The Los Altos Writers Roundtable was the first group of poets in America devoted exclusively to the composition and study of English-language haiku. Helen Stiles Chenoweth established the writers’ group in Los Altos, California, as early as 1956. Fourteen of the women, all from the San Francisco Bay area, began serious study of haiku in 1964. The group’s 1966 collection, Borrowed Water, is believed to have been the earliest anthology of original English-language haiku.