Preserving & protecting the D.H. Lawrence Ranch
May 7, 2014
What can be done to create a revenue stream for the D. H. Lawrence Ranch and bring the property to the attention of possible donors and philanthropists?
As an English professor at the University of New Mexico, as a fiction writer, and as a lifelong reader of Lawrence’s work, Sharon Oard Warner has often pondered this question. Back in 1998, she established the Taos Summer Writers’ Conference (TSWC) to make a clearer connection between the UNM English Department and the D. H. Lawrence Ranch, which is widely recognized as an international cultural property. In the intervening years, the Conference has grown to become one of the leading writing events in the nation, but the success of the Conference has not benefited the Ranch, at least not until now.
The “Kiowa Ranch” (as it was known in Lawrence’s time) is the closest Lawrence ever came to realizing his Rananim, a congenial community of artists and intellectuals. Rananim is thus an apt name for an online writing community which will offer non-degree workshops, classes, and facilitated critique groups to writers from around the nation and the world.
Net proceeds from this venture will benefit the D. H. Lawrence Ranch and serve to publicize both the property and ongoing efforts to preserve and protect this site and plan for its future use for the arts, as Frieda Lawrence and others envisioned. These new non-credit courses will be taught online by established writers, such as those who have come from around the nation to teach at the TSWC each year over the past 15 years. The new program and its net proceeds (projected to exceed $75,000 per annum by year 3) will also be used to fundraise and eventually to launch a proposal to establish National Landmark status for the Ranch.
Warner will give a panel presentation on the Rananim Writing Community at the International D. H. Lawrence Conference in Gargnano. And she is pleased to announce that the first slate of classes will be open for registration at the 2014 Taos Summer Writers’ Conference this July.
