Venue Woes

February 11, 1990, San Francisco Chronicle, Written by Patricia Holt

LET’S HEAR IT FOR Dean Lipton and his embattled San Francisco Writers’ Workshop, the small but hard-working institution that has nurtured hundreds of writers over its 40-year existence yet “has never cost taxpayers anything,” as workshop leader Lipton explains, “and never will.”

For its first 39 years, the Workshop held weekly meetings at the Main Library. Then it got bumped from that space by other library concerns (“due, we were told, to the city’s fiscal problems,” says Lipton). So the indefatigable writers have roamed Civic Center looking for a meeting ground, which they found briefly at the Old State Building; the group now meets at a nearby Burger King (“obviously unworkable,” grumbles Lipton).

“With all of the unused office space in city and state buildings during the evening, it is inconceivable that a room cannot be found for the San Francisco Writers’ Workshop for two hours a week. If we permit it to die, it will shame all of us.” Well stated, professor! Come, Civic Center landlords, open those hearts and doors . . .

CITATION: Holt, Patricia. “Chilling Decisions Bode Ill for Bios.” THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, SUNDAY ed., sec. SUNDAY REVIEW, 11 Feb. 1990, p. 2.