WELCOME, NEW STEERING COMMITTEE MEMBER
AND NEW CHAIR
We have seated our 2024-2026 Steering Committee without the need of a ballot. According to NWU bylaws, if there are fewer or as many candidates as available slots on the SC, a ballot is not necessary. We had nine candidates for our 11 available slots, now duly seated. Bylaws empower steering committees to elect their own Chair and Financial Secretary.
All eight current SC members are “sticking with the union,” and Janice Brodman (see below) is joining us as our ninth committee member. Barbara Mende continues as our steadfast financial secretary (also as webmaster and Update editor). All will serve two-year terms.
Shannon O’Connor, our new chapter Chair, has been hosting, in all weather, our monthly Writers’ Night Out get-togethers in Cambridge. She’s also been the organizer of our Book Party volunteers. She’s a fiction writer, poet, and blogger, who is happy to share her knowledge of the business of writing that she’s gained from being an NWU member since 2016. She’s former President of Toastmasters General at Massachusetts General Hospital.
We deeply appreciate Willie Wideman-Pleasants’s leadership as chapter Chair over the past two years: in the face of COVID, Zoom challenges, and occasional discord, she has been a stabilizing force. Willie has stayed focused on our mission and insured our work is leavened by laughter. She continues as a Steering Committee member.
Janice Zarro Brodman, author of Sex Rules — Astonishing Sexual Practices and Gender Roles Around the World, has joined the SC, having always believed that it’s essential for people to work together to improve their conditions and wanting to strengthen the union to adhere to that ideal.
Also on the 2024-2026 SC: Barbara Beckwith, Charles Coe, John Hodge, Jim Kates, John McDaid.
