Founded By Writers For Writers
Founded in 1978 by five writers who met in the New York Public Library on 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue, The Writers Room is the nation’s oldest and largest urban writers’ colony. It is New York City’s only not-for-profit workspace dedicated entirely to the creation of literature in all of its forms.
The Writers Room can be found at the crossroads of the East and West Village – Noho – in a landmarked cast iron building on Broadway off Astor Place. Although The Writers Room has many members, their varying schedules ensure that a desk is always available.
The Writers Room has a gentle policy comprising three golden rules of silence in the workspace: no talking, no ringing phones, no eating. Beverages are allowed.
Writers Room membership includes 24-hour security in the lobby, securely locked elevators evenings and weekends, high-speed internet access in the workspace, storage for computers and research materials for a nominal fee, a kitchen-lounge for taking a break and a phone niche.
We also have a friendly staff with a combined experience of almost 70 working years at The Writers Room. Native Manhattanite Donna Brodie is the executive director (27 years), Jersey Strong native Elizabeth Sherman is the assistant director (22 years) and Nuyorican born and bred Vilma Torres is the facilities manager (19 years).
Board of Directors
The Writers Room trustees are professional writers themselves. They understand the needs of writers and work closely with the executive director and support staff to keep the Room accessible, affordable, comfortable, and conducive to creating excellent writing.
Writers Room Board of Directors
Doron Weber, president, author
Michael Berg, vice president/secretary, screenwriter
Shelby White, treasurer, journalist
Ann Banks, author, journalist
Tomer Inbar, esq., poet
Anne Landsman, novelist, screenwriter, documentarian
Stephen Reynolds, author
Harriet Washington, author, journalist
Please Donate Today!
The Writers Room is New York City's only nonprofit organization entirely dedicated to providing writers with 24-hour work space. We offer as much as we do for as little as we do - membership is just more than $6 a day for access to secure workspace in a doorman building - thanks to the generosity of government agencies, foundations, corporations and individuals. If you love the cause of good writing, won't you please make a 100% tax-deductible donation today to The Writers Room?
Spotlight On Members
2024
Congratulations to Shaan Sachdev, Writers Room Member Liaison, on winning a $10,000 New York State Council on the Arts award to finish his creative nonfiction book FLÂNEUROLOGY: ESSAYING A GAYER NEW YORK.
Congratulations to Writers Room alum Socorro Venegas of Mexico City on the publication of LA NOCHE SERÁ NEGRA Y BLANCA presented at BMCC’s Fiterman Hall, October 2024. Socorro joined The Writers Room as part of our historic 5-year exchange with Mexico’s Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes. Socorro writes, "After many years, we present the new edition of my novel, which I finished at the wonderful Writers Room.”
On Monday, September 16th, The Writers Room held a reception for the convocants of the New York State Council on the Arts’s annual Lit TAP Conference. Pictured are from left to right: Milda De Voe, Executive Director, Pen Parentis, Donna Brodie, CEO, The Writers Room, Michelle Kotler, Executive Director, Community-Word Project, and Jeffrey Lependorf, Executive Director, The Flow Chart Foundation.
On Thursday, June 6th, Writers Room Board Member Anne Landsman was the keynote speaker for Epiphany Magazine’s Summer Fete at The Urbane Arts Club in Brooklyn. It was a special night of words, song, wine, and delectables. With more than 100 people in attendance, the evening marked, for many of us, the beginning of the summer season.
2023
This spring The Writers Room welcomes 30 members of the Latinx Playwrights Circle who are here on one-month residencies. We hope that this wonderful new initiative will grow into a long-lasting program!
2022
On Wednesday, October 19th, The Writers Room held an evening reception for its first group art show INGRES’S VIOLIN: WRITERS WHO PAINT. In the course of the evening, close to 200 people toured the walls of The Writers Room for this one-night only event that featured the work of 10 writers, including Marcy Dermansky, Jill Hoffman, Jasper Krents, Elizabeth Mailer, Mark Alan Stamaty, Meredeth Turshen, Frederic Tuten, Suki Weston, and Donna Brodie. It was a smash that introduced many new people to The Writers Room. The show runs through December 16th, by appointment only.
The New Bleecker Street Pugs, gouache on paper, by Suki Weston is one of the works featured in INGRES’S VIOLIN: WRITERS WHO PAINT.
The Good Nurse
The 2022 Netflix hit film THE GOOD NURSE is based on the best-selling non-fiction book THE GOOD NURSE: A TRUE STORY OF MEDICINE, MADNESS AND MURDER, written in The Writers Room by former WR member and alum Charles Graeber.
Sigrid Nunez, winner of the 2018 National Book Award for her novel THE FRIEND and author most recently of WHAT YOU ARE GOING THROUGH, joined The Writers Room. Welcome, Sigrid!
Welcome back to K’naan, world-renowned musician, who rejoined The Writers Room as an author this summer.
Congratulations to Sapphire on the 25th-anniversary publication of the novel PUSH, written in The Writers Room all those years ago!
The Writers Room congratulates alumna Rosa Beltrán who has won Mexico’s Premio Excelencia en las Letras José Pacheco, given by the UADY / FILEY (Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán) / Feria Internacional de la Lectura Yucatán AND UC-Mexicanistas, a group of Mexicanists from the University of California! Rosa’s long association with The Writers Room began with her residency in 2000 as a visiting author from Mexico City.
On Friday, March 18th, The Writers Room welcomed the City College of New York’s MFA Creative Writing Program for an open mic reading of work written by its students. The event organized by Nidhi Metha of the program featured poet David Groff and many more. It was a thrill to welcome this great group of writers in our first post-Covid event.
Nidha wrote us with the following words, "Thank you so so much for letting us use The Writer's Room for our first in-person MFA Reading Series Event in such a long time! It was an incredible night with a great turnout and amazing readings!”
2021
Pen Parentis Executive Director Milda De Voe
In 2021, the New York State Council on the Arts hired WR Executive Director Donna Brodie to provide mentorship in fundraising and arts administration to Pen Parentis Executive Director and Founder Milda De Voe. Pen Parentis, www.penparentis.org, is a non profit organization created by Milda De Voe in 2009 for the following purposes
• to encourage the production of creative written work of professional standard by authors who are also parents
• to foster supportive communities of authors who are also parents, both locally and online, and through outreach activities,
• to provide educational, creative, and professional support in this discipline to members of these communities so that authors who are also parents will continue to actively pursue their creative goals.
Milda and Donna meet over borscht and pirogues at East Village headquarters The Veselka to discuss all that’s relevant to helping writers thrive.
In 2021 The Writers Room welcomed attorney, poet and translator Tomer Inbar to its board. Tomer is a translator of Saibara. In Tomer’s words, "Saibara (literally, “urge/horse/song”) are a strange animal. Part bawdy peasant folk song, part aristocratic court poem, Saibara appear to be the lyrics of early folk songs adapted to the music and aesthetics of Chinese T’ang musical style as interpreted by the Heian Court. Saibara first make their appearance in the Court literature of Japan in the mid-ninth century.” Here is a link to the song “The Old Mice."
2020
Ediciones El Milagro, Mexico’s premier publisher of prestige Mexican theater and film work, hosted DRAMATURGIA SIN CONCESIONES, a livestreamed interview with playwright Carmina Narro (“La Narro”) to celebrate the publication SIN GANAS DE MATAR and DESPUÉS DE LA IRA, an anthology of award-winning plays written by Ms. Narro, a WR alumna and one of Mexico’s most renowned playwrights. Ms. Narro invited longtime friend and admirer WR Executive Director Donna Brodie to participate in the panel discussion. It was a lively and enlightening evening moderated by theater professional Rodrigo Johnson.
Medical Apartheid A Terrible Thing to Waste
In 2020 The Writers Room welcomed journalist and author Harriet Washington to The Writers Room board of directors. Harriet, a former Writers Room member, had been one of the first recipients of the Alfred P. Sloan for Writing on Science and Technology Desk Award at The Writers Room. Harriet wrote her first book at The Writers Room, Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present, National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, the PEN/Oakland Award, the BCALA Nonfiction Award and the Gustavus Meyers Award.
2019
The Writers Room hosted The Climate Museum’s Youth Climate Arts Program rehearsals, in which fourteen school age poets prepared to deliver spoken word poems about the climate crisis from the stage of the Apollo Theater in Spring 2019. In the words of Climate Museum Executive Director Miranda Massie, "We were having trouble finding suitable performance workshop space that we could afford. Not only did Donna give us free space, she gave us her own office. I previously had a sense of the critical role The Writers Room plays for the literary community at book launch parties and the like. This year I learned it is a critical role for the community, period. We'll always be grateful.”
The Writers Room Makes Movies! Wonderful night, May 28th, at artist Jessica Schwartz’s Chelsea salon and studio to show two short films written, produced and directed by Writers Room members. Author, playwright screenwriter and WR member Penny Jackson (MY DINNER WITH SCHWARTZEY) shared the bill with musician, screenwriter, director and WR member Sammy James, Jr. (THE ACOLYTE). These two debut narrative films were written at The Writers Room in glorious technicolor!
2018
Congratulations to Writers Room board president Doron Weber who was presented with the National Book Foundation's 2018 Literarian Prize for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community on November 14th, 2018. Here he is with Writers Room Executive Director Donna Brodie, who was honored to be a guest at his table!
2017
The Writers Room was thrilled to host THE BEST OF KWELI (an anthology published by Aster(ix)) in its beautiful work space in March 2017. Kweli is a digital and print journal of the literature and art of the African diaspora that presents new and established writers of fiction, creative non-fiction and poetry. KWELI founder Laura Pegram and Writers Room Executive Director Donna Brodie were introduced at a New York State Council on the Arts conference.