44 | FRONTDOORS MAGAZINE A portrait of Virginia Piper hangs over the fireplace at the Piper Center for Creative Writing, serving as a reminder of Piper’s love of the literary arts. Courtesy Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing The building underwent extensive renovations in 2005 to turn it into a kind of literary mecca. A lifelong lover of the arts, Virginia Piper was a noted Valley philanthropist with a passion for great writing. So much so that in 2003 the trustees of Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust felt that an excellent way to honor her legacy while supporting advances at ASU was to give a $10 million grant to establish the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing. The center was tasked with organizing a conference, presenting visiting writers, and developing outreach programs and initiatives to enrich the intellectual and artistic life of ASU, the Valley and Arizona as a whole. A tall order for a small house, but one that it was perhaps built for. “It’s a home, and it was always a home. The kitchen table is different from the lectern in an auditorium,” said ASU professor and Arizona inaugural Poet Laureate Alberto Álvaro Ríos. Appointed director of the Piper Center in 2017, Ríos has seen the building work its magic time and again. “It helps you move from where you’re standing to what you’re feeling, which is where the arts are,” he said. Sometimes, the literary arts can be a forgotten part of “the arts,” but the team at the center sees them as worthy of much more. “They’re an essential community gathering point and way for people to engage in a world of feeling and ideas,” said Sheila Black, assistant director at the Piper Center. “Piper Trust did an unusual thing in endowing a creative writing center focused on writing education and bringing literary arts to the community. There are not many of them nationally, and certainly not funded ones.” As a result, the team feels fortunate to have a historic space to offer access to good writing education and good writers telling their stories. “We have the ability to create these magnificent programs, and offer them for free to the public without having to build in some sort of revenue,” Swedbergh said. “It’s a home, and it was always a home. The kitchen table is different from the lectern in an auditorium.”

FRONTDOORS MAGAZINE | 45 ASU professor and director of the Piper Center, Alberto Álvaro Ríos has helped to create a nurturing space where writers of all backgrounds, genres and stages of development can connect and grow.