We are WriteNYC
Formerly the Writers In The Schools Committee at PEN America, WriteNYC has now joined the Teachers & Writers Collaborative, a founding organization of the writers in the schools movement.
Established in 2013 with the goal of helping students in New York City public high schools find their voice as creative as well as academic writers, WriteNYC now sends its volunteers—novelists, essayists, journalists and poets—into classrooms and after-school programs across the city. We focus our efforts on under-served communities where students often lack the opportunities for self-expression available in private schools or wealthier areas.
WriteNYC volunteers work with students and teachers to build writing skills, conduct creative writing workshops and writing clubs, and oversee the publication of literary magazines and school newspapers. We also tutor students through the college application process, working with each individual on their personal statements and supplemental essays. Some tutors work alongside teachers in class, while others work directly with students. Tutors are expected to volunteer an hour or so per week. Some of the work is in person and some remote, by Zoom.
We aim to build long term support and relationships with our schools, teachers and students, to create literary opportunities for both the program’s students and volunteers. One of our volunteers was hired as a substitute teacher at Brooklyn Collaborative, and another was hired as an artist-in-residence at Bronx Academy. Our students have been accepted to colleges like NYU, Brown, Syracuse, Yale, University of Michigan, Hunter, Wesleyan, Stony Brook, Penn State and more with full or significant financial support. Our students have also been accepted to college through prestigious scholarships like QuestBridge, Macaulay Honors, and Posse.
James Traub
Founder
James Traub is a journalist who has written for America’s leading magazines over the last fifty years, an instructor at New York University and the author of a dozen works of biography and history. His writing about education for the New York Times Magazine and others brought him into public schools around the country.
Executive Director
Ellie Stimpson
Ellie Stimpson is a poet and teacher. She holds an MFA in poetry from New York University and has been teaching creative writing since becoming the director of WriteNYC in 2024. She is the John Dewitt Gregory Writer-in-Residence at the Bronx Academy of Letters. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Beloit Poetry Journal, Narrative Magazine, Boulevard Magazine, and elsewhere.