Hugo House

Double Your Impact!

Hugo House is matching ALL 2024 GiveBIG donations! Double the power of each dollar donated—suddenly $25 becomes $50; $100 becomes $200; $500 becomes $1,000; $5,000 becomes $10,000, and so on! Help support Seattle's vibrant writing community. Everyone has a story to tell!

Mission

Hugo House opens the literary world to everyone who loves books or has a drive to write, providing people with a place to read words, hear words, and make their own words better.

Description

Hugo House is committed to developing writers and and ensuring long term financial stability, through which we must assess all actions and decisions. Since 1997, Hugo House has been a welcoming place to read words, hear words, and make your own words better. The hub of Seattle's literary community, we help writers young and not so young find their voice, explore deeper truths, and refine their craft in a learning environment that is educationally innovative, racially equitable, culturally responsive, and devoted to creative civic discourse. Through words, we make the world. The main goals that drive our programs and organizational culture are:

• creating a transformative space where writers can come together and grow in their art;
• engaging new groups of people and creating opportunities to connect more deeply with the power of the written word;
• and advancing racial equity, ensuring diversity and inclusion, and making Hugo House a profoundly welcoming space to all writers and readers.

Hugo House is unlike any other arts organization in Seattle: it is a place for writers, offering classes, readings, book launches, workshops, open mic readimgs, consultations with expert writers, and more. It is a place for readers to discover fresh voices, take classes illuminating the work of beloved writers, discuss novels, poems, and essays, and to meet local and national writers. Year after year, Hugo House increases programming and outreach to expand our classes and events to serve more readers and writers. We present events featuring authors from all walks of life, many free to the public, along with our signature event series. In 2023, we offered over 400 adult classes. We will grow our scholarship funding with an emphasis on serving BIPOC writers and individuals, and extend our outreach to under-resourced communities through new and existing partnerships. Everyone has a story to tell that can connect us to each other; Hugo House is here to provide the support writers need to get it down on paper.

A teacher once described poems as houses, structures erected out of the void waiting to be inhabited by the reader. The same can be said about Hugo House. Hugo House is not merely a place for writers, but a home: a home for all writers. Without our community, Hugo House is just an empty space waiting to be filled.