Driftless Writing Center nurtures healing

With devastating floods hitting the several Wisconsin Driftless Area water sheds over the past few years, last fall’s flood left a large economic impact on many communities.

But what about the emotional impact and trauma experienced by many of those communities’ residents? A loss of home, priceless heirlooms, and feeling of normalcy can bring depression, despair, stress, and worry, changing life forever. Leaving common questions like, where do we go from here, or is the threat of flooding a new normal throughout the Driftless?

A few of the most severely hit, were the communities on and near the Kickapoo and Baraboo Rivers, and the Coon Creek watershed.

Recently, the Kickapoo Valley Reserve (KVR) hosted an evening of sharing. The sharing of stories, concerns, and emotions, all the result of flooding.

The event saw the Driftless Writing Center premiering a project called Stories from the Flood and its booklet appropriately titled, ‘Stories from the Flood-A Reflection of Resilience’.

According to their website, The Driftless Writing Center Inc., is a non-profit corporation that operates in Viroqua, WI. The Center is a response to the needs of the area’s talented writers and offers workshops, intensives, and public readings.

Having started about ten years ago, the center also seeks to enhance the creative expression of the people of The Driftless and beyond, holding the belief that everyone has a story to tell.

“We are primarily an educational non-profit. Up until the Stories from the Flood project, most of our programs were things like writing workshops and author readings. We would bring in authors from the region and around the nation to read and give craft talks and workshops in their specialty field. We also offer education to youth. We’ve helped high school students draft their college application essays. We’ve had a home-school English program for both literature and writing. Our writing workshops range from beginners to advanced, youth to adults,” Driftless Writing Center board member, Tamara Dean said.

Dean continued, “Then the floods happened in 2018. We’ve had about 7-100 year or worse floods since 2007 in the Kickapoo River Watershed. Last year, in 2018, we saw the deepest river floods we have ever seen. Part of that was because of the flood control dams breaking up stream of the Villages like Viola, Readstown, Gays Mills, Soldiers Grove, and Coon Valley. Members of the writing center board had flood waters around us, some of us had water in our basement, but we weren’t personally displaced. We didn’t lose all of our possessions like some of our neighbors did.”

Board members found themselves as did many others, going out and selflessly helping people to clean up and salvage as best as they could. “We carried things out of people’s basements, we were mopping floors. Some of us were reporting on the events. After that, we did have a book relief program that some of us individually participated in, and that was donating books to the schools because some of the children had lost their home libraries. Books can be a comfort, we know that, but we still wanted to do more.”

With tragedy came forethought, and the center’s idea for ‘Stories from the Flood’. Dean shared that the writing project was a bit different project than what they were accustomed to. “It’s more of a community service project. We know that stories can help people heal and move forward because they are able to process their experiences, and make sense of what happened. We knew also that we didn’t want to dive into this immediately because it can still be traumatic for people to write about it.”

The center set out to gather funding and received a major grant from the Wisconsin Humanities Council, with funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities. “That really kick-started our project. That made it possible for us to partner with libraries throughout the Coon Creek and Kickapoo River Watershed and hold workshops,” Dean said.

“Initially, we thought people would write their experiences, because we knew that was healing, that particular way of expressing our feelings can help us move forward.”

It became clear right away that writing just wasn’t everybody’s thing, Dean acknowledged. “People feel intimidated by it, or they might have vision problems, or their hands are arthritic, or they have Parkinson’s, or for some reason it wasn’t comfortable for them to write. Actually, they really warmed to telling their stories to an interviewer.”

That’s when the project became an oral history project she said.

“We fulfilled our commitment to hold two workshops at every library in the Coon Creek and Kickapoo River Watershed, in addition to a school in Wauzeka. We held 26 of those workshops. We invited people to come. We tried to pick times when they would have free time, either in the evenings or on the weekends. The librarians were huge supporters. They helped us publicize the events and were very enthusiastic. But still, we didn’t get a huge turnout. We had two or three people on average at each of these workshops.”

The center, wanting to go talk to people individually when it was convenient for them, realized they had enough momentum and publicity to contact people individually and get lists of names of people who survived the flood. The workshops had started in April, and the interviewing started this past summer in July.

As of the end of November, the center had collected stories from about 75-78 people. With conducting so many personal interviews a seemingly daunting task, Dean expressed her gratitude for the center’s partnership with the University of Wisconsin at Madison. “When we got our Wisconsin Humanities Council grant, we were required to partner with a humanities expert.”

They found their expert in UW-Madison Associate Professor Caroline Druschke. Professor Druschke an English professor, also directs an interdisciplinary group of researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison working at the intersection of public engagement and natural resources management.

Knowing both writing and rivers, the professor was a perfect fit for this project. “She came up with this class called Writing Rivers. It was the first time it has ever been offered this fall (2019). She got a couple of grants from the UW-Madison to support this class. What it helped her do, was develop a curriculum around our ‘Stories from the Flood’ project. It also paid for the transcription of our oral history interviews, and it paid for the students to come out here (the Driftless) and conduct more interviews. They’ve been a great help. We trained them just as we trained our facilitators back in April (the original interviewers) because we knew we were not mental health professionals, but we need to know what people go through, what’s okay to ask, and what were the most important things to bring up. Also, to help people recognize their strengths and reflect on how resilient they have been to survive this,” Dean said.

The students, contributing tremendous help and unwavering dedication, discovered how to apply what they learn in a real-time. Dean noted, “Some of them have made remarks like ‘this project has been life-changing’ and they want to keep working on it. They’ve said they have cried along with the survivors they were interviewing. One young man had said it’s the first time he’s understood how what he’s learning in class can apply to the real world.’”

Dean stressed that all of the interactions are changing people, both the survivors and the interviewers, as the project moves forward.

As part of the Wisconsin Humanities Council grant, one of the intentions from the beginning, was to publish a booklet in excerpts from stories that were collected. The UW students were hands on with that part of the process as Dean pointed out. “They read all of the transcripts of all of the interviews and pointed us to the most poignant quotes. From there, I went through and selected a few dozen of them and we printed a booklet called ‘Stories from the Flood-A Reflection of Resilience’.”

The booklet in its 60 pages, includes quotes from the interviews conducted, and a few photos from August’s flooding last year. With an initial printing of 500 copies printed, very few remain for distribution. “They are almost gone! It’s been so popular!” Dean exclaimed.

“I think, in the beginning, the project wasn’t clear to people, but once we had the event at the KVR and published that booklet, something tangible came out of it, and they could really understand what we were going for.” In short, the event became an opportunity for people to share stories in a group, which Dean felt, “was very healing”.

She also feels the booklet has been very touching for flood survivors, in that they could see that their experience had been validated, and to know that this booklet was going to the hands of policy makers. “It’s gone to Representative Kind’s office, it’s gone to Senator Schilling and Senator Baldwin’s offices, and it’s been in the hands of the county conservation officers, as well as the DOT, the Army Corps of Engineers, the DNR, and other organizations that are really deciding the future of our watershed.”

In addition, Dean noted the booklet has helped in recruiting more storytellers. “We had a feeling this might happen, people who were reluctant to talk to us in the beginning might see that ‘oh, there’s my neighbor’s name’ or ‘there’s the guy who helped rescue us’.

As for a continued role of UW-Madison students, Professor Druschke will repeat her Writing Rivers class. “I’ve heard that the students are recommending it to their friends, so we will have more students help interview and analyze the interviews which is wonderful. We are also probably going to have an event next year to gather people,” Dean said.

If you have not had the opportunity to read the booklet, the center will be reprinting so the word can continue to be spread about the project. “We might do another booklet of additional quotes for those who we interviewed from October of this year, which is when we had to cut off the collection of quotes for the booklet. We just need to find funding for the project”, which Dean acknowledged is a big challenge. Unfortunately, the Wisconsin Humanities Council won’t fund the project again in a consecutive year, and she completely understands their policy.

Additional support for publishing ‘Stories from the Flood-A Reflection of Resilience’, came from Westby Co-op Credit Union.

Anyone can be a member of the Driftless Writing Center (DWC). We are writers and supporters of the Literary Arts. The Center exists to create and develop occasions to write and opportunities to hone our skill. Our group operates in a spirit of cooperation. We recognize that each individual's contribution is as valuable as any others. We are mindful to create a supportive and non-competitive environment, while celebrating excellence in writing.

Editor’s note: excerpts from the booklet, provided by the Driftless Writing Center