Money Makes the House Go Round
Trisha Ready, as of a few weeks ago, has a new job. She also has a BA in English literature (and a teaching certificate) from the University of California at Santa Barbara, a talent for working with youth (she won the 2001 Language of Hope Award from the Starbucks Foundation), a country western band in which she sings harmonies and writes many of the songs (“I like country western music because it seems like this very American strain of tragedy”), a family history marked by madness (“Have you ever taken care of someone with dementia?”), an affinity for opera (Carmen in particular), a plain wardrobe (denim, mostly), a curiosity about consciousness and the “territory” of the brain (she’s working on a master’s in psychology at Antioch University), and a decided interest in money. “I don’t know too many artists or writers who also know how to do budgets,” she told me last week over lunch. “My mind’s really chaotic and numbers are really orderly. And it’s not just numbers but how numbers support writing and art. That’s really interesting to me.”
Which is why the recent announcement of Ready’s promotion to managing director of Richard Hugo House–meaning she’ll manage the staff and the $800,000 annual operating budget–struck so many people as obvious. She told me she’s actually been doing the job since July, when her predecessor, Toni Aspin, left the post to be an executive at Mariner Bank. “But not officially,” she said. “I’ve been doing two jobs.”
Ready’s been involved with Hugo House, in one way or another, for almost its entire six-year existence, and she has, as she puts it, “about as much background in business as in art.” (In its announcement, the Hugo House board referred, hilariously, to Ready’s bizarre history of aborted careers: “Ready has also been a truck driver, flower broker, governess in Paris, France, and manager of a temp agency that supplied Danielle Steel with workers.”)
Previously Ready was Hugo House’s programs and education manager, reporting to artistic director Frances McCue; Ready and McCue are now equals. Not that that matters: Power and influence are just not the kinds of things you associate with Trisha Ready. During our lunch I kept asking her to talk about her new position and what she plans to do for Hugo House, and she kept steering the conversation toward discussion of her western shirt and boots. (“I have a hat, too,” she said, “but I didn’t wear it because I thought you’d laugh at me.”) This habit of deflecting attention from herself is, in a way, exactly the right attribute for the managing director’s job, because the managing director’s job isn’t about glory. It’s about making sure there are plenty of ways to get money and other resources to working writers.
The impulse comes to her naturally. After our lunch, she picked up the check, explaining, “I’ll write it off. Do you write stuff off?”
“No,” I admitted. “I don’t know how.”
“Oh, I’ll show you sometime,” she said. “I’ll help you with your taxes.”
