Pen Parentis

Pen Parentis has begun outreach through Pen Parentis Across America to communities underserved by traditional Literary Nonprofits - marginalized urban communities, through partnerships with smaller locally-active literary organizations, and rural communities through partnerships with larger regional arts councils. Pen Parentis has already sponsored free workshops for writer-parents online through Literary Cleveland and are in discussions with other local literary organizations. Through collaborations and partnerships, Pen Parentis can widely expand its reach to writers who had to relocate their kids for financial reasons or for the safety of their families.

In 2024, author Sandell Morse endowed our first Fund, the Author Ambassador Fund, which established a permanent voting seat on our board for a member of the writer-parents community. This fund enables members of our target community to have a voting voice on decisions that affect them. Our first Author Ambassador is Marina Budhos, a DEI-trained expert and published author of Indo-Guyanese heritage, who will work closely with the board to create the parameters for her own succession.

Journalist Shani Gilchrist, Columbia professor Karl Jacoby and novelist Helen Wan (all are also parents) discussed writing about race with an intimate audience of 50 writers who were also parents. We host Literary Salons on the second Tuesday during the school year, and since 2020 all of the Salons are online, free and completely accessible, featuring the same outstanding, diverse curation--and every month any author who wishes may tune in for inspiration and to interact directly with these incredible authors. We made the decision to remain online because we have had audience members from Alaska to Maine, and even expat writers who have kids who tuned in from as far away as Australia. We make our writers feel seen - as artists, as professionals---without making them dismiss or ignore the beautiful work they are doing as parents. Our writers have won Pulitzer Prizes (Jennifer Egan), National Book Critics Circle Awards (Darin Strauss), Shirley Jackson Awards (Victor La Valle) and many many other prizes. All of our authors are also parents.

Before the pandemic, our weekly meetups were in-person - now they have all moved online and this group stayed strong--the poet (foreground with baby) won a Pushcart Prize, and we added several writers from other parts of the country, including a single mom from a small town in Ohio and an indie publisher from Connecticut. The blend of children of all ages and writing at all stages allows the group to pool resources in an authentic and compassionate way - the established writers help guide the emerging writers, while the "established parents" can encourage the new parents as well. Everyone sets weekly goals and the progress is tracked across years. Friendships, write-ins, and editing circles have organically emerged from these meetups. From this one weekly meetup in Manhattan, we now have eight online meetups with members who span the entire country.