One year of SheWritesAI growth, and what's next

A look back at our first 365 days for actively supporting women and nonbinary writers about AI and data here, and a sneak peek at what's coming in 2026

The seeds of this SheWritesAI community were planted a year ago in response to a fresh reminder, here on Substack, that women and nonbinary folks are badly under-represented in AI (see the origin story). Since then, we’ve grown from an initial list of 34 writers in 8 countries to 566 people in 56 countries!

📈 And since we’re all about data, here’s a simple visualization of directory growth over that one-year period. It’s been pretty steady:

Growth in membership of the SheWritesAI directory over time. Dates for the first 6 months reflect when the batch of updates was published. Later dates reflect when the writers nominated themselves for the directory.

Here’s how our members’ newsletters map to categories within AI and data:

❓Who has a question about the directory data that we could answer?
(or would like to try some exploratory analysis on the data for us?)

2025 Community Features

We started in December 2024 with one simple Substack article. During 2025, we’ve added the following features and resources:

📰 Spin-off from my personal newsletter to SheWritesAI, with subscriber chat

📰 Regular directory update posts to introduce and welcome new community members

➡️ Nomination form to add oneself to the directory

💻 Interactive directory table

🌐 Interactive world map & USA state map

📰 Weekly digests highlighting 💟featured articles (top 10 by engagement) and 🎲wildcard posts. (Thanks to Karen Spinner for the automation support!)

📰 Interactive table of articles included in the latest digest

🔗 New LinkedIn company site and Bluesky profile for SheWritesAI, for sharing news such as digests and directory updates. (Bluesky includes a Starter Pack and a Feed List of directory members)

📈 Over the past 6 months since this SheWritesAI newsletter was created, here’s what our subscriber growth looks like:

2025 subscriber growth for the SheWritesAI newsletter

If you’re a subscriber: we’re glad to have you with us! You can manage your subscription on your account page or here:

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2026 Community Outlook

📢 Some of the new community features and resources we’re building for 2026:

• ✨ Highlight collaborative articles in a special section of the weekly digests (see the sneak preview summarizing previous collaborations and the first pilot digest)

• 📘 Publish our first SheWritesAI collaborative book (chapters are in draft and peer review now; see the book plan)

• 🎙️Hold our first virtual networking events for directory members!

  • Cristina and Karen Smiley are working together to plan this and will co-host the events. We are aiming for two events at different times of day in late January 2026 to try to cover our global footprint.

  • Directory members who are interested in participating may register their interest by subscribing to our new private members-only mailing list, community@shewritesai.org. (Join requests are subject to confirmation and approval.) Advance registrants will be polled in early January to choose the best dates for the events.

• 🚺 Curate and share a SheWritesAI history list of women who have contributed to AI, and are contributing today.

  • The history list will be seeded from the History chapter Celeste Garcia is writing for the book, and augmented by other book chapter authors. This list will be open for additions by the community and allies.

• 📚 Curate and share a SheWritesAI book list, seeded with books written by community members, and open for additions by the community and allies.

  • The first 46 books in the list came from the Books column of the SheWritesAI directory table. (If you’ve published a book that isn’t yet in the table, or have a new one in the works, please let us know!)

  • Shannon Edwards and Karen Smiley are working together on this feature. Shannon has some awesome ideas on making this list valuable for writers who want to find ARC readers or who are willing to offer community discounts on their published books. Writers, please contact Shannon if you’re interested in exploring this!

• 📝 Guest posts by community members (we piloted our first one, by Shamim Rajani, in December) . We’re particularly looking for curated articles in one of our categories that highlight community member posts. To volunteer as a Guest Writer, contact us or post a message in the Subscriber Chat.

Our goal is to keep this community free (no paywalls). Everything we do — including all of the above — is 100% volunteer-driven. We’d also love to launch a mentorship program, and provide more-active support for collaborations among community members. If you’d like to give back to the community in 2026 and help to support our writers, we’d love to have you join us on any of these. Please get in touch, and plan to join our networking events in January if possible!

🙌🏼 2025 has been an amazing year. Thank you all for reading, writing, and supporting SheWritesAI in our mission to help women and nonbinary folks’ voices be heard on AI and data!

Please continue to support their articles (💕📤💬), help us find more writers to support (point them to the nomination form), and spread the word to help their excellent writing find the wider audiences they deserve! And happy new year!!