The Northeast Ohio writing community is about to lose one of its most valuable resources at the end of this coming week.
Before anyone rushes to sound the alarm or launch a campaign of some kind, let me be clear: No libraries are closing. No literary organizations are folding. No longstanding bookshops are shuttering. No writers were harmed in the making of this blog post. I’m talking about a loss of a different kind.
Since 2015, Laurie Kincer has been the head of the William N. Skirball Writers’ Center located in the South Euclid branch of the Cuyahoga County Public Library, a system with 27 locations that cover all of Cleveland, its inner ring suburbs, and its outlying communities. Laurie joined the CCPL staff in 2001, and she has spent the last 25 years spearheading programs that promote literacy, education and the development of creative spaces.
Laurie will retire on July 31.
As it happens, I live barely two miles away from the South Euclid branch and the Skirball Writers’ Center. I only started using the space on a regular basis a few years ago. In that time, Laurie has allowed me to maintain an ongoing weekly reservation in one of the smaller rooms adjacent to the center’s main space. Every Saturday from 11 am to 3 pm, I park myself in the room, plug in, hunker down, and—to paraphrase Jack London—go looking for inspiration with a club. Saturday has become the most productive day of my week.
Most weeks, I also manage to spend two or three hours in the Writers’ Center on Thursday night. More often than not, Laurie has been there on those nights as well—and more often than not, she’s managed to set me up in a room.
It’s not just the space itself, though. It’s what Laurie has done in it and with it that has made her tenure so meaningful. Every spring, she has helped plan and host the annual Western Reserve Writers Conference. She has also arranged weekly presentations, meetings and workshops for writers during the other fifty-one weeks of the year.
But just as important are the smaller gestures that may not be part of her official job description. From her desk just inside the entrance to the center, she greets every visitor—most of whom she knows personally—with a friendly disposition. She maintains an entire wall of books, periodicals and other resources for writers who frequent the center, and there’s usually a stack of back issues—Writer’s Digest, Publishers Weekly and other magazines—that are free for the taking. On Saturdays, she often provides free coffee.
I can’t think of an instance when she and I didn’t have an engaging conversation—even if just a short one—about any number of topics: books, writers, upcoming author events at any of the branches, family, the perplexing and precarious state of the world, and more.
I remember one brief conversation in particular. She asked me what I was working on at the time, and I remember giving some half-assed response about the next novel or the next short story or maybe the website that was taking forever to get out of the development phase. I shrugged and said, “I’m just writing stuff. I’m not thinking too much about my endgame.”
She looked back at me for a moment and said something in a subtle but unmistakable cut-the-nonsense kind of voice: “I think you need to figure out your endgame.”
It was the closest she ever came to cracking the whip and telling me to get my shit together. It was a little bit, but it was what I needed.
When I posted a few words of praise about Laurie on social media a couple years ago, the chorus of accolades was resounding:
“Laurie is the best!”
“It’s because of her that the Western Reserve Writers Conference continues year after year, and I’m so grateful!”
“We have such a resource with the writing center, and she does a great job with all the classes, authors, books and more.”
“Who doesn’t love Laurie Kincer?”
I concur wholeheartedly with all of the praise, and then some. But on a more personal note, I would add that she has helped me keep the demons under control. The best way for me to explain would be with a few sentences that are about me and not her, but hopefully my point will be clear in a minute.
Over the last forty years, I’ve written hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles and won a couple awards for feature writing. Since I transitioned out of journalism, I’ve spent twenty-five years (and counting) in marketing and corporate communications. I’ve written three novels that haven’t exactly taken the world by storm, but they’ve helped me establish a small but consistent following. I’ve had a handful of short stories published in various small presses, and I co-founded a small press of my own that’s been in operation for eleven years.
And yet I still feel uncertain about whether I belong at the table.
It’s classic imposter syndrome stuff. You don’t even have to be a writer to understand. You just have to be someone who has spent a lot of years working on a particular craft or skill set in an effort to be good at something.
But every Saturday morning when Laurie has unlocked the door to one of the rooms for me—every time she’s found a room for me on a weeknight, even when I wasn’t in the schedule—she has conveyed an unspoken but powerful message:
There’s a place for you.
I suspect she’s done that for a lot of writers, whether she knows it or not.
I’m a better and more disciplined writer for having known Laurie. I have a better understanding of what it means to maintain a consistent schedule by showing up at a specific time and place and being ready to do the work. I have a deeper sense of commitment and accountability. A better sense of my endgame.
By this time next week, her story will have turned in a new direction. She won’t be at the desk anymore, but as far as I know, my standing reservation on Saturdays will still be in the books. I have every confidence that the staff who will take over after her departure will be gracious and accommodating. They’ve already proven to be so.
I’ll keep showing up, but I honestly don’t know if the experience will be quite the same. I’ll miss the conversations. I’ll miss the coffee. I’ll miss the friendly but firm nudge to get my act together. I’ll miss the voice that encouraged me to take a seat at the table.
I’ll miss Laurie, but I wish her well.
I suspect every other writer in town will miss her too.