The city’s longest running writers’ workspace is celebrating its 25th birthday with a gala tonight, capping off a suite of new endeavors it's undertaken in honor of the milestone. 

Launched in 1994 by Po Bronson, Ethan Canin, and Ethan Watters in a six-room apartment on upper Market Street, The Writers Grotto was intended to be a creative co-working space for writers and other "narrative artists," as they’ve come to call themselves.

The "grotto" in the name was an homage to the writing room Bronson had in his basement prior to creating the new space. Long before co-working spaces became trendy, the founders had a theory that a working community could nurture productivity and creativity, said Grotto member Hunter Oatman-Stanford, senior producer of Collectors Weekly.

The three writers couldn’t pay the full rent for their massive Victorian flat, so the Grotto quickly grew to six members. Today, they have 147, based out of an entire floor of an office building at Second and Bryant streets, near South Park.

The Writers Grotto has been in its current space since 2005, and has a little time left on its lease, according to Oatman-Stanford.

"[We've] been very lucky to have a landlord that has not raised the rent exorbitantly, even as there's been increasing competition for office space in the South Park area," he said. 

For its first two decades, The Writers Grotto was a loose collective that shared rent on offices and had minimal organization structure. When this became untenable, a handful of members created an LLC and the Grotto was run as a for-profit company while it grew as a community. This fall, the Grotto applied for 501(c)(3) nonprofit status and was selected for fiscal sponsorship by Independent Arts & Media. This allows the writers community to solicit and accept tax-deductible donations, Hale explained.

“Our current membership is pretty expansive across the Bay Area, and some folks join for the community and teaching opportunities, even if they aren't able to frequently work from our office space,” Oatman-Stanford said, noting that the Grotto offers memberships to anyone working the nine-county greater Bay Area.

As the lease in its current space winds down, and the organization evolves, there may be a shift in the offerings it provides, member and author Connie Hale told us.

“I think we are trying to be open about what writers need most and how best to provide as many writers as we can with what they need,” she added. That could mean a decrease in the amount of available office space, but an increase in community across virtual and other platforms.

Over the past year, the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto was rebranded to The Writers Grotto to remove the unnecessary and often misplaced apostrophe, and to represent the organization’s broader membership and renewed commitment to diversity, Hale said.

"We are actively seeking to diversify our ranks with new members who need an affordable space to write,” Oatman-Stanford said.

The organization's new mission statement aims to reflect the members’ calls for assisting “seldom-heard voices” and “community and camaraderie,” Hale added.

To support those goals, The Writers Grotto this year introduced a new series of "Rooted & Written" workshops, to provide a space for writers of color to share and develop resources.  It also launched a series of “Lit Starts” books this year, designed to give authors ideas and strategies for creating new stories.

Tonight's event is intended to recognize “the founders’ notion that something happens when creative people work in each other’s midst… there is an alchemy,” Hale said.

Over the past 25 years, Grotto members have published more than 100 books, 20 of which have appeared on the New York Times bestsellers’ list. Five won major awards, including the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award. 

The Writers Grotto offers more than 100 classes each year, and will be launching more on-line learning options next year as its membership expands and moves further afield. 

Any published writer interested in joining a collaborative co-working space can apply to be part of The Writers Grotto in 2020.