Here at Night Writers Books we diligently spend hours at an art we love. Being a highly motivated group, our objective is solely to support each others writing.
Night Writers began in the 1980's at Hennepin Technical College, as Maureen LaJoy’s writing classes. She taught us writing skills, but her real gift was encouragement. No matter how bad we were in the beginning, Maureen believed in us and somehow we believed it too. We began to think of ourselves as writers; therefore we wrote. How could it not be so? We were surrounded by other talented writers who encouraged one another and some of their talent rubbed off on us and Maureen was always there applauding no matter what we did. Maureen changed my life and so many others too. We were called the Center for Developing Writers back then, CDW for short.
When Maureen died in 1996, Meg took over the classes shortly after and changed the name to the Writing Center. She kept us together and continued to put out Wellspring Magazine. She let many of us writers get a feel for publishing by contributing a column about writing in the magazine or sometimes share our stories.
When Meg’s classes ended, we started meeting at the Maple Grove Community Center and called ourselves Local Writers. This time we had no teacher or leader; we just met as a critique group and paid our own rent. We have been meeting ever since. There are a few members of the group who have been together for over 20 years. I still see myself as one of Maureen’s cronies. Without her I doubt that I would be where I am today. I also feel that there is so much to be gained by joining and sharing our writing with a writer’s group.
About us
