"The Guild was formed in December of 1992 for the express purpose of invigorating and empowering a sense of community among the writers of East Tennessee.  Looking back on that time, it is easy to see now why the Guild was an immediate success.  For one thing, East Tennesseeans enjoy a healthy and pronounced sense of place.  Just a look at the local interest section of Knoxville bookstores suggested as much even ten years ago.  Knoxville was home to several organizations that supported writers:  UT/K, Pellissippi State, the News-Sentinel, Metro Pulse, and Whittle Communications, to name the more prominent.  But, most important, the writers of East Tennessee were, and are, industrious, enthusiastic, thoughtful, and talented.  All that was lacking was a venue in which writers could come together and bridge the artificial boundaries represented by the various organizations within which many of them toiled, a place and a different kind of organization where writers are encouraged to develop a sense of community among themselves.  The Guild was, quite literally, born of a keen sense of the importance of community....

From its beginning, the Guild has been all about community, about building bridges across artificial boundaries, about coming together for the individual and the common good, about creative artistic endeavor in behalf of human progress.  Let no one discourage or undermine that great will, the ever-expanding sense of community.

'They can muffle the drum, and they can loosen the strings of the lyre, but who shall command the skylark not to sing?'  --Khalil Gibran

Congratulations to all the members of the Knoxville Writers Guild, past and present, on the occasion of the Guild’s tenth anniversary."   --Michael Gillespie