Writers On The Edge website

Writers On The Edge has helped Lincoln County, Oregon, to blossom into a literary Mecca. Our monthly Nye Beach Writers’ Series, the flagship program of Writers On The Edge, has hosted 143 events featuring 321 authors since 1997. This program of live literary entertainment is held the third Saturday of every month, year round. Featured authors are poets, historians, novelists, investigative journalists, playwrights, singer/songwriters, or storytellers in choreographed shows. Surprisingly successful are the Haiku Slam Classics, held every April to celebrate Poetry Month.

Each show concludes with an open mic, which helps inspire locals to continue with their own writing projects. Over the years, seven thousand people have attended our shows and more than one thousand of them have bravely stood facing the audience to express their truths. Hundreds of those open mic readers have been high school students.

In addition to the Writers’ Series, a primary goal of our organization is educational outreach. Whenever possible, we bring our featured authors into local schools, host after-school writing clubs, and conduct summer writing workshops for youth aged six and up. When the Lincoln County School District cut all creative writing classes from its curriculum due to budget constraints, we ramped up our youth programs and initiated collaborations. Our writing workshops are open to everyone in the school district, including home-schooled children. Every participant receives a full scholarship and nutritious meals. Writers On The Edge also sponsors annual high school writing contests in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, with cash prizes. This is all done with no paid staff.

Each event and program requires vast amounts of promotion. Our logos and website were created with Adobe software. All our full-color brochures, rack cards, postcards, and fundraising campaign materials are designed and produced in-house using Adobe Creative Suite 4. Without Adobe's contribution to TechSoup, we could not have updated our archaic website so successfully. As predicted, the improved look immediately increased our response rate. Since we launched our revamped website in January 2009, new visitor hits have increased 56%.

Using the full range of Adobe Creative Suite programs--InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, and Acrobat—we can design 8.5 x 11-inch flyers that appeal to youth and their parents, as well as event invitation postcards, poster-sized school announcements, printed admission tickets, attractive email press releases, and downloadable registration forms. In June 2009, we will use these programs to produce an anthology of student work written during the 2008-2009 school year, then hold a public reading where copies of the anthology will be sold to raise funds for next year's after-school writing clubs.

Writers On The Edge has gained a reputation for stability, quality, and results. We have provided wide exposure to, and education in, the literary arts. Lincoln County is an isolated, rural, economically challenged area, but Writers On The Edge has become a major force providing cultural opportunities to the entire community. By allowing us to create strikingly attractive outreach materials, Adobe Creative Suite 4 has helped us become a grassroots success.