCarthy, who has made a point of representing traditionally underrepresented voices. Intimidated and nervous for my first event as an intern, I attended lectures from all three faculty, engaged in conversation about queerness and books, and walked away feeling that it all almost seemed too good to be true. I’d written paper after paper about how oppressive systems rear their ugly head in literature, but at the Rainbow Weekend, I heard firsthand from writers whose novels had been deemed “too gay” to make money or who were told they needed to “tone down” the queer elements of their books. While I knew that such things were happening, sitting down and talking to the people whose careers had been personally affected by their sexuality made the knowledge exponentially more concrete.
Since my first event, I’ve went to work countless times and left feeling so lucky and confident that I was finally immersed in the world that I care so much about. Classes at the Barn are oriented towards not only teaching writing as a craft, but also providing students with the support that they need to make the leap towards referring to themselves as “writers.” The word seems pretentious, and comes loaded with a whole set of judgments and assumptions about how hard it is to transform writing into a career.
Working at The Writing Barn, I’ve learned that being a “writer” doesn’t have to mean a New-York-Times-bestseller and buckloads of cash and recognition. A literary life is sometimes as simple as making connections with other people who understand the immense cultural power of storytelling or finding new ways to tell the truths that matter to us in our own personal writing, no matter if anybody ever reads it or not. I’ve gotten past so much shame and embarrassment about my own creative writing, and began to consider how writing will become a part of my career post-Southwestern. This internship has truly impacted my life to an extent that I never could have expected, and I am exceptionally grateful for it.
Kat Shuttlesworth is a junior studying English and Feminist Studies at Southwestern University. Raised in White Oak, Texas, she’s been in love with reading and writing for as long as she can remember, holing herself away in her room for days at a time to binge-read Nancy Drew books as a little girl. Now, as an adult, she holes herself away to write poem after poem. On any given night, she’s relaxing or doing yoga with her friends and her cat, June.