Allied Authors of Wisconsin keeps written “minutes” of monthly meetings. Our purpose is two-fold: first, to record date, time, place and also the names of all attendees; second, to record literary benchmarks achieved by the group or by individual members between meetings. These minutes differ from traditional minutes, because they do not (as a rule) record the events taking place during the meetings (primarily the constructive criticism of works in progress).
Maintaining the organization’s history in this (or any) form is a relatively recent development. The Milwaukee Fictioneers (est. 1931) as a matter of policy did not record minutes or “take” notes of any kind. Allied Authors of Milwaukee (est. 1937) did from the beginning record minutes, but the earliest have long since disappeared, and a later cache (that included many years following the two groups merging in the 1990s) is part of a documented loss. The existing file of Allied Authors of Wisconsin begins in 2000.
A hard copy of the minutes are filed, after they are reviewed and accepted by the membership, with the group’s historian. Henceforth, Allied Authors will post all meeting dates after they take place on this page. From time to time, Allied Authors will link to these dates selected “minutes” of the authors’ meetings, carefully edited excerpts from the file-record.
Allied Authors 