A Message From the Executive Director
Things are changing at Poets & Writers. If you are a subscriber to this magazine or a frequent visitor to our website, perhaps you’ve already noticed that some things are different. As we ring in the New Year, I’m excited to tell you about the new initiatives we’ve been working on. But first some context for why some things will be a little different going forward—and what you can continue to expect from us.
Poets & Writers was founded in 1970 as a service organization for writers, and that mission remains unchanged. As we begin our fifty-fifth year of serving the literary community, we are dedicated to helping you navigate the marketplace, connect with other writers, and build the community you need for a generative writing practice. But it isn’t 1970 anymore. We’re operating in a vastly different world—and so are the writers we serve. Naturally we must evolve, both to meet the changing needs of writers and to ensure that we can sustain our work for generations to come.
As 2025 begins, we’re rolling out a membership program that offers writers new digital content, resources, and connections that expand on the news, essays, and insight you find in the pages of Poets & Writers Magazine. For example, we’ve got a nifty new app that’s ideal for reading the latest from our editors during your commute or whenever you have a few minutes to catch up on what’s happening in the world of books and writers. (To get the free app, go to app.pw.org.) We’ve created a premium newsletter, available exclusively to members, that provides weekly updates on writing contests, including upcoming deadlines and insider perspectives from contest judges.
We’re launching a major upgrade to Poets & Writers Groups, our networking and collaboration platform for writers groups. It has turned out beautifully, and we’re thrilled to invite you to visit groups.pw.org to explore this unique new forum for writers. And because we’ve seen what the internet is like, we’re committing resources to making sure that Poets & Writers Groups is a respectful, welcoming community for all writers—the kind of increasingly rare online place where you’ll actually want to spend time. We’ve also got a full roster of online classes led by distinguished authors and publishing professionals to help you deepen your craft and move your writing career forward.
In a perfect world we would provide all this and more free of charge. But that’s not the reality we live in. The truth is that these invaluable resources and programs are increasingly expensive to produce and challenging to fund. To keep providing the expertly curated, trustworthy guidance you expect, and to build an online community you’ll want to be part of, we need to ask you to kick in a bit more than perhaps you have in the past. Over the next year, as your Poets & Writers Magazine subscription comes up for renewal, you’ll be asked to become a member of Poets & Writers. We are pulling back on discounted subscription offers and asking all readers to pay a minimum of $30 a year for the print edition of Poets & Writers Magazine—an amount that, while still affordable, will help us continue to publish. When you visit pw.org you’ll find that many of our online resources are still free, but some content is now behind a paywall. We know that most writers don’t make a lot of money from their writing, so we’ll keep the membership fees as low as we can, with full digital access for as little as $5 a month. If you can pitch in more, choose the $10 a month membership level and we’ll send you a Poets & Writers tote bag. You can find all the details about the membership program at pw.org.
We know writers find tremendous value here because so many have shared their stories with us. Marlon James, the New York Times best-selling and award-winning novelist, has said that an article in Poets & Writers Magazine changed his life. When acclaimed novelist Rebecca Makkai was thinking of giving up on writing, she got the encouragement she needed from peers on pw.org. Tracy K. Smith, the Pulitzer Prize–winning former U.S. poet laureate, recalls how for years she kept a chart of contest deadlines culled from this publication and “felt a delicious cocktail of envy, exhilaration, and outrageous hope reading about all the winners.” Poet Carl Phillips, also a Pulitzer Prize winner, has thanked Poets & Writers for telling him what he most needed to know: that he “wasn’t alone in wanting to give shape to a life through language.”
I hope you find real value here too—whether it is practical, reliable information you cannot find anywhere else, the community you seek, or the spark of inspiration you need to stay true to your writing goals. If so, please join us as a Poets & Writers member, both to take full advantage of all that we offer and to help keep Poets & Writers going strong in 2025 and long into the future. Thank you.
Melissa Ford Gradel
Executive Director and Publisher