Meet Our Volunteers
Volunteer Profile: Nica Waters
Jumping in feet first is how Nica Waters characterizes herself. It certainly fits her enthusiasm for writing, though she doesn’t let enthusiasm get in the way of being a professional. A UVA English major, Waters returned with her husband and fellow UVA grad, Jeremy, to Charlottesville to raise a family. The former admissions director at Tandem Friends, she returned to a childhood love of writing when she and her husband took their children sailing for nine months in 2009. Those regular posts from the ocean (svcalypso.wordpress.com) introduced her writing to a columnist for a national sailing magazine who she met on the trip and who connected her to Chesapeake Bay magazine.
Waters’ piece about her family’s experience featured her characteristic enthusiasm. She wrote of just doing it instead of dreaming about a family sail adventure. The article was published in November, and additional articles have been accepted. With blog headings like ‘swimming pigs,’ ‘levitation,’ and ‘magic,’ landlubbers can’t help but be enticed to read further.
Re-directing a little of that award money, Waters funded her WH membership where she’s also jumped in feet first; volunteering, spearheading this year’s Wine and Words fundraiser, and honing her writing skills. In between running a personal chef business, Tasty Food, and chauffeuring her son and daughter, she’s hard at work on an essay about her grandmother and several short stories. A two year veteran of NaNoWriMo, she admits this year’s novel is about sailing too, but also that it needs serious work. “Before I can call it a presentable draft,” she quips.
Online writing includes her posts for the Fishing Bay Yacht Club in Deltaville, where the Waters family continues to sail summers and weekends. “Charlottesville is woefully far from the water,” she laments. Her secret fetish is collecting dishes, a habit she says she curbs by surrendering her wallet to her husband whenever she’s in the vicinity of Crate and Barrel. Another secret, she loves to gunkhole, but I’ll let her tell you about that.
