About Us

Mission

Teachers & Writers Collaborative (T&W) celebrates the imagination through transformative writing and arts education for youth and lifelong learners. Our programs and publications inspire classroom innovation and create greater equity in and through the literary arts.

T&W programs include: writing workshops for youth, art workshops for seniors, and training for teachers. In addition, T&W hosts the NY Poetry Out Loud recitation competition and the NY Youth Poet Laureate program for teens in New York State. To support the teaching of creative writing, we publish Teachers & Writers Magazine and an assortment of books for educators.

Our 2025-2028 Strategic Plan

Our 2025-2028 Strategic Plan, released July 2025, is a roadmap to strengthen our programs, increase financial sustainability, and broaden our reach over the next three years.

Read the 2025-2028 Strategic Plan

Vision

We strive toward a world in which artistic practice is valued and accessible to all, with the belief that words have the power to transform lives and communities.

We envision a world in which students’ whole selves have a place in school, where they are encouraged to experiment and explore language in their authentic voices.
We envision a world in which learning is a lifelong process and there are abundant art-making opportunities for older adults.
We envision classrooms that embrace creative play, free thought, free expression, and an eager willingness to engage with divergent ideas.
We envision a world where artists earn fair and sustainable compensation that supports creative work.
We envision a world in which arts education is vital; valued as a wellspring of creative thinking, problem solving, and growth; and where society thrives through artistic collaboration among communities, teachers, students, and artists.

Core Values

T&W’s programs are centered around our core values of creativity; process & practice; collaboration; and diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility.

Creativity:

We inspire imagination, foster critical thinking, and nurture the development of student voices.

Process & Practice:

We honor the creative process, guided by the practice of working artists, and provide the space and structure that leads students to produce great work.

Collaboration:

We work together with writers, partners, and students to develop innovative and responsive programs. We believe good things happen when ideas and resources are exchanged in a spirit of reciprocal learning.

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, & Accessibility:

We pursue a culture in which all can flourish by centering marginalized voices, asking participants and facilitators to examine their place in the context of their communities.

The 1977 staff of Teachers & Writers Collaborative

History

Teachers & Writers Collaborative was founded in 1967 by a group of writers and educators who believed that professional writers could make a unique contribution to the teaching of writing and literature. Those responsible for shaping T&W’s program and philosophy in the organization’s early years included June Jordan, Rosellen Brown, Victor Hernández Cruz, Kenneth Koch, Herbert Kohl, Phillip Lopate, Grace Paley, Muriel Rukeyser, and Anne Sexton, among others.

Since its founding, T&W has published more than 80 books about teaching writing. T&W writers have brought writing residencies and professional development workshops to hundreds of thousands of students and tens of thousands of teachers in New York City schools. This depth of experience led the National Endowment for the Arts to call T&W the arts education group that is “most familiar with creative writing/literature in primary and secondary schools.”

Staff

Asari Beale, Executive Director

Asari Beale is an Afro-Latina writer, educator, and leader deeply committed to children’s literacy. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the NYC Arts in Education Roundtable and a steering committee member of LitNet, a network serving America’s literary community. She has taught literature and creative writing at Hunter College, Brooklyn College, and Fordham University. Prior to joining Teachers & Writers, she served as the Director of Communications and Community Relations at LSA Family Health Service and as Communications Manager at Reach Out and Read of Greater New York. Ms. Beale holds a BA from New York University and an MFA from Brooklyn College. She lives, loves, and writes out of Harlem, New York City.

Nancy L. Weber, Education Director

Nancy L. Weber is a fiction writer and teacher. Prior to joining the Teachers & Writers staff in September 2019, Ms. Weber was an Adjunct Lecturer at St. Joseph’s College and the New York City College of Technology in Brooklyn, as well as a Fiction and Business Writing teacher at Gotham Writers Workshop. She was also a Founding Board Member, Program Director, and Workshop Facilitator for NY Writers Coalition, a non-profit arts and social justice organization providing writing programs to disenfranchised youth and adults throughout NYC. Ms. Weber received a BFA in Film Production from New York University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the Writer’s Foundry at St. Joseph’s College.

Calley Anderson, Program Manager

Calley Anderson (she/her) is a Brooklyn-based playwright from Memphis, TN. Anderson spent three years in the Memphis non-profit arts sector before moving to New York City to pursue her master's degree. Her work has been supported by Page 73, National Black Theatre, MacDowell, SPACE on Ryder Farm, Liberation Theatre Company, Clubbed Thumb, The Civilians, Dramatists Guild Foundation, and Downtown Urban Arts Festival. Beyond playwriting, she previously served as program director and workshop leader at NY Writers Coalition. Anderson received her BA in English from Davidson College and MFA in Playwriting from The New School for Drama.

Joshua Garcia, Office Manager & Managing Editor

Joshua Garcia (he/him) is a poet and writer. He has led a poetry writing program for incarcerated writers at SCI Coal Township in Pennsylvania, and he has mentored undergraduate students in creative writing and community engagement initiatives at the College of Charleston. He is the author of Pentimento (Black Lawrence Press 2024), and his poetry has appeared in Ecotone, The Georgia Review, Passages North, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA from the College of Charleston and has received a Stadler Fellowship from Bucknell University and an Emerge—Surface—Be Fellowship from The Poetry Project. He lives and writes in Brooklyn, New York.

Philip A. Alexander, Grants Manager

Philip A. Alexander is a creativity catalyst who seeks to inspire and empower others in their own artistry. He partners with artists and educators in pursuit of meaningful and effective arts pedagogy, having held management and leadership positions with such esteemed organizations as the Brooklyn Arts Council, Roundabout Theatre Company, Usdan Summer Camp for the Arts, Empire State Partnerships, the Metropolitan Opera Guild, and the New York State Alliance for Arts Education. He consults in the realms of professional development, assessment and strategic partnership, having supported the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Center for Arts Education, VSArts, and the U.S. Department of Education, among others. Holding a doctorate in theatre history, he is seen regularly at professional gatherings as a workshop leader or featured speaker.

Join our team

We do not have any open positions at this time.

Board of Directors

Lynn Chin
Global Client Partner, PricewaterhouseCoopers

Patricia Hampl
Regents professor of English at the University of Minnesota; author of Blue Arabesque, I Could Tell You Stories: Sojourns in the Land of Memory, Virgin Time, and A Romantic Education; recipient of numerous awards, including MacArthur, Guggenheim and Fulbright fellowships.

Wandy Hoh (Treasurer)
Managing Director, Macquarie Asset Management

Casey Blue James (Secretary)
Senior Director of Strategic Development, Random House Group, a division of Penguin Random House

Luis Jaramillo
Author of the novel The Witches of El Paso; director, School of Writing, The New School.

Ping Li
Senior Vice President, Macquarie Asset Management.

Fatima Malik (Chair)
Chief Advancement Officer, Power of Two; Malik’s poetry has been published in The Georgia Review, The Margins, Poetry NorthWest, Waxwing, and elsewhere.

Steven Schrader
Author of the short story collections Crimes of Passion, On Sundays We Visit the In-laws, and Arriving at Work, and the memoir What We Deserved; publisher of Cane Hill Press; former Teachers & Writers Collaborative director.

Nancy Larson Shapiro
Director of Teachers & Writers Collaborative from 1979-2005; co-editor of The Point: Where Teaching & Writing Intersect.

Barbara Stallworth (Vice Chair)
PMP, Lead Program Manager, S&P Dow Jones Indices

Join our Board and make a difference!

Teachers & Writers Collaborative is currently seeking new members for the Board of Directors. To learn more about this unique opportunity to make a difference in the lives of New Yorkers, contact T&W Executive Director, Asari Beale.

Information packet for board prospects

Teachers & Writers Collaborative thanks the members of the T&W Advisory Board for their support of our work.

Catherine Bowman

Rosellen Brown

Billy Collins

Christina Davis

Sasha Waters Freyer

Dixie Goswami

Colin Greer

Marvin Hoffman

Kaylie Jones

Daniel Kane

Marc Kaminsky

Simon Kilmurry

Karen Koch

Katherine Koch

Leonard Marcus

Bruce Morrow

Sidney Offit

Abiodun Oyewole

Max Rodriguez

Mike Rose

Esther Rosenfeld

Jessica Siegel

Martin Skoble

Mark Statman

Susan Straub

David Unger

Meredith Sue Willis

Linda Winston

Alexandra Tyler

Zelda Wirtschafter

Kevin Young

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