WThe American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 250-member honor society whose goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, music, and art. Located in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City, it shares Audubon Terrace, a complex on Broadway between West 155th and 156th Streets, with the Hispanic Society of America and Boricua College.
WThe Asian American Writers' Workshop is a nonprofit literary arts organization founded in 1991 to support Asian American writers, literature and community. Cofounders Curtis Chin, Christina Chiu, Marie Myung-Ok Lee, and Bino A. Realuyo created AAWW because they were searching for New York City community of writers of color who could provide support for new writers.
WThe Authors Guild is America's oldest and largest professional organization for writers and provides advocacy on issues of free expression and copyright protection. Since its founding in 1912 as the Authors League of America, it has counted among its board members notable authors of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, including numerous winners of the Nobel and Pulitzer Prizes and National Book Awards. It has over 9,000 members, who receive free legal advice and guidance on contracts with publishers as well as insurance services and assistance with subsidiary licensing and royalties.
WBiographers International Organization (BIO) is an international, non-profit, 501 (c)(3) organization founded to promote the art and craft of biography, and to further the professional interests of its practitioners. The organization was founded in 2010 by a committee of noted biographers, led by James McGrath Morris, who served as BIO's first Executive Director. The president of BIO as of 2019 is Linda Leavell. The executive director as of 2020 is Michael Gately.
WClarion is a six-week workshop for aspiring science fiction and fantasy writers. Originally an outgrowth of Damon Knight and Kate Wilhelm's Milford Writers' Conference, held at their home in Milford, Pennsylvania, United States, it was founded in 1968 by Robin Scott Wilson at Clarion State College in Pennsylvania. Knight and Wilhelm were among the first teachers at the workshop.
WThe Federal Writers' Project (FWP) was a federal government project in the United States created to provide jobs for out-of-work writers during the Great Depression. It was part of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a New Deal program. It was one of a group of New Deal arts programs known collectively as Federal Project Number One or Federal One. The FWP employed thousands of people and produced hundreds of publications, including state guides, city guides, local histories, oral histories, ethnographies, and children's books. In addition to writers, the project provided jobs to unemployed librarians, clerks, researchers, editors, and historians.
WThe Horror Writers Association (HWA) is a worldwide non-profit organization of professional writers and publishing professionals dedicated to promoting the interests of Horror and Dark fantasy writers.
WThe Iowa Writers' Workshop, at the University of Iowa, is a celebrated graduate-level creative writing program in the United States. The writer Lan Samantha Chang is its director. Graduates earn a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree in Creative Writing. It has been cited as the best graduate writing program in the nation, counting among its alumni 17 Pulitzer Prize winners.
WKundiman is a nonprofit organization dedicated to nurturing generations of writers and readers of Asian American literature. The organization offers an annual writing retreat, readings, workshops, a mentorship program, and a poetry prize, and aims to provide "a safe yet rigorous space where Asian American poets can explore, through art, the unique challenges that face the new and ever changing diaspora." Kundiman was co-founded in 2004 by Asian American poets Sarah Gambito and Joseph O. Legaspi, and has received support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the Poetry Foundation, the New York Community Trust, Philippine American Writers, PAWA, and individuals.
WThe Lambda Literary Foundation is an American LGBTQ literary organization whose mission is to nurture and advocate for LGBTQ writers, elevating the impact of their words to create community, preserve their legacies, and affirm the value of LGBTQ stories and lives.
WThe League of American Writers was an association of American novelists, playwrights, poets, journalists, and literary critics launched by the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) in 1935. The group included Communist Party members, and so-called "fellow travelers" who closely followed the Communist Party's political line without being formal party members, as well as individuals sympathetic to specific policies being advocated by the organization.
WThe Library of America (LOA) is a nonprofit publisher of classic American literature. Founded in 1979 with seed money from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ford Foundation, the LOA has published over 300 volumes by authors ranging from Mark Twain to Philip Roth, Nathaniel Hawthorne to Saul Bellow, and includes the selected writings of several U.S. presidents.
WThe Literary Society of Washington was formed in 1874 by a group of friends and associates who wished to meet regularly for "literary and artistic improvement and entertainment". For more than 140 years, this literary society has convened monthly for discourse and the reading of essays written by members. The Society consists of approximately 40 Members, plus Honorary Associates and Emeritus Members. Unlike many similar social organizations, the Literary Society has included women members since its founding. The Society has no formal building or address, but meets in member homes or other locations.
WMystery Writers of America (MWA) is an organization of mystery and crime writers, based in New York City.
WNational Writers Union (NWU), founded on 19 November 1981, is the trade union in the United States for freelance and contract writers: journalists, book and short fiction authors, business and technical writers, web content providers and poets. Organized into 17 local chapters nationwide, it had been Local 1981 of the United Automobile Workers, AFL-CIO since merging with them in 1992. On 11 May 2020, the NWU disaffiliated with the UAW.
WThe New York State Writers Institute is a literary organization based at the University at Albany in Albany, New York. It sponsors the Albany Book Festival, the Albany Film Festival, Visiting Writers Series, Classic Film Series, the Trolley online literary magazine, and the New York State Summer Writers Institute, and New York State Summer Young Writers Institute in collaboration with Skidmore College,
WPEN America, founded in 1922 and headquartered in New York City, is a nonprofit organization that works to defend and celebrate free expression in the United States and worldwide through the advancement of literature and human rights. With more than 7,200 members—including novelists, journalists, nonfiction writers, editors, poets, essayists, playwrights, publishers, translators, agents, and other writing professionals—PEN America is the largest of the more than 100 PEN centers worldwide that together compose PEN International. PEN America has offices in New York City, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C.
WPEN Center USA was a branch of PEN, an international literary and human rights organization. It was one of two PEN International Centers in the United States, the other being the PEN America in New York City. On March 1, 2018, PEN Center USA unified under the PEN America umbrella as the PEN America Los Angeles office. PEN Center USA was founded in 1943 and incorporated as a nonprofit association in 1981. Much of PEN Center USA's programming continues out of the PEN America Los Angeles office, including the Emerging Voices Fellowship, PEN In The Community writing residencies and guest speaker program, and PEN Presents conversation series.
WPhilippine American Women Writers and Artists also known as PAWWA was founded in 1991 by a group of seven Filipina writers in Southern California. It was the first such support group for Filipina women writers. Aside from supporting one another, the group wanted to help other Filipina writers and artists, as well as to provide community service. PAWWA encouraged the creation of PAWWA-North, headed by Ceres Alabado in the Bay Area, California.
WRochester Poets is the oldest ongoing literary organization in the upstate New York region. Founded in 1920 as the Rochester, New York, chapter of the Poetry Society of America, the group ceased its affiliation with the Society in the 1980s in order to accept a wider variety of members. At that time, the organization adopted its current name.
WThe Swordsmen and Sorcerers' Guild of America or SAGA was an informal group of American fantasy authors active from the 1960s through the 1980s, noted for their contributions to the "Sword and Sorcery" kind of heroic fantasy, itself a subgenre of fantasy. When it developed a serious purpose that was to promote the popularity and respectability of Sword and Sorcery fiction.
WThe Westbeth Playwrights Feminist Collective was a group of professional women playwrights in New York active from 1971 to 1975. They wrote and produced feminist plays and were one of the first feminist theatre groups in the United States to do so. The members' individual works had been produced at the Public Theater, La Mama, Joe Chaikin’s Open Theater, Caffe Cino, Circle Repertory Company, Mark Taper Forum, Lincoln Center, and New York Theater Ensemble.
WWestern Writers of America, founded 1953, promotes literature, both fictional and nonfictional, pertaining to the American West. Although its founders wrote traditional Western fiction, the more than 600 current members also include historians and other nonfiction writers, as well as authors from other genres.
WThe Writers Guild of America West (WGAW) is a labor union representing film, television, radio, and new media writers. It was formed in 1954 from five organizations representing writers, including the Screen Writers Guild. It has around 20,000 members.
WThe Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE) is a labor union representing film and television writers as well as employees of television and radio news.