Charlotte Lit

The celebrated English author Virginia Woolf is best known for her modernist novels, such as Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse, but she also wrote memorable essays. In one of her essays, she discussed the importance of having a place to write. “A woman must have,” according to Woolf, “a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”  This quotation came to mind when I heard the great news that the Charlotte Center for Literary Arts, more commonly known as Charlotte Lit, has recently found a permanent home.  As I see it, Woolf’s point about an individual author’s need to have a place to write also applies to writing organizations, such as Charlotte Lit.  

Since its founding in 2015, Charlotte Lit has aspired to provide area writers with an inviting place to take writing classes and workshops, participate in conversations and readings, and write and reflect in a space that promotes creativity and conviviality.  For the past two years, however, Charlotte Lit has been working out of a shared space.  Although this space has worked, it was not really a room of their own.  Well, that is about to change.  About a week ago, Charlotte Lit announced that it will soon be moving to a new permanent home.  Curious about this development, I contacted Paul Reali, Charlotte Lit’s Co-Founder and Executive Director, and asked him for more information about Charlotte Lit’s big news. Here is what he sent to me:

Mark, we’re excited to tell you and your readers about Charlotte Lit’s new home, and a little about how we got here.

Writers and readers know about the importance of setting, of place. Kathie Collins, our co-founder, has long said there would have been no Charlotte Lit without the Midwood International & Cultural Center, the place it all started. That old school building had everything we needed: a great vibe, affordable rent, and parking. (We can’t overstate the importance of free and easy parking.) We had seven great years there until the building was bought for redevelopment.

We’ve spent the last two years inside hygge coworking’s Belmont neighborhood location, a move that was always intended to be temporary. It worked well enough—an office and shared meeting rooms where we could hold classes—but those rooms weren’t ours. They didn’t feel like Charlotte Lit, and our community noticed. 

What would it take, we were asked quite frequently, for Lit to have its own space again? We laughed and said dollars. In fact, it wasn’t just that. Unless it was a ridiculous number of dollars—enough to build our own perfect place from scratch—we needed to find an existing place to meet our specific (read: uncommon) needs.

We looked for two years. We didn’t find a place like that in (or out!) of our price range.

A few months ago, Paula Martinac—an author with a great sense of place, who is also Lit’s community coordinator—saw a “Space for Lease” sign on a building Uptown none of us had noticed before. The building’s name—the Ascend Nonprofit Center—caused a flash of recognition. Could this place be like the Midwood Center, the place with everything, and designed for nonprofit orgs?

Mark, it is exactly that. 

We’ll be moving to Ascend this spring, at the corner of 5th and Davidson, on the edge of Uptown. It’s inside the I-277 loop but outside the congestion, which makes it central to the whole community. We’ll have 1200 multi-use square feet on the first floor for classes, lit arts events, and our offices.

It’s such a great space, and we can’t wait to welcome our community there. We have plans to make it feel warm, welcoming, and inspiring. We’re grateful to be working with Merriman Schmitt Architects, thanks to our longtime friends and supporters Anne and Steve Schmitt.

And the other things we needed? Ascend has nine shared breakout and meeting rooms, for big events like our three year-long Labs, just steps from our new space. It’s affordable, priced for nonprofits. No small thing, it has parking—lighted, ample, and free. 

And: it’s a 10-year lease—renewable. Which means it’s a permanent home for Charlotte Lit, at last.

The space will include one more exciting feature: the Dannye Romine Powell Poetry Place, to honor our great friend and teacher. Picture a raised platform with comfortable armchairs, side tables and reading lights, and bookshelves of poetry and craft books. This will be a wonderful place for our members to read and write during our Open Studio hours. And—Kathie’s design inspiration—the platform can be converted in an instant to be the stage for our readings and community conversations.

For a small nonprofit, this is a huge step in our continuing commitment to the Charlotte community, and we will need community support to make it happen. We’re budgeting $100,000 for infrastructure, tables and chairs, audio-visual, bookshelves, food service area, and so on. Ascend has given us a generous up-fit allowance, and with year-end donations we’re close to $60,000 already. We’re confident our community will contribute the rest. (Here’s the link: https://secure.givelively.org/donate/charlotte-lit/charlotte-lit-ascend-capital-campaign)

Mark, thank you for helping us get the word out. We’re looking forward to welcoming you and our whole community to our new place in May.

I know that I speak for everyone in Storied Charlotte in wishing everyone associated with Charlotte Lit all the best as they make their big move into their new home of their own. 

When I saw the news about the publication of Charlotte Lit’s latest issue of Litmosphere, I remembered hearing that Charlotte Lit was planning to make some changes to their literary journal beginning with this issue.  Curious about these changes, I contacted Kathie Collins, the Editor-in-Chief of Litmosphere, and asked her for more information about the latest issue.  Here is what she sent to me:

Hi, Mark. The Fall 2024 issue of Litmosphere is live online, and we couldn’t be more pleased to share with readers these outstanding stories and poems by thirty writers from Charlotte and around the world. The issue also features beautifully evocative hand-cut collages by artist Wendy Balconi. We hope readers will agree that by combining fantastic writing with thought-provoking visual imagery the new Litmosphere is something the entire Charlotte Lit community can be proud of!

North Carolina is well-represented in the issue. We’re pleased to publish works by Sarah Archer, Joseph Bathanti, Steve Cushman, Christopher Davis, Michael Dechane, Mary Alice Dixon, Paul Jones, Eric Nelson, David Radavich, Lucinda Trew, and George T. Wilkerson.

This is the fourth issue of Litmosphere and the first since revisioning our journal last spring. As you’ve written about, Mark, for three years Litmosphere was home for Charlotte Lit’s Lit/South Awards winners and finalists. We gained essential experience running a contest-based journal and we leave Lit/South behind with mixed feelings. We were able to engage writers with huge national prominence as contest judges, and we had the good fortune to select winners and finalists among some excellent stories and poems that came in from throughout our region. But we started to question the contest model and the less-than-friendly landscape for writers seeking to find homes for their work. We’ve re-envisioned Litmosphere as an oasis in the desert of long response times and impersonal rejection notes. As writers ourselves, we know submitters are putting real skin (thick or thin) into the game and deserve our full attention and respect. 

Here’s some essential info for anyone interested in reading Litmosphere and submitting their work.

You can read Litmosphere online at https://litmosphere.charlottelit.org. We now publish two issues per year, in March and September, with submissions accepted in the first weeks of January and July. We pledge to respond quickly—no more than four weeks—and most often with a personal note. We curate writing selections with thematic resonances, pay every contributor a meaningful honorarium, and elevate the reading experience with visual art and a user-friendly web platform. 

We’d love to hear what people think of our re-visioned journal—what’s working and what tweaks might take our journal even higher into the Litmosphere!

I congratulate Kathie and all of the good folks at Charlotte Lit on the publication of the fourth issue of Litmosphere. I also congratulate them on their willingness to embrace change.  One of the reasons Charlotte Lit is such a vital part of Storied Charlotte is that is never rests on its laurels.